After all, why not? There was no need for him to cut short his vacation. He already knew that the attacker was a lone extremist and that the attack had nothing whatsoever to do with Islam or with a global jihad, which doesn’t exist anyway, so why not keep skiing?
“NCTC director Michael Leiter remained on ski slopes after Christmas Day airline bombing attempt,” by James Gordon Meek for the New York Daily News, January 6 (thanks to Walter):
WASHINGTON – The top official in charge of analyzing terror threats did not cut short his ski vacation after the underwear bomber nearly blew up an airliner on Christmas Day, the Daily News has learned.
Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center since 2007, decided not to return to his agency’s “bat cave” nerve center in McLean, Va., until several days after Christmas, two U.S. officials said.
“People have been grumbling that he didn’t let a little terrorism interrupt his vacation,” said one of the sources.
The NCTC, the post-9/11 clearinghouse for intelligence to detect terror plots against the U.S., is under intense scrutiny for failing to “connect the dots” on Nigerian bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Leiter’s spokesman declined to say when the terror-center chief returned to Washington and fully retook the helm of his analysis agency, which is near CIA headquarters just outside the nation’s capital.
“It is our policy to not make our director’s schedule available to the public,” center spokesman Carl Kropf said in an e-mail.
Leiter has long been well-regarded, and he was not the only official in the homeland security orbit to skip town for vacation during the holidays. President Obama himself stayed in Hawaii until Jan. 4….