Obama cites US systemic failure for Detroit plane attack
US president Barack Obama, delivering his second speech in 24 hours on the failed airliner attack said: "Data was not shared and a systemic failure occurred. I consider that totally unacceptable." To save time the statement was delivered Tuesday, Dec. 29, by video, which he explained by saying that information reaching him in the last 24 hours raised serious concerns. Weeks ago, information came from the suspect's father to intelligence which was not efficiently distributed. "Bits of information with the intelligence community should have been pieced together and was not."
He went on to say that the system in place for some years is not sufficiently up to date. Human and system failures contributed to this catastrophic lapse in security, he said, adding: "It is my job to ensure our intelligence and homeland security departments are working efficiently and people are made accountable." This was taken by debkafile's Washington sources as indicating that heads would be rolling in these departments in due course.
Twelve hours before Obama's second speech debkafile ran an article covering the same ground.