The screenshot is from the top of the official White House web homepage as it stands today, Jan. 7. Go there if you care to "watch the video."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/
Should Obama, Biden, Secretary Clinton, Secretary Gates, and Secretary Nepolitano clean house? Most of the security people who blundered are carryover individuals. They are not ones that were recruited and installed into job assignments since Jan. 1, 2009. A few might be, but not the bulk of the rank-and-file in the faulty procedures, faulty judgment, and faulty communications situation hind sight is revealing.
Recall how Bush rewarded his National Security Czar, Condi Rice, for her negligence prior to 9/11 by making her Secretary of State? A promotion for failure to perform.
Should error of that kind be repeated?
Reuters today, this link, reports:
President Barack Obama "is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on," Jones said in the interview published on Thursday.
Jones, Obama's top aide on security and foreign policy issues, predicted that Americans will feel "a certain shock" when they learn of the account the White House is to release later in the day.
"That's two strikes," he said, referring to the failed airplane bombing and a November shooting rampage by U.S. Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas, in which officials also failed to act on warning signs.
But Jones also suggested the report would show that the Obama administration is now on top of events.
"We know what happened, we know what didn't happen, and we know how to fix it," he told the newspaper. "That should be an encouraging aspect. We don't have to reinvent anything to make sure it doesn't happen again."
The president is scheduled to make a public statement when the White House released the report. The review is expected to make recommendations on plugging holes in security, including changes in passenger screening and terrorism watch lists.
Obama has already acknowledged a security "screw up" that officials say allowed a Nigerian man to board a Detroit-bound airliner in Amsterdam on Christmas Day with explosives sewn into his underwear that later failed to ignite.
[emphasis added] There is nothing in there among the reporting about cleaning house, assigning responsibility and then punishing inappropriate handling of duties by dismissals. Should there be? Certainly the negligence is paled in comparison to Bushco reading from the goat book while the trade center buildings were being brought down; but this is supposed to be an administration predicated on "CHANGE" so changing some culpable individuals from the government payroll to the unemployment rolls might be viewed by some as appropriate action in a "change-oriented" regime.
And this Crabgrass post is not a call for a ceremonial top department head falling on the sword, taking one for the team. I have more in mind the question of appropriate actions to be taken with answers being found via investigating who screwed up, got lax, got into turf wars or whatever, and my question is would it then be proper to be rolling appropriate responsible [irresponsible actually] heads to send a message up and down the security-bureaucracy complex that accountability is more than a dictionary word.
As was done by Gates in response to the armed nuclear weapon handling and transit fiasco; where responsible heads rolled, see here and here for extended in-depth reporting and opinion.
People at high responsibility levels were sacked over that one. But it was military chain of command, with the intelligence-security complex levels of responsibility and accountability not nearly as publicly well understood.
Will we instead see the situation as one where communication among security personnel was the fault, with the presidential answer being more Bushco imitation, curbing the freedom of the populace more, as per the offensive "Patriot Act" restraints on freedoms that until then had been longstanding and treasured. Will the Obama answer be the Bush answer, spy more on the population?
Finally along the lines of lax behavior, and those responsible paying a price, the situation of the double agent bomber at the Afghan CIA site has gotten less press coverage but the negligence there resulted in the responsible folks being blown up by the suicide bombing that Taliban claimed as theirs. Coverage here.
It seems to me that situation is "strike three" but with the instantaneous deaths to mark the laxity, we can expect that folks out at that field level in covert activity will not show a flat learning curve. The immediacy of the price paid is so very clear.
On other stuff, if the answer to lax behavior of officials will be to impose more on the general freedoms of the population; the likely result; on that --
We wait. We see.