President Obama today released a declassified version of the administration’s review into the failed terror attempt on Flight 253, telling the American people the “first line of defense is timely accurate intelligence that is shared, integrated, analyzed and acted upon quickly,” but adding “that’s not what happened in the leadup to Christmas day.”
He said the United States intelligence agencies knew that al Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula “sought to strike the United States.”
Obama detailed what advisers have said from the get-go was a failure to connect the dots, saying the government “had the information scattered throughout the system to potentially … “disrupt the attack.”
The president said information must be “distributed more rapidly and more widely,” adding, “we cant sit on information.”
TPMmuckraker details the new findings here and here.
Read Obama’s remarks here and read the president’s memo and declassified review here.
Obama’s homeland security adviser John Brennan detailed the review for reporters and said what he wanted to address is all the threads of intelligence information and ask “Why weren’t they integrated and pieced together?”
Brennan concluded, “The president has told us that we must do better. I will do better and we will do better as a team.”
Watch Obama’s remarks here:
