Intel failure

French intelligence tracked but failed to thward Paris attack: media

France changed its military strategy and started airstrikes in Syria last year because of concerns months before the attacks on Paris that ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud was plotting to target a concert and take hostages, the Associated Press said citing a French newspaper report.

The report in Friday, May 13's Le Parisien, citing French and Belgian intelligence material and police recordings, lists repeated occasions when authorities allegedly failed to catch Abaaoud, even though he had been considered a major threat by several European intelligence services before the Nov. 13 attacks that left 130 dead in the French capital.

U.S. intelligence was also onto Abaaoud. President Barack Obama's envoy for the anti-Islamic State coalition, Brett McGuirk, said Friday that at as soon as he heard about the Paris attacks "we all assumed this was probably something that was planned by Abaaoud" from the Syrian IS stronghold of Raqqa. Speaking to reporters in Brussels, McGuirk described the Paris attacks as unusually sophisticated.