Suspect's Father Met with CIA
JOHN ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Tonight: President Obama admits the anti-terror system failed.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable.</s>ROBERTS: Four days after the Christmas airliner attack, the president promises to act quickly to fix the flaws that nearly led to disaster. Searching for answers; we now know what the bomb looked like but investigators still don't have a key piece of the puzzle. Exactly how the bomb was supposed to work. And Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly took his orders from terrorists in Yemen. What do we know about this new Ground Zero of terrorism and how is the U.S. going to fight it?</s>ANNOUNCER: This is CNN TONIGHT live from New York. Here now John Roberts.</s>ROBERTS: Good evening and thanks for being with us. A mix of human and systemic failure, that's how President Obama described the circumstances that led up to the near tragedy on Christmas morning. He made the surprise statement late this afternoon from his vacation home in Hawaii saying, "The intelligence community knew about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab weeks ago and failed to spread word that would have put him on the no-fly list." Our Ed Henry is following that part of the story for us and will join us in just a moment from Hawaii. First, though, the latest on the investigation tonight from Homeland Security correspondent Jeanne Meserve. She joins us live tonight from Washington with breaking news about the CIA's role in this systemic failure. Hi, Jeanne.</s>JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Hi, John. This information coming to us from a single, well-placed source, who tells us that someone from the CIA met with the father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in Nigeria and spoke with him and prepared a report on his concerns that his son had become radicalized and might have gone to Yemen. What I'm told by my source is that a report was prepared and it was sent on to the CIA in Langley, Virginia, CIA headquarters. But it was not disseminated to the wider intelligence community. This source says that there was other intelligence being gathered, intelligence that perhaps did not have a name attached to it but perhaps if they had had additional information about someone, maybe someone of a certain nationality, perhaps that would have helped put the pieces together perhaps in time to stop this plot. But in fact the information, I'm told, stayed with the CIA and stayed there until after the attempted attack on Christmas Day. We asked the White House for comment. We got a response from an administration official who did not deny or contradict in any way the specifics of that reporting. He just said that the president's statement made clear there was information held by the U.S. government in various places and various forms that could have and should have been assessed, analyzed and correlated with other information in a way that would have allowed us to disrupt the attempted terrorist attack before the suspect boarded an aircraft. He goes on, of course, to say how the White House is trying to correct the situation. There is a little pushback, however, from the intelligence community. An intelligence official telling us the guy's father gave his son's name and passport number. That was disseminated. He said his kid might have connections to extremists to Yemen. That, too, was disseminated. "I'm not aware of a magic piece of intelligence somehow withheld that would have put Abdulmutallab on the no-fly list." But what my source is saying is that it wasn't that specific intelligence alone but that intelligence in combination with other intelligence which might have put the picture together -- John.</s>ROBERTS: And what about the sense of urgency, Jeanne, that was conveyed by Abdulmutallab's father? I mean, he went to the embassy not once, more than once and also made some follow-up phone calls. What do we know about the level of contact that his father had with the U.S. embassy there?</s>MESERVE: Well, U.S. officials are saying that there was one face-to-face meeting that they know of, but then there were several telephone calls. So this wasn't a one-time affair. He did go several times or rather make contact several times to express his concerns about his son and what he might be up to. And what has been noted before, this wasn't just a Joe off the street. This was a very prominent citizen of Nigeria who was coming in to try to sound the alarm about his son.</s>ROBERTS: And Jeanne Meserve with the very latest for us from Washington tonight. Jeanne thanks so much. The immediate reaction to this attack has been to focus on airport security. But Abdulmutallab could have been stopped long before he ever set foot on an aircraft. The U.S. had issued him a visa and the U.S. had multiple reports, again from his father, a former bank official in Nigeria, that Abdulmutallab may have been a radical Muslim. But no one in the U.S. government put those two facts together to justify an investigation that could have led to canceling his visa. Jill Dougherty has been trying to find out why.</s>JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): These images still fresh of what could have been a devastating terror attack, President Obama is slamming security agencies after warnings from the bombing's suspect father that his son might under the influence of religious extremists fell through the cracks.</s>OBAMA: It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community, but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect's name on a no-fly list. There appears to be other deficiencies as well.