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US spy chief in spotlight after botched plane attack
Source: Agencies |
December 31, 2009, Thursday
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Online Edition
Online Edition
US intelligence chief Admiral Dennis Blair faced tough questions about his future yesterday as the Obama administration fended off criticism over the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25.
Publicly, the White House was standing by Blair, the United States' top spymaster who is responsible for coordinating intelligence gathering between 16 agencies, saying the four-star admiral had the full confidence of the president.
"This is not about one person or one agency," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
But speculation was rife that Blair or Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano could be forced to resign after President Barack Obama said on Tuesday there had been a systemic failure by the country's security agencies to prevent the botched Christmas Day attack.
Napolitano has been lambasted by Republican critics, and in the media, for initially saying the air security system worked, and then backpedaling and saying she had meant the system of beefing up measures worked after the incident had occurred.
Gibbs said Napolitano had the president's support, and Obama referred to her in his public comments on Tuesday, supporting her statement that correct actions were taken after the attempted attack.
Kurt Volker, a former CIA analyst and until recently US ambassador to NATO, said Blair and Napolitano were facing the traditional Washington blame game.
"That's politics. It's the way politics goes, that you look for whom you can blame so you can say, 'if my party had been elected instead of yours, things would have been better,'" said Volker, now at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
A senior aide said Obama would seek accountability at the highest levels for the failure, a remark some observers took to mean that heads would roll.
Obama, a Democrat, is under pressure from Republicans, who fault his administration for not preventing the attack and the president for keeping silent about it for three days while on vacation in Hawaii.
Republicans portrayed Obama as weak on national security even as he campaigned for last year's presidential election, and have sought to push that point before mid-term elections in November, when they will challenge the Democrats' control of both houses of the US Congress.
Publicly, the White House was standing by Blair, the United States' top spymaster who is responsible for coordinating intelligence gathering between 16 agencies, saying the four-star admiral had the full confidence of the president.
"This is not about one person or one agency," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
But speculation was rife that Blair or Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano could be forced to resign after President Barack Obama said on Tuesday there had been a systemic failure by the country's security agencies to prevent the botched Christmas Day attack.
Napolitano has been lambasted by Republican critics, and in the media, for initially saying the air security system worked, and then backpedaling and saying she had meant the system of beefing up measures worked after the incident had occurred.
Gibbs said Napolitano had the president's support, and Obama referred to her in his public comments on Tuesday, supporting her statement that correct actions were taken after the attempted attack.
Kurt Volker, a former CIA analyst and until recently US ambassador to NATO, said Blair and Napolitano were facing the traditional Washington blame game.
"That's politics. It's the way politics goes, that you look for whom you can blame so you can say, 'if my party had been elected instead of yours, things would have been better,'" said Volker, now at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
A senior aide said Obama would seek accountability at the highest levels for the failure, a remark some observers took to mean that heads would roll.
Obama, a Democrat, is under pressure from Republicans, who fault his administration for not preventing the attack and the president for keeping silent about it for three days while on vacation in Hawaii.
Republicans portrayed Obama as weak on national security even as he campaigned for last year's presidential election, and have sought to push that point before mid-term elections in November, when they will challenge the Democrats' control of both houses of the US Congress.
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