One of the central questions about the failed terrorist attempt on Flight 253 has always been a simple one: were the missed clues about the attack a one-time failure that took place within a system that is working the rest of the time to stop other potential attacks? Or was it a systemic failure?
President Obama stressed Thursday that it was the latter.
“At this stage in the review process it appears that this incident was not the fault of a single individual or organization, but rather a systemic failure across organizations and agencies,” Obama said, during remarks at the White House.
John Brennan, the president’s top adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism, said the same.
“As the President described, this was not the failure of a single individual or a single organization. Yes, there were some human errors, but those errors were not the primary or fundamental cause of what happened on December 25th. Rather, this was a systemic failure across agencies and across organizations,” Brennan said, briefing reporters at the White House after the president had spoken.
But later in the White House briefing, Brennan made a comment that may have contradicted all the assertions of systemic failure.
“I want to say that in every instance over the past year the intelligence community, the homeland security community, the law enforcement community has done an absolutely outstanding and stellar job in protecting this homeland and disrupting plots that have been directed against us. It was in this one instance that we did not rise to that same level of competence and success,” Brennan said.
That doesn’t sound like systemic failure at all.
The reason this is important? A systemic failure means that other al Qaeda operatives have a high chance of succeeding if they exploit the holes in our intelligence collection. It also means we’ve been fairly vulnerable for some time to attack.
Of course, no system works perfectly, so there will always be holes. But it seems as if, at least rhetorically, the White House is trying to have it both ways, blaming the foul-up on the system but saying that the men and women who run the system usually do a great job but didn’t this time.
Here is video of the president’s remarks:
Here is video of the Brennan briefing: