Today, the topic for discussion in the POLITICO Arena was: “Flight 253: Do you agree with Janet Napolitano that ‘the system worked.’”
Below is my response. You can also see it on the POLITICO Arena page.
If the detonator had worked, we would have gruesome proof that our system did not work.
I’d like to focus on one aspect of the security process of Christmas -the notification of President Obama. The attempted attack on Flight 253 occurred just before noon ET, or 7 a.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Time.
President Obama and his family left for the gym on Christmas at 6:40 a.m. According to Peter Baker of the New York Times, President Obama’s “only known work interruption came after 9 a.m. when a military aid notified him” about the attempted terrorist attack.
So, in this instance, President Obama couldn’t be bothered to learn about an attempted terrorist attack over U.S. soil for over two hours. By comparison, in October President Obama was woken up by his press secretary before 6 a.m. to be told he had “won” the Nobel Peace Prize.
Obama’s staff felt it was urgent for the President to know he had been selected for an award, but it was less important for him to be notified of attack on American citizens. That’s either bad staff work or a reflection of President Obama’s priorities. Either one is deeply troubling.
Scott, you are dead wrong on this.
At the time the attack occurred, no one knew that it was an attack. Indeed, four and a half hours after the attack, the AP was still reporting that a ‘fire-cracker’ had gone off on the plane (note the dateline in the linked story):
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091225/ap_on_re_us/us_airliner_disturbance
Given the timeline, it seems that Obama was notified as soon as it became apparent that the attack was indeed an attack, not a fire-cracker mishap.
You should be ashamed of this post and retract your statement from Politico.
Thanks for stopping by my blog, Robert. I appreciate you taking the time to comment, but you are misinformed. The President of the United States,thankfully, doesn’t need to rely on news reporting for information. He has DOT, FAA, TSA, DHS, DOJ, FBI, CIA, and his National Security Council to keep him posted. The initial news reports did mention a “firecracker,” but it was quite immediately known on the plane what was happening and that reporting was inaccurate. In fact, Abdulmutallab had to be restrained by other passengers and told a flight attendant that what he had was “an explosive device.” The DOJ was aware of this fact. See this story.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-tc-nw-terror-plane-1226-1227dec27,0,2104053.story
And, as for your AP story time stamp, you are confused as to what that means. Yahoo News, like many news sites, automatically post stories from the AP, Reuters, AFP and others. The time stamp is what time it was automatically posted, not what time the story was filed. Often times, original wire stories are posted and the updated copy doesn’t see as many postings. I know this because I’ve been quoted in hundreds of stories where the original – which doesn’t include my quote – gets repeatedly posted, while the updated version containing my comment isn’t as easily found. It’s not malicious, it is just a hiccup of the way news works.
I’m proud of my post and stand by it. I don’t think the White House staff or President Obama should be proud of the level of concern they displayed in those initial hours.
I still think that unless you can pinpoint exactly when the investigatory bodies convinced themselves that they had a solid story, it’s hard to make the claim you’re making.
There seems to have been a lot of confusion about what was going on. I can’t tell from the news stories how long the would-be bomber was interviewed and what time the FAA alert to other planes went out. Can you?
Even if there was a delay — which again, I think you haven’t shown — I’d personally find it to be tenuous evidence from which to infer the administration’s attitude towards terrorism.
As soon as the Obama team decided to treat him as a common criminal (not an enemy combatant), he lawyered up and stopped talking. A better course would’ve been to interrogate him to see if there would be follow on attacks so Americans could be protected. But, that’s definitely not “the administration’s attitude towards terrorism.”