After it emerged agencies knew that leaders of a branch of al-Qaida in Yemen were talking about “a Nigerian” being prepared for a terrorist attack, Barack Obama has described US intelligence failings as “totally unacceptable.”

Interrupting his vacation in Hawaii, the US president spoke bluntly about lapses that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board a Northwest Airlines flight from Nigeria via Amsterdam.

Obama was given a briefing that the US had information that would have been a clear warning if shared among agencies, a senior American official said. This included information about where Abdulmutallab had been and some of his plans.

Obama said, “When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been, so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable.”

(article and photo source: Guardian)