Abdulmutallab - It's Even Worse Than You Think

Or,how the Obama Administration let valuable, potentially life-saving intelligence get away.

The attempted Christmas Day destruction over Detroit of Northwest Flight 253 by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is fading from public memory as a fortunate near-miss. This incident should not fade from view. As more information emerges, the picture it paints about the antiterror mindset of the current U.S. government is—there is no other word—scary.

Last week in these columns, we discussed Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair's Congressional testimony on the Abdulmutallab case. This was Mr. Blair's famous "duh" remark about the government's failure to invoke the new High-Value Detainee Interrogration Group (HIG) to question Abdulmutallab. A remarkable Associated Press story this past weekend makes clear that "duh" was mainly another word for disgust inside the intelligence bureaucracy over what happened that day in Detroit.