President Obama knows his administration got lucky on Christmas Day when a passenger allegedly came close to destroying a US airliner over Detroit.
Eleven days on he made it abundantly clear the system to stop potential bombers didn't work.
"The US government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack. Now I will accept that intelligence by its nature is imperfect ... but it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not analysed or fully leveraged. That's not acceptable and I will not tolerate it."
The comments came after Obama met with twenty Cabinet members and senior advisers including the heads of the CIA and the FBI.
He wanted to know how it could be that a man on a watch list, who bought a one way ticket to the US with cash and whose own father told the American embassy in Nigeria he was worried about what his son might do … came even close to the Detroit bound jet.
The President's spokesman came under pressure from journalists concerned that Obama's full plate of issues like the economy and healthcare meant he let security issues slip a little ... something the White House strongly denies.
Robert Gibbs was answering a question at the 1pm daily briefing, "We didn't have a mind set that this problem didn't exist prior to December 25th," when the veteran Washington journalist Helen Thomas interrupted him with, "Nobody's saying that they're saying you blew it!"
A clearly flustered Gibbs ploughed on, "Helen let me just answer Matt's question. The President's spent part of everyday since he's been here working on terrorism, working on terrorist threats, dealing with extremists."
Something else the White House has been hard at work at since Obama came to office - closing the infamous prison at Guantanamo Bay. That process - already delayed – has been further complicated by the alleged would-be bomber’s connection to Al Qaeda in Yemen.
Dozens of the 90 or so Yemeni nationals still at Guantanamo have been cleared for release – the White House now says recent events have put the transfer of detainees back to Yemen on hold indefinitely. The President said.
"We will not be transferring additional detainees back to Yemen at this time. But make no mistake. We will close Guantanamo Prison which has damaged our national security interests and become a tremendous recruiting tool for al Qaida."
During his White House statement after the top-level meeting in the Situation Room President Obama - who was clearly angry - demanded that all reports relating to the 25th of December incident on his desk by the end of this week so he can decide what needs to be done to stop it happening again.
The trouble with meetings like the one that took place on Tuesday is that while it shows the American public the administration's on top of security issues ... all government agencies have to be right all the time whereas a potential bomber needs luck only once.
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