The attempted downing of Northwest Airlines (NWA) flight 253 as it approached Detroit Metro airport on Christmas Day has exposed a fatal flaw in US intelligence gathering and dissemination and renewed calls for greater levels of information sharing amongst agencies nationally and internationally.
The incident has particular resonance for speakers and delegates at the forthcoming Counter Terror Expo conference and exhibition, due to be held 14-15 April 2010 in the National Hall at London Olympia.
Over two full days high level attendees will debate issues such as intelligence sharing and greater cross border cooperation in the fight against international terrorism.
“This incident is a text book example of how systemic failures and human factor issues conspired to allow a lone individual with direct links to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to get far too close for comfort to achieving a goal of blowing up a passenger jet over a major United States city,” comments Peter Jones, Managing Director, Counter Terror Expo. “President Obama has ordered a full scale review of the incident in order to ensure it doesn’t happen in the foreseeable future. The lessons learned from this review will doubtless filter down and be subjected to peer review at this globally significant event.”
Counter Terror Expo brings the world’s leading thinkers in the arena together annually with those tasked with turning strategy into meaningful deliverables from across the globe. The event seeks to foster much closer ties between agencies tasked with preventing terrorist outrages and is actively supported by leading sponsors including Thales DLJ UK, Rapiscan Systems, EADS, Lockheed Martin, Smiths Detection, Panasonic, Bosch and others.
The event comprises an extensive high-level conference, multiple supporting specialist workshops and one of the biggest technology exhibitions of its kind in the world today.
Principal conference themes with particular importance in light of current events include Building Cooperation across Europe and Internationally to Combat Terrorism in the Current Climate; Cooperative Counter Terror Strategies with South East Asian Countries, Facilitating Transatlantic Action in Response to Terrorism and The Role of the United States in Countering the Changing Face of International Terrorism amongst others.
“When the system of intelligence gathering and information sharing fails in its primary role of protecting people against those who would wish to do us harm, it is vitally important that lessons from that failure are learned quickly. Counter Terror Expo is the internationally recognised forum enabling rapid dissemination of strategic countermeasures and exists to foster greater understanding of events that have occurred previously and how they can be avoided in the future,” concludes Peter Jones.
Counter Terror Expo will be held 14-15 April at the prestigious National Hall at London’s Olympia Conference and Exhibitions Centre.
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