Washington, January 02: US President Barack Obama obtained intelligence on aviation threats prior to a recent aerial drama in which a passenger attempted to ‘blow up’ a US airliner, a report says.
Obama was warned of looming aerial threats in a ‘high-level’ pre-Christmas briefing by US intelligence agencies.
The US president received confidential information in a written account entitled “Key Homeland Threats” three days ahead of Christmas, Newsweek quoted an anonymous US administration official as saying.
The unnamed ‘high-ranking’ official has refrained from divulging further details of the dossier.
Meanwhile, another undisclosed government source is reported as telling journalists later in December 2009 that the US government possessed “bits and pieces” of classified data, which, put properly together, “could have…allowed us to disrupt the attack or certainly to know much more about the alleged attacker in such a way as to ensure that he was on, as the President suggested in his statement, a no-fly list.”
On December 25, Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab managed to get onboard a Delta Airlines passenger plane before security forces arrested him for an alleged attempt to detonate highly-combustible materials hidden in his underwear over Detroit, Michigan.
The episode has led to the introduction of tighter security checks and the idea of full body scanning at US airports after American authorities warned of bigger plots by al-Qaeda militants to undermine US national security.
——-Agencies