</s>DOUGHERTY: State Department spokesman Ian Kelly insists department staff did what they were supposed to do, send a cable from the embassy in Nigeria outlining those warnings to the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington, the brain trust of all federal agencies fighting terrorism. Could the State Department on its own have pulled the suspect's visa which allowed him to visit the U.S. any time? No, Kelly says. "It's an interagency decision." But the bureaucratic finger-pointing has begun. A U.S. government official familiar with how the embassy cable was handled in Washington telling CNN, the cable was a very thin report with nothing specific; just one of hundreds of reports that Counterterrorism Center evaluates daily. Not enough reasonable suspicion to warrant putting the alleged bomber on a no-fly list or revoking his Visa. But in May, British authorities did refuse the suspect a visa and put him on a watch list. A British source tells CNN, it was because he lied on a student visa application claiming he went to a bogus college. That information, however, was never passed on to U.S. authorities, he says, because it wasn't linked to terrorism.</s>FRANCES FRAGOS TOWNSEND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTOR: I think we've got to ask why wouldn't our allies have shared with us information even if it was not terrorism related? If this individual lied on their visa application, in their visa application process, why wouldn't they have shared that with us? Because, frankly, if an individual is known to have lied to another immigration authority around the world, I'd want to know that.</s>DOUGHERTY: And already the State Department is pointing to some possible loopholes that might allow someone to fly even with a revoked visa. Information that a visa has been pulled goes into a database and that is communicated to other U.S. government agencies, but no automatic notification goes into airline databases -- John.</s>ROBERTS: And do people in the State Department find it curious that the Brits appear to have gotten it right here in revoking Abdulmutallab's visa but at the same time the U.S. visa wasn't revoked?</s>DOUGHERTY: Well, you know, they are saying that it's a different deal. That at that point, you know, the Brits were working on something that was really an immigration issue as opposed to a terrorism issue. So it's apples and oranges.</s>ROBERTS: All right, Jill Dougherty for us tonight. Jill thanks so much. President Obama has given his Homeland Security team until Thursday to come up with a preliminary report on how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got on board Flight 253 with enough high explosive to potentially blow it out of the sky. Our senior White House correspondent Ed Henry is covering the story for us as the president vacations in Hawaii.</s>ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Faced with criticism he's been too slow to react to the attempted terror attack, President Obama interrupted his Hawaiian vacation for the second straight day. This time he minced no words.</s>OBAMA: When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could have cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred. And I consider that totally unacceptable.</s>HENRY: Taking a more aggressive posture than just 24 hours earlier, the president gave officials a Thursday deadline to give him preliminary findings on the failures. Calling it a nearly catastrophic breach of security, Mr. Obama had a blunt message for the intelligence community.</s>OBAMA: ... pull the resources they need to keep America safe but it's also my job to ensure that our intelligence, law enforcement and Homeland Security systems and the people in them, are working effectively and held accountable. I intend to fulfill that responsibility and insist on accountability at every level.</s>HENRY: The kind of demand for accountability that was lacking Sunday when Homeland Security Secretary Janet</s>JANET NAPOLITANO, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: One thing I'd like to point out is that the system worked. Everybody played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action.</s>HENRY: Napolitano walked that back Monday saying she meant the system worked after the attempted attack. The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee pounced on that and is charging the administration has not kept them in the loop on the investigation.</s>REP. PETER HOEKSTRA (R), MICHIGAN: It's their responsibility to keep us fully and currently informed. They're not doing that.</s>HENRY: But after CNN learned Congressman Pete Hoekstra was in fact briefed on Christmas Day, his office acknowledged the White House aide did speak to him. Though, the Republican contends he got limited information. The Democratic National Committee blasting Hoekstra for putting out a fund-raising letter on the terror incident that vows to fight the president's plan to quote, "weaken our security".</s>HENRY: Now, a Hoekstra spokesman told me the fund-raising appeal is part of his chance to sort of highlight his national security credentials. He's already raised money off of it so he's happy to do it. But in a sign of the Democrats being a bit more aggressive than they were a couple days ago, a DNC aide said that after eight years of failed leadership on national security it's, quote, "shameful for Republicans to be playing politics with this incident" -- John.</s>ROBERTS: Ed, we weren't expecting the president to come out and talk today. Why did he make that decision?</s>HENRY: In the last few moments, a senior administration official had told us that some new information that basically earlier today the president got on a secure conference call with two of his top security aides; John Brennan, who handles Homeland Security and General Jim Jones, who is his national security advisor. And we're told on that call the president was given new information that suggested officials had not connected the dots properly before this incident. They won't get more specific. But obviously as Jeanne Meserve reporting about the CIA contact with the father and other information coming out, it's clear now that the president was briefed before he came out, and that prompted him to come out. That there was a lot more information kicking around and aides are saying he wanted to be transparent and tell the American people that he knew more information -- John.</s>ROBERTS: Ed Henry for us in Hawaii tonight. Ed thanks. And coming up, we're going to have much more on the fallout from the failed attack on Flight 253. We'll take a look at the Middle Eastern country of Yemen and its increasing role in the war on terror. And an international custody battle that appeared to be resolved is actually far from over. We'll have the latest on the fight over 9- year-old Sean Goldman.