MADELEINE BRAND, host:
When Abdulmutallab boarded that plane for Detroit, he did so with an American visa. He also applied for a visa to Britain, which turned him down. The British may simply have been lucky he was seeking a student visa to a nonexistent school. The fact remains that one nation stopped him, while another did not.
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
We're going to work through what this means with Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer and senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies here in Washington. He's in our studios. Welcome to the program.
Mr. REUEL MARC GERECHT (Senior Fellow, The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies): Pleasure to be here.
INSKEEP: What, based on the facts that are known, did the British get right that the Americans did not?
Mr. GERECHT: Well, I mean, it's difficult to say right now. One, the British system is actually more difficult than the American system, just as a general rule. It's harder to get a British visa than it is to get an American visa. Two, visa issuance in Great Britain is directly controlled by the Home Office. The MI5 officers, domestic security officers, the domestic intelligence officers are posted all over the world.
INSKEEP: Let me make sure I understand that. You're saying that the British domestic intelligence agency, the MI-5 - not their equivalent of the CIA, their domestic intelligence agency - might have people in Lagos, Nigeria, might have people in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, might have people in Pakistan.
Mr. GERECHT: I'm pretty positive they certainly have one in those places, and many others. It's very common for them to have an overseas role that has domestic ramifications.
INSKEEP: Which makes it easier for different parts of the government to talk to one another.
Mr. GERECHT: Exactly.
INSKEEP: What is the Americans system?
Mr. GERECHT: The American system isn't like that at all. Just saying that the FBI, for example, would have input into the issuance of American visas I think would cause many people to become quite nervous. The American system is much more divided. The consular service in the State Department is more independent - it's less independent than it was before 9/11. It's a separate bureaucracy. It does not cooperate intimately with the Central Intelligence Agency in the issuance of visas. It has more cooperation with the Department of Homeland Security. But even still, it is not nearly as smooth in the way they handle these things from a security perspective as are the British.
INSKEEP: So we've asked why didn't the Americans catch the red flags with this guy when it seems the British did. That leads to another question about cooperation. The U.S. and Britain are the closest of allies, and their intelligence agencies are said to work together very closely. If the British had sufficient concerns about this man to deny him a visa, why didn't the Americans know?
Mr. GERECHT: Well, because the British - I'm guessing here. I suspect the British consular service did not distribute their assessment, their opinion to the Americans. Just because you have a visa denial doesn't mean the Americans are going to know about that visa of denial. You would have to find out why that visa was denied. It's possible that if it was because of what his father said, and maybe his father also said, oh, by the way, I told the Americans, and the Brits didn't feel obligated to let the Americans know.
INSKEEP: I want to play a piece of tape, if I can. This is James Jones, the national security advisor, speaking last month at the White House, and we asked him about the emerging threat from places like Yemen. And he said, greater collaboration between countries and intelligence agencies would have to be the answer to that. Let's listen.
Mr. JAMES JONES (National Security Advisor): I think the 21st century is going to serve as an interesting moment in history where nations of the world, by virtue of this kind of threat, organize and train their forces to react with much greater speed, with much better intelligence, and with a degree of cooperation that nobody would have thought possible 20 years ago simply because in order to be successful against these kinds of groups, you have to get at them quickly.
INSKEEP: Okay, so that's what James Jones says is necessary to succeed. Is that happening? Are we on the way to that?
Mr. GERECHT: Well, I think that's certainly happening with Europeans, that the liaison relationship that the United States has with the Europeans is much more intimate and much more efficient. Whether that is the case throughout the Middle East is more questionable. Yemen is - the government there is obviously several rungs down its organizational abilities, and its ability to command people outside of the capital, it's a relatively primitive society. That's not to say the agency hasn't had considerable cooperation. I don't think you would have seen any missile attacks in Yemen without Yemeni intelligence. I think the cooperating - I think the ability...
INSKEEP: Oh, because the U.S. has fired missiles at targets within Yemen, right?
Mr. GERECHT: Right, right. I don't think the agency - I'm sure the agency has very limited - what we call in the trade - unilateral ability inside of Yemen, that is to gather intelligence by itself through its own assets without the input of the Yemeni government. So we will be dependent in a place like that on - for better or worse - on the government, and I don't think there's much the agency can do about that.
INSKEEP: Reuel Marc Gerecht is a former CIA officer and a senior fellow with the Foundation of Defense of Democracies. Thanks very much.
Mr. GERECHT: My pleasure.
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