A Single Database Held All the Spies' 'Bits and Pieces' on Alleged Underpants Bomber

A single intelligence community database operated by the CIA, known by the code name "Hercules," held all the "bits and pieces" of intelligence that White House officials believe could have led U.S. authorities to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before last Dec. 25, according to current and former counterterrorism officials. However, even though all the raw information was in a single computer system, "all source" intelligence analysts at the CIA and National Counterterrorism Center, which both had access to "Hercules," were unable to assemble the intelligence scraps in time to prevent Abdulmutallab from boarding his Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit with a bomb hidden in his underpants.

The current and former officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, assert that the fact that all the tidbits of information on Abdulmutallab and the possibility that Al Qaeda's Yemen-based affiliate was plotting an attack on a U.S. target were entered into a single intelligence community database validates assertions by White House and congressional investigators that the alleged lapses in the handling of intelligence related to Abdulmutallab did not stem from a failure of sometimes turf-conscious spy agencies to share information with each other. Instead, they point to the intelligence analysis carried out by the CIA and NCTC.

Among the "bits and pieces" on Abdulmutallab that were available in Hercules, but also buried in mountains of unrelated raw intelligence reporting, were assorted fragmentary clues about Abdulmutallab and a possible attack originating in Yemen, which had been collected by the National Security Agency's ultrasecret worldwide electronic eavesdropping network, as well as reports from the CIA describing how Abdulmutallab's father had warned the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, that his son had disappeared and may have fallen in with Islamic "extremists" in Yemen.

In addition to reports about Abdulmutallab's father's warning to the U.S. Embassy, officials and news reports have said that other intelligence available to the U.S. government before Christmas included an intercept from late last summer that indicated that A.Q.A.P. might be preparing an unnamed "Nigerian" for an attack, a subsequent report that someone named "Umar Farouk" might be involved with the Yemen-based group and a report indicating A.Q.A.P. might be planning some kind of unspecified attack against a Western target during the holiday period. Officials have said that these clues were not assembled into a whole until after Abdulmutallab failed to detonate his bomb as his flight descended into Detroit and he was arrested by U.S. authorities.

Spokespeople for the CIA and NCTC declined to comment. However, national-security officials maintain that while it's easy to accuse analysts of missing clues that in hindsight appear to fit together neatly, extracting and assembling small wisps of information hidden among huge stacks of irrelevant material is a lot harder than it sounds.

The intel community, still stinging from earlier rebukes from President Obama and Congress, is now bracing for a new round of criticism over its mishandling of the Christmas attacks. Behind a cloak of anonymity, an intel official tried to explain how the government could have missed the many clues that were sitting in their own computers: "The volume of any database doesn't matter much. That, by itself, doesn't get you anywhere. Nor does the mere fact that the NCTC and the CIA have shared access to material. The key is knowing what to look for, how to bring together different bits and scraps of information that—on the surface and in an ocean of data—don't appear to be connected. This is hard stuff. It's not a case of punching in a couple of search terms, sitting back, and waiting for enlightenment. Once you know the answer, it seems easy. But in real life, you don't get the answer ahead of time."