Obama acknowledges security, intelligence failures in attempted bombing

Security and intelligence lapses allowed a suspected terrorist to board a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas Day, President Obama said from Hawaii today, interrupting his vacation to speak about the failed bombing attempt.

“A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama said.

The president said he learned in the last 24 hours that information about the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been passed to “a component of our U.S. intelligence community” weeks ago, but that the information was not effectively distributed and the Nigerian man was not added to a “no-fly” list.

There were other lapses as well, Obama said.

“There were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have and should have been pieced together,” he said, without elaborating.

The president also told reporters that he has directed that preliminary findings from two reviews that he announced Monday for air-travel screening and the terrorist watch-list system be provided to the White House by Thursday.

“We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix the flaws in our system,” Obama said.

The president also lauded the work done by those in the intelligence, law enforcement and domestic security communities, and said that he would do everything in his power to make sure they have the tools and resources necessary to do their jobs.

But, he said, it also was his job to make sure that the systems were working effectively.

“There was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potentially catastrophic breach of security,” the president said. “We need to learn from this episode and quickly fix the flaws in our system because our security is at stake and lives are at stake.”

alana.semuels@latimes.com