Obama asks officials for foolproof measures to prevent recurrence of Christmas Day plot
By ANIWednesday, January 6, 2010
WASHINGTON - US President Barack Obama has told his cabinet members and others responsible for counterterrorism, intelligence and homeland security that he wants immediate changes in the security to prevent a recurrence of the attempted airplane bombing on Christmas Day.
According to reports, during the Situation Room session Obama said that he will not tolerate “finger-pointing” by intelligence agencies.
“We dodged a bullet, but just barely. It was averted by brave individuals, not because the system worked, and that is not acceptable,” Politico quoted Obama as having told his security team.
Obama further said that he remains convinced that the government failed to piece together signs that could have stopped the suspect in the Christmas Day plot, Umar AbdulMutallab.
“When a suspected terrorist is able to board a plane with explosives on Christmas Day, the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way. And it’s my responsibility to find out why and to correct that failure so that we can prevent such attacks in the future,” Obama said.
Obama also accepted that officials in his administration had crucial information about the suspect and the possibility of an attack, but no one saw the full picture.
“This was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had. The information was there, agencies and analysts who needed it had access to it,” Obama said.
“I will accept that intelligence by its nature is imperfect, but it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged. That’s not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it,” he added. (ANI)
