Heckuva job.
Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Michael Leiter didn't cut short a ski trip until several days after alleged Nigerian attempted bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to destroy a commercial jetliner en route to Detroit Christmas day, veteran New York Daily News intelligence correspondent James Meek reports Thursday.
Citing two intelligence officials grousing about Leiter's continued vacation, Meek says the top counterterror boss declined to cut short his snow-struck holiday.
"People have been grumbling that he didn't let a little terrorism interrupt his vacation," one of the sources purportedly told Meek.
Leiter is a carryover from the Bush Administration and has been director of the National Counterterrorism Center since 2007.
In an email to Meek, Leiter's spokesman declined to say when the counteterror chief returned to the agency's headquarters in suburban Virginia.
"It is our policy to not make our director's schedule available to the public," spokesman Carl Kropf reportedly said in an e-mail.
Will Leiter go the way of former FEMA Director Michael Brown -- a Bush appointee who was tossed in the wake of the federal government's tepid response to Hurricane Katrina?
Not likely, according to AP.
"No firings over the December security debacle are expected — for now, at least," the wire service wrote Thursday morning.
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