Security Leaders Drilled by US Senate

By: Bill Johnston

The big news for the last two days is Scott Brown winning the US Senate seat in Massachusetts. He won it by beating state attorney general Martha Coakley who is being criticized for running a poor campaign. One of the things her campaign committee did wrong was run a television ad where they misspelled Massachusetts. Oops.

 

Now comes word that one of the reasons the underpants bomber was never stopped was because of a spelling error. I guess that would be possible with a name like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

President Obama and his handlers should be happy about the fact that an appearance on Capitol Hill by his top national security advisors is buried in today’s news because the performance was both pathetic and stunning.

The National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano all appeared before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. And they got ripped.

First, it was Blair who according to reports was “pressured” to trim the no-fly list. That’s remarkable considering that there is an 8-year old boy who is still on the list. If they were going to trim a list, age would be a pretty easy category to search and cut from.

The question is WHO pressured the Director to trim the list? Blair admitted that he wrongly “caved” to that pressure. Both Blair and Leiter said the system failed, and they are making changes to correct it. Here’s a question: WHEN will the changes take place? If a easy to see terrorist looking fellow walks up to a ticket counter anywhere in the world and buys a one-way ticket to a US city, and THEN pays in cash and THEN declares he has no luggage and THEN doesn’t even have a coat? And just so the record is clear, he was going to Detroit on Christmas and there’s usually snow on the ground and in the air. You need a coat! That is unless of course you don’t ever plan on landing safely.

And do you remember how the President responded to the story when it broke? He let Janet Napolitano appear in the Sunday talk shows to declare that, “The system worked.”

It was only three days after the failed attack that the President spoke directly to the nation, and even then he couldn’t muster wearing a tie. It was like vacation time and the president deserves a vacation. And what about Mister Leiter? The National Counterterrorism Center Director? The guy who was on a skiing trip when all this happened? He didn’t stop skiing. He stayed on vacation.

The story in Haiti and the story about Scott Brown winning in Massachusetts is drowning out the coverage of these hearings. But that will not last forever. The real question is why do these people get to keep their J-O-B-S? More>>