In a strongly worded statement that rejected recent partisanship at home and bluntly asserted "a war against al-Qaida," Obama defiantly warned Islamic extremists that Americans would not "succumb to a siege mentality" in the face of their threats.
The president described "a systemic failure across agencies" to stop a Nigerian man from boarding a Detroit-bound jetliner with explosives sewn in his underpants. Although many of the shortcomings were already known, a declassified report on the incident outlined several human errors, including spelling mistakes, that added up to a breakdown in security.
Also: What Intelligence Analysts Didn't Do | Read the White House review (PDF)
Intelligence agencies had learned a great deal about al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, including that the group planned to send a suicide bomber who turned out to be Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on a deadly mission to strike the United States, but they did not aggressively analyze and distribute the information.
That, Obama said, contributed to a larger failure to connect the proverbial dots. Had the pieces been put together, they would have revealed the signs of the attack and that, in turn, would have led to the 23-year-old Nigerian being placed on a "no-fly" list instead of a much larger list of suspected terrorists, he said.
Noting he has already directed security agencies to reduce the time needed to add suspects to the "no-fly" list and to loosen the criteria for who should be placed there, Obama ordered:
- Intelligence agencies to focus on high-priority threats and to pursue them aggressively. "We must follow the leads we get," he said.
- Intelligence reports to be distributed more rapidly and more widely. "We cannot sit on information that could protect" Americans, he said.
- Stronger analysis of collected information. He instructed Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair to "immediately reaffirm and clarify" the roles and responsibilities of the 16 agencies under his oversight. He also tasked his intelligence advisory board with finding better ways to sift through and analyze the vast amount of information gathered by agencies every day.
- Improve the criteria used to add people to terrorism watch lists. "We must do better in keeping dangerous people off airplanes, whole still facilitating air travel," he said.
The president noted he had already increased by $1 billion funding for new body-imaging scanners at airports to improve the Transportation Security Administration's ability to detect explosives like the kind the would-be bomber brought aboard the Northwest Airlines jet. He said "significant investments" would still be needed to "make our skies safer and more secure" and said the Department of Energy will work on developing and deploying the next generation of screening technology.
"There is no foolproof solution," the president said. "In the never-ending race to protect our country, we have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary."
Having addressed the technical failures, Obama said he would hold his staff and agencies accountable but indicated that no heads will roll anytime soon.
"At this stage, this not the fault of a single individual," he said, repeating his initial assessment while still on vacation in Hawaii that there was "a systemic failure across agencies."
Obama said agencies will conduct internal accountability reviews and "we will measure progress." He instructed his counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, to report back in 30 days.
But Obama said he was "less interested in passing out blame" than ensuring that future plots never get as far.
"I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people," he said. "And when the system fails, it is my responsibility."
Following the president's lead, Brennan also made a personal avowal of responsibility.
"I told the president I let him down," he said at a press conference this afternoon. "I told him I'd do better and that we would do better as a team."
Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano made no such declaration of responsibility.
After days of partisan bickering in which former Vice President Dick Cheney led criticism of Obama's handling of security and the fight against Islamic extremists, the president made his clearest statement to date that he grasped the threat facing America.
"We are at war. We are at war with al-Qaida," he said in a pointed attempt to silence critics who have said he hasn't taken the threat seriously enough. "Now is not the time for partisanship, it's a time for citizenship -- a time to come together and work together with the seriousness of purpose that our national security demands.
"That's what it means to be strong in the face of violent extremism," he said. "That's how we will prevail in this fight."
Officials worked until the last minute to confirm that the six-page unclassified version of the events was fit for public consumption. That delayed Obama's remarks twice during the afternoon. Right until he walked into the State dining room to give his brief remarks, theories ran rampant about what national security adviser James Jones meant when he said the review would provoke "a certain shock" when Americans learned just how much intelligence agencies knew and how they failed to put the pieces together.
Earlier in the day, administration officials downplayed a Los Angeles Times report that border enforcement officials learned of the Nigerian man's terrorist links while he was en route to Detroit. They told the Associated Press that Abdulmutallab was flagged for additional screening upon landing in Detroit after a routine check of passengers as the jetliner made its way to the U.S. from overseas and not because of any new intelligence gleaned during the flight.
Customs and Border Protection officials check passenger manifests against terrorist watch lists before international flights and then again against a different database once the aircraft is in flight. Officials said it was during the second check that agents saw that the alleged bomber's father had warned the U.S. Embassy in that his son had gotten mixed up with Islamic extremists.
Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., said she would introduce legislation to require airlines to send passenger lists to the CBP at least 24 hours before international flights arrive in the U.S. to give officials more time to check for security threats.
The White House also played defense for National Counterterrorism Director Michael Leiter, whom headlines called a "ski bum" for vacationing in the aftermath of the attack.
In a statement, National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough said Leiter was at work on Dec. 25 and only left for a planned family ski vacation the next day after consulting with the White House and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. He said Leiter stayed in touch with other officials while he was away.
