Obama Criticises Christmas Terror Bomb Intelligence

US President Barack Obama has described the way US intelligence services handled the attempted Christmas Day airliner bomb explosion as a potential "screw up". During comments made on January 5th 2010, Obama highlighted how spy organisations possessed sufficient details of the Christmas Day airliner bomb plot to have uncovered it ahead of time, but did not managed to "connect those dots". He added that US airport security must be strengthened with rapid effect.

"We have to do better and we will do better", he said, adding: "And we will do it quickly."

US Terrorism Intelligence

While these comments were made in the public domain, in conversation with security officials, Obama was quoted by the White House as having referred to this US terror intelligence incident as "barely" having "dodged a bullet". "It was averted by brave individuals, not because the system worked - and that is not acceptable", he stressed.

The trigger for Obama's speech was the alleged attempt, by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to blow up a Northwest Airlines aircraft while in flight on December 25th 2009 and - at the beginning of January - new US airport security measures were put in place to isolate and screen passengers arriving in the country from one of 14 nations "of interest." Prior to Christmas Day, Abdulmutallab's name formed part of a 500,000+ terror suspect name list, but was not linked by US authorities to extra airport security needs, it has now emerged. What's more, Obama explained, American intelligence had been aware of plans by one strand of Al-Qaeda to attack the US, and that it had been collaborating with one individual - Mr Abdulmutallab, as it now turns out.

US Terrorism Security

"I want specific recommendations for corrective actions to fix what went wrong", the US President said. "I want those reforms implemented immediately so that this doesn't happen again and so that we can prevent future attacks." While not elaborating on exactly what reforms will take place in terms of US terror security measures, Obama did pledge to amend the current mechanism through which the US government identifies and monitors potential terrorist activity.

"The bottom line is this: the U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list", President Obama concluded.

In light of the President's identifying lapses in US security, a prominent US official has pledged that revisions will be made. "The intelligence community received the president's message today - we got it, and we are moving forward to meet the new challenges", Dennis Blair - US Director of National Intelligence - asserted.