Red-faced White House officials admitted today that the nation’s top intelligence chief was mistakenly left in the dark about key terrorist arrests in London.
The humiliating confession came after Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stumbled when he was asked about the raids by ABC anchor Diane Sawyer.
The British arrests to foil an alleged al Qaeda terror plot got wide coverage on TV news shows and newspapers. But the spy chief appeared stumped when asked whether there were any US links.
Sawyer was talking to Mr Clapper, Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, and John Brennan, the president's assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism.
Mr Clapper was caught totally off guard by Sawyer's reference to the London arrests, and Mr Brennan hastily broke in to comment on the situation.
Sawyer told Mr Clapper she was 'a little surprised' that he 'didn't know about London', to which he replied: 'I'm sorry, I didn't.'
The slip was an embarrassment both to President Obama, who will be concerned his appointee was left out of the loop, as well as Mr Clapper - whose effectiveness as the central figure in charge of America’s myriad intelligence agencies is increasingly being questioned.
The job, created after the 9/11 attacks, is widely seen as failing to live up to its billing as a way of channeling information from the different agencies.
Today, Mr John Brennan admitted that Mr Clapper should have been kept abreast of the UK arrests.
He said Mr Clapper was focused on escalating tensions between North and South Korea and a nuclear weapons treaty with Russia, adding: 'He was engaged in a variety of classified matters.
‘Should he have been briefed by his staff on those arrests? Yes. And I know there was breathless attention by the media about these arrests, and it was constantly on the news networks.
'I'm glad that Jim Clapper is not sitting in front of the TV 24 hours a day and monitoring what's coming out of the media.
‘What he is doing is focusing on those intelligence issues that the president expects him to focus on, and to make sure that we don't have conflict in different parts of the world.’
Mr Brennan said there was ‘no action’ required of Mr Clapper concerning the 12 arrests in the UK.
The suspects, aged between 17 and 28, are accused of preparing Al Qaeda-inspired attacks on ‘mass casualty’ targets such as shopping malls and nightclubs.
They were taken into custody after more than 150 officers from four forces swooped on homes in London, Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham and Cardiff.
Senior security sources described the arrests as ‘hugely significant’.
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