According to Keith Obermann and minions at MSNBC, the failed Christmas Bombing intel failure could not have anything to do with President Obama. Since Obama takes no responsibility for the failure, it must be GW Bush failure and the intel community allowing the event to occur to give Obama a Black eye.
President Obama on Phone with National Security Advisor
John Gibson and Ace read this as Olby’s way of hinting that dark elements within U.S. intelligence tried to hurt Obama politically by intentionally letting an attack happen, but I don’t think that’s what he and Wolffe are getting at. It’s all very murky and breathless and seasoned with sensational references to White House sources, but I think what they’re suggesting is that there was some kind of turf war between different agencies — which has been known to happen, even recently — that might have led one agency to be greedy with its intel. (Remember, the CIA reportedly failed to circulate the record of its chat with Abdulmutallab’s father.) Or rather, that’s probably what Wolffe’s White House sources were trying to suggest to him and he blew it up into some sort of sinister “conspiracy” against America or whatever. If you follow the Gibson link and listen to the clip, it sounds like he ended up walking this back very soon thereafter on Maddow’s show. The obvious question no one asked here: If any of this is even remotely true, how come U.S. intel did such a good job coordinating when they busted the New York City subway mega-plot in the fall?
