Word: arabian
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...allowed a suspect known to U.S. intelligence to board an airliner allegedly carrying explosives on his body. On Jan. 7, the President's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, laid out what he said were the facts of the failure. "It was known that AQAP [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the group that took responsibility for the attempted attack] not only sought to strike U.S. targets in Yemen," Brennan said, "but that it also sought to strike the U.S. homeland. Indeed, there was a threat stream of intelligence on this threat." (See pictures from the life of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab...
...Brennan said the intelligence community had failed in not pursuing that threat stream and piecing it together with other information it had gathered. "We didn't follow up and prioritize the stream of intelligence indicating that al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula sought to strike our homeland, because no one intelligence entity or team or task force was assigned responsibility for doing that follow-up investigation. The intelligence fell through the cracks. This happened in more than one organization...
...that Obama and his national-security team "routinely ask for more detailed information and explanations of what follow-up steps are being taken to address particular threat streams and to respond to known terrorist threats." The official said Obama was briefed on AQAP threats to U.S. interests in the Arabian Gulf region...
...report, intelligence-community leadership, presumably including top brass Leon Panetta at the CIA, Michael Leiter at the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and Dennis Blair at the office of the Director of National Intelligence, "did not increase analytic resources" to address the threat of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), even after it became clear that the group was planning attacks on U.S. targets...
...social and economic problems have created a vacuum for al-Qaeda to fill. Squeezed out of Iraq and Afghanistan, al-Qaeda operatives have regrouped in Yemen's lawless mountain regions east of Sana'a and have merged with al-Qaeda's Saudi branch to form al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Led by Naser Abdel-Karim Wahishi and Saeed Ali Shehri, a Guantánamo detainee who was released in 2007, AQAP may constitute 200 core members supported by thousands of locals. Terrorism experts worry that with a firm footing in Yemen, al-Qaeda can coordinate with...