Washington, Janaury 06: A fuming President Barack Obama bluntly asserted last night that the American intelligence community had failed to “connect the dots” ahead of the thwarted Christmas Day bombing of a jetliner on approach to Detroit and that the system that is meant to prevent terror attacks had fallen down, “in a potentially disastrous way”.
Mr Obama, emerging from a meeting with his top homeland security and intelligence aides, revealed that the US had been aware of “other red flags” regarding the suspect in the case, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is believed to have been dispatched on his mission by a group associated with al-Qa’ida in Yemen. It was already known that his father had warned US officials in Nigeria of his fears that his son may have become a threat.
–Agencies