Page 115 - Intelligence Failure News Today

They underestimated what had been taking place in syria. >> you were head of the dia at the time? >> yeah. do you think it was an intelligence failure? >> no, i dont. i really look at that and -- its easy to. i mean, i will take one for the team, you know. the president has to decide who hes going to listen to and what information hes going to use and i think that he was poorly advised to say that. >> the president makes no apologies for being measured and deliberate about committing u.s. milita...

Helping the iraqi government take on isis. but the biggest intelligence failure, the biggest policy failure, the biggest undestimation was not of the strength of the self-styled islamic state but of the weness of the iraqi state. in the middle of 2014, when isis started taking town after town in iraq, the iraqi army essentially laid down its arms and ran away. remember, this was an army that the united states had spent more than $25 billion building up, an army more than 200,000 strong. thats mo...

>> do you think we should have been alerted to the threat that isis posed earlier? >> you know, its always easy to look back and say you could have been alerted to a specific threat at a specific time, but the question is then, what action would that have triggered? part of what the president has brought, his approach to national security is some degree of restraint in saying that were not going to chase every rabbit down every hole in the middle east. >> the white house did underestimate isis. ...

York were saying there is no known threat. that said, the questions we are all asking is wasnt there an intelligence failure before paris, what did they know, when did they know it and how do they know theres no credible threat here at home. >> reporter: thats right. they continue to repeat that. as you say, it is important to repeat it but when you are here in america and you know america is a target, you look at france, you see how this attack seemed to have slipped through their fingers, ther...

Intelligence community, jim clapper, has acknowledged that they underestimated what had been taking place in syria. >> you were head of the dia at the time? >> yeah. do you think it was an intelligence failure? >> no, i dont. i really look at that and -- its easy to. i mean, i will take one for the team, you know. the president has to decide who hes going to listen to and what information hes going to use and i think that he was poorly advised to say that. >> the president makes no apologies for...

Threat at a specific time, but the question is then, what action would that have triggered? part of what the president has brought, his approach to national security is some degree of restraint in saying that were not going to chase every rabbit down every hole in the middle east. >> the white house did underestimate isis. and republicans seized on the issue, excoriating the president, growing increasingly strident. >> our strategy will fail yet again. this president needs to rise to the occasio...

The search for salah abdeslam continues on. he was stopped shortly after the attacks because he wasnt i.d.d as a sus yet. are those major failures? how do you correct them. you dont get to the point of the raid if you dont have the intel. >> thats the tricky part about counter terror direct action operations, which is what the gign, or the special operations unit of the french military and the french national s.w.a.t. team was doing. you dont have the graeest information. were dealing reactively...

At least. a massive intelligence failure on the part of the french. maybe there was not a lot of intelligence sharing between the french and other countries that he traveled. >> right. >> just seeing that -- >> which goes to the point that with all these hundreds of raids, they had perhaps actionable intelligence on hundreds and hundreds of people that they werent acting on and this -- it took this in order for them to say, oh, my gosh, we actually need to do this. >> france raised the alert lev...

That they think are fostering radicalism. that has many people here upset. >> interesting, is there a sense on the street that this is -- you talked about the poll, but just from folks youre meeting on street, is there a sense were okay with this, or -- this is a big move in a democracy or a republican to say this, were going this extra step to protect citizens, citizenry, but these are -- its sort of like our probable cause in the constitution. where were saying thats not so important, weve got...

>> well, i think our head of the intelligence community, jim clapper, has acknowledged that they underestimated what had been taking place in syria. >> you were d.i.a. at the time? >> yeah. do you think it was an intelligence failure? >> no, i dont. i really look at that and -- its easy to -- i mean, ill take one for the team, you know? the president has to decide who hes going to listen to and what information hes going to use. and i think that he was poorly advised to say that. >> the presiden...