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CIA knew about Nigerian terror suspect: Report
As US President Barack Obama today conceded of systemic intelligence failure, media reports said that the CIA knew about the Nigerian terror suspect involved in a thwarted Christmas Day plane attack.
As US President Barack Obama on Wednesday conceded of systemic intelligence failure, media reports said that the CIA knew about the Nigerian terror suspect involved in a thwarted Christmas Day plane attack.
Several American media organisations on Tuesday reported that the father of Nigerian terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had met the CIA officials in Nigeria and briefed them about his son's radical links.
The news reports claimed that this report was not shared by the CIA with other agencies.
"Had that information been shared, the 23-year-old Nigerian who is alleged to have bungled an attempt to blow up a jetliner as it was landing in Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day might have been denied passage on the Northwest Airlines flight," a source was quoted as saying by the CNN.
Abdulmutallab, 23, has been charged with attempt to blow up a US plane on December 25.
The CBS News reported that as early as August of 2009 the Central Intelligence Agency was picking up information on a person of interest dubbed "The Nigerian", suspected of meeting with "terrorist elements" in Yemen.
This Nigerian has now turned out to be Abdulmutallab, it said.
"We must get better at collecting these bits of information, putting them together at a central point, analysing them and then acting," Lee Hamilton, the vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission, was quoted as saying by CBS news.
