Obama: "Systemic Failure" Allowed Attack
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Posted: 8:05 PM Dec 29, 2009
Obama: "Systemic Failure" Allowed Attack
President Obama calls for accountability in U.S. intelligence measures.
Reporter: CBS
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(CBS) President Obama again addressed the American people Tuesday about the Christmas Day bombing attempt aboard a Detroit-bound airliner, acknowledging "serious concerns" about the intelligence and security failures that contributed to the breach and promising to "insist on accountability at every level."

Mr. Obama, speaking from his vacation spot in Hawaii for the second time in as many days, praised the bravery and commitment of those who work in intelligence and law enforcement and said that the response to the attempted attack - after it occurred - was appropriate and effective.

But the president admitted that information about the bombing suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was not effectively shared among intelligence agencies in the weeks and months leading up to the attack.

"Had this critical information been shared, it could have been compiled with other intelligence and a fuller, clearer picture of the suspect would have emerged," Mr. Obama said. "The suspect would never have been allowed to board that plane for America."

He added, "A systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable. … There was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security. We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix the flaws in our system."

The president pointed specifically to reports that Abdulmutallab's father warned U.S. in officials in Africa that his son was developing extremist views and might be a risk.

"It now appears that, weeks ago, this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspects name on a no-fly list," Mr. Obama said. "There appears to be other deficiencies as well. Even without this one report, there were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have and should have been pieced together."

Monday, Mr. Obama announced reviews of the America's terrorist watchlist system and its air travel screening procedures. He said Tuesday that those reviews are underway with preliminary results due to him on Thursday. More rigorous reviews will be completed in the coming weeks, he said.

He promised to provide homeland security agencies with all needed tools and resources.

"I fully understand that even when every person charged with our security does what they're supposed to do, even when every system works exactly as intended, there's still no 100 percent guarantee of success," Mr. Obama said, but that uncertainty should only drive the nation to work even harder to minimize risks.


Latest Comments

Posted by: Joe Location: topeka on Dec 30, 2009 at 12:14 PM

What we need to do is take the punk to the end of the runway; poor a jug of pig fat on him then shoot him. Make sure this gets all over the news that this is what we will do if we catch you. If you do manage to blow something up we will hunt down your body parts and bury them in a vat of pig fat!! I also think we should fly over Yemen and show them how our bombs work. Enough of this worrying about what everyone thinks crap and Obama apologizing to countries that want nothing to do but Kill us. It’s time we start showing some back bone. As for Afghanistan we need to drop the big ones until there aren’t any mountains left to hide in.
Posted by: Lynn731 Location: Lawrence on Dec 30, 2009 at 08:30 AM

Once again the flying public leaves their personal safety to the government. Once again the government fails them. We should be very happy that in this case the terrorists were as incompetent as we were, otherwise another 300 would be dead.
Posted by: Brian Location: KS on Dec 30, 2009 at 12:11 AM

Obama always calls for something AFTER THE FACT! What has he done to prevent anything...NOTHING! But what do you bet he will now receive an award for "Law Man of the Year". And Kirby you are so right! Obama has done and will do what ever he can to leave the door open for this to happen again. Way to go left liberals who don't have a clue!
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