'System Failure' In U.S. Screening For Terrorists

The White House concluded in a report issued Thursday that "a series of systematic breakdowns" contributed to the failure to prevent the failed Christmas Day bombing of a trans-Atlantic airliner bound for Detroit. The unclassified summary of the swiftly completed review said the unsuccessful attack exposed failures when it came to assembling and analyzing disparate pieces of intelligence, as well as gaps in the U.S. government's procedures for placing potential terrorists on federal watch lists.

Obama admitted that spy agencies had collected, but failed to connect, pieces of information that should have led authorities to pay greater attention to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student who allegedly tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253. "At this stage in the review process, it appears that this incident was not the fault of a single individual or organization, but rather a system failure across organizations and agencies," President Obama said on Thursday.

He ordered a set of changes in counterterrorism procedures, including how the watch list system operates, as well as new efforts to develop more sophisticated explosives detection technology for airport screening checkpoints. The White House review found the complex system of maintaining multiple watch lists "is not broken," but John Brennan, the deputy national security adviser who supervised the review, said the process of feeding information into the watch list system must be strengthened.