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Newer News: February 2010

January 2010 Intelligence News

• New Fatah charter omits language on Israel's demise, JTA News, January 27. "The office of the U.S. Director of National Intelligence translated the document that emerged from Fatah's council in Bethlehem last summer, and Secrecy News, a project of the Federation of American Scientists watchdog group, obtained a copy and published it Wednesday."
• White House Releases Public Summary of the Inventory of Files Related to Fort Hood Shooting, January 15. "This review was conducted on an accelerated timeline to identify issues of concern or potential vulnerabilities in our systems and to immediately take appropriate corrective measures."
• Analysts Question Al-Qaeda Efforts at Counterterrorism Center by Spencer Ackerman, The Washington Independent, January 15. "According to interviews with several veteran NCTC analysts, the five-year-old National Counterterrorism Center, meant to be a hub for pulling together terrorism information from across the 16-agency U.S. intelligence community to better anticipate future attacks, has a cumbersome bureaucratic structure and a questionable set of institutional values."
• Remarks by the President on Strengthening Intelligence and Aviation Security, January 7. "Today, I'm directing a series of additional corrective steps across multiple agencies. Broadly speaking, they fall into four areas."
• White House Briefing on Initial Review of December 25, 2009 Attempted Terrorist Attack, January 7. "The review had three primary goals: to get the facts to find out what happened, to identify the failures and shortcomings of what went wrong, and to make recommendations on corrective action so we can fix the problems. And I want to address each of these areas."
• President's Directive on Corrective Actions Following the Attempted Terrorist Attack on December 25, 2009, January 7. "I have concluded that immediate actions must be taken to enhance the security of the American people. These actions are necessary given inherent systemic weaknesses and human errors revealed by the review of events leading up to December 25th."
• Summary of the White House Review of the December 25, 2009 Attempted Terrorist Attack, January 7, 2010. "On December 25,2009 a Nigerian national, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate an explosive device while onboard flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit."
• DNI Statement on Preliminary Review of December 25 Attack, January 7. "That Mr. Abdulmutallab boarded Northwest Flight 153 [should be: 253] for Detroit was a failure of the counterterrorism system."
• Counterterrorism Center Assigns "Eight or Nine" Analysts to Middle East by Spencer Ackerman, The Washington Independent, January 5. "While NCTC, as it's known, has taken much criticism in the media over the past two weeks for failing to flag Abdulmutallab as a threat, NCTC has so far evaded criticism over a structural problem it still faces five years after its creation: of the 300 analysts working at the center, fewer than a dozen focus full-time on the Middle East."
• Obama Imperils Intel Briefings by Theodore Kettle, NewsMax.com, January 3. "President Barack Obama's executive order last Tuesday to declassify millions of secret U.S. government document delighted left-wing "open government" groups, but it may render impotent one of the intelligence community's most vital tools: the President's Daily Brief, or PDB."
• Presidential Memorandum to Facilitate Closure of Detention Facitilities at Guantanamo Bay, December 15, 2009, published in Federal Register, January 8, 2010. "In order to facilitate the closure of detention facilities at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, I hereby direct that the following actions be taken as expeditiously as possible with respect to the facility known as the Thomson Correctional Center (TCC) in Thomson, Illinois."