we are at war

Obama said intelligence reports involving threats would be distributed more widely among agencies. He instructed the State Department to review its visa policy to make it more difficult for people with connections to terrorism to receive visas,while making it simpler to revoke visas to the US when questions arise.

We are at war, Obama said,releasing an unclassified version of a report on the attempted attack. He pledged not to succumb to a siege mentality sacrificing the countrys civil liberties for security.

The report concluded that the governments counter-terrorism operations had been caught off guard by the sophistication and strength of an al-Qaeda cell in Yemen,where officials say the plot against the US originated.

We didnt know they had progressed to the point of actually launching individuals here, said John O Brennan,the Presidents chief counter-terrorism advisor,in a briefing to reporters.

The report sharply criticised the National Counter Terrorism Center and the Central Intelligence Agency. The President ordered the agencies to speed the dissemination of information about potential plots and to develop ways of more quickly pursuing connective threads on potential terrorists.

In the never-ending race to protect our country,we have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary, Obama said.

Obama ordered the review of the incident in which a Nigerian man traveling tried to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight and its 278 passengers. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab,23,is to be arraigned on Friday on charges of attempted murder on a plane,attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and other offenses.

Administration officials said human error led to the lapse: the failure to put Abdulmutallab on the no-fly list despite the governments having information that showed him to be not only a threat,but also a threat with a visa to visit the US.

The internal report,conducted by Brennan,blamed a host of errors for the intelligence lapse,including a misspelling of Abdulmutallabs name. The mistake led officials at the State Department to the erroneous conclusion that Abdulmutallab did not have a visa.

The intentional redundancy in the system should have added an additional layer of protection in uncovering a plot like the failed attack on December 25, the review found. However,in both cases,the mission to connect the dots did not produce the result that,in hindsight,it could have.

But the systemic breakdown went much further. The cable from the State Department outlining Abdulmutallabs fathers warnings about his son was available to the NCTC officials who maintained the no-fly list,the report said. But the cable alone did not meet the minimum standard for Abdulmutallab to get on the list.

At that point,a senior administration official said,the logical thing to do would have been to cross-check to see if there were other red flags out on Abdulmutallab. That apparently did not happen.

Watch-list personnel had access to additional derogatory information in databases that could have been connected to Abdulmutallab, the report said,but that access did not result in them uncovering the biographic information8230; necessary for placement on the watch list.

Brennan said that the intelligence failures that took place before Christmas were not similar to the lapses that led to 9/11. Brennan said the most significant finding of his report was the strength of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. He called it one of the most lethal cells of the terrorist organisation.

The White House defended Michael Leiter,the director of the counterterrorism center,who went on vacation in the immediate aftermath of the Christmas incident. Brennan said he had approved Leiters leave. Obama said the missteps were not the fault of one individual or agency. He took responsibility for the failures,saying,The buck stops with me.