Former intelligence officer under President Carter says 'Obama's latest intelligence failure is worthy of Jimmy Carter'

Excerpted from an article written by James Corum, a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Reserve who served as an Intelligence officer under former President Jimmy Carter:

The latest grand intelligence failure of the Obama administration – setting up a system so flawed that last week it allowed a Muslim terrorist with a bomb aboard a US passenger jet – reminds me of the incredible level of stupidity I first experienced as a young Army Intelligence officer under President Jimmy Carter.

Immediately after his election [in 1976, Carter] appointed a cabinet packed with hard-core liberals and instituted a series of Leftist foreign and military policies... [Additionally], a very Left-wing US Congress pushed through policies that gutted the CIA’s ability to collect intelligence...

One of the typical “reforms” of the Carter era was a rule forbidding Military Intelligence from holding any files on Americans overseas who were associated with terrorist groups...

I was stationed with the US Army in Europe at the time and did some work supporting the counterintelligence effort.... In the late 1970s Army Counterintelligence had some files on individuals, including American citizens, who had close connections to European terrorist groups...

The order came that all files that mentioned the names of American citizens had to be disposed of and that keeping such files would incur criminal prosecution for violating their privacy rights...

Luckily, I was working closely with some European police agencies who also thought it was a good idea to monitor Americans associated with violent groups. So I disposed of the files by turning them over to a European police force, one that gave us regular access to their files on terrorists. The Carter orders were followed – but we still had full access to vital information.

This solution was just a little victory for the forces of Western civilization versus the Carter administration, but I still feel good about it. Unfortunately, it seems our Intelligence people could not find a way around the policies of Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security Secretary, who insists that Muslims must not be profiled and that words like “jihadi” and “radical Islam” are inappropriate.

Today, officers of the US military and civilian intelligence agencies are contending with bad leadership and bad policies that exceed even the awful level of the Carter era... The near disaster last weekend is a direct result of the anti-intelligence Carter mindset that has been revived in the Obama administration.

This just in, from the Washington Times: 'Awlaki personally blessed Detroit attack':

The Nigerian accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner had his suicide mission personally blessed in Yemen by Anwar al-Awlaki, the same Muslim imam suspected of radicalizing the Fort Hood shooting suspect, a U.S. intelligence source has told The Washington Times...

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab..., the bombing suspect has boasted of his jihad training during interrogation by the FBI and has said it included final exhortations by Mr. al-Awlaki...

"It was Awlaki who indoctrinated him," the official said. "He was told, 'You are going to be the tip of the spear of the Muslim nation'."...

In his FBI interrogation, according to the U.S. intelligence official, Mr. Abdulmutallab spoke of being in a room in Yemen receiving Muslim blessings and prayers from Mr. al-Awlaki, along with a number of other men "all covered up in white martyrs' garments," and known only by code names and "abu" honorifics...

You got to wonder how the Washington Post recently managed to arrange an interview with Alwaki through an intermediary - a journalist who apparently has access to Muslim extremists - and yet US intelligence can't nab this fellow.

Obama may want to consider assimilating the Washington Post staff into the intelligence community... Or, perhaps he would prefer that the Liberal mainstream media not spy on a foreign and sovereign entity.....