US failed over bomb attempt - Obama

US President Barack Obama meets with his national security team at the White House
12 April 2012

President Barack Obama has asserted the US government had enough information to foil the attempted bombing of a plane on Christmas Day, but intelligence agencies "failed to connect the dots".

Mr Obama called that unacceptable and added: "I will not tolerate it."

The accused attacker, a Nigerian man who claimed ties to al-Qaida, was subdued by other passengers and airline crew members after he allegedly attempted to detonate explosives hidden under his clothes.

The US president, speaking after meeting with his cabinet and national security team, declared, "We have to do better and we will do better. And we will do it quickly."

Mr Obama also said he was suspending the transfer of Guantanamo detainees from Yemen. The December 25 attack has raised concerns about Yemen, because the Nigerian man claims to have been acting on instructions from al-Qaida operatives in that country.

Mr Obama said the foiled attack exposed "a potentially disastrous" security failure.

He spoke after a White House meeting with the high-ranking government officials charged with carrying out two reviews he has ordered, and spelled out recent changes in security protocols for airline flights and changes to the government's watchlist of suspected terrorists.

Mr Obama told reporters the security lapse did not have to do with the collection of information but with the failure to integrate and analyse what was there. The bottom line, he said, was that the government had "sufficient information to uncover this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack".

"Our intelligence community failed to connect those dots which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list," he said. "This was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already have."

Talking about the prison for terror suspects in Cuba, he said: "Make no mistake, we will close Guantanamo prison." Guantanamo, he said, "was an explicit rationale for the formation of al-Qaida" operating in Yemen.

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