Obama tough on US intelligence after Detroit bombing attempt

6 Jan, 2010 18:39 / Updated 15 years ago

President Barack Obama has criticized US security agencies after they failed to prevent an attempted bombing of an airliner on Christmas Day.

The president said that although the government of the United States had enough information to prevent the attempt, the intelligence community "failed to connect those dots."

Obama added that the prevented attack exposed "a potentially disastrous security failure.”

"I will not tolerate it," he added.

After the meeting with his national security team, Obama said, "We have to do better, and we will do better, and we will do it quickly." However, the American president has not announced any job reassignments.

On December 25, a 23-year-old Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, allegedly tried to blow himself up on board a plane bound for Detroit.

The bomb failed to explode, and passengers managed to subdue the perpetrator until he was detained by authorities on the ground.

The man claimed that he was acting on instructions from Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

Following the attempt, security measures have been tightened in the US airports.

The Transportation Security Administration directed airlines to give full-body pat-down searches to US-bound travelers from Yemen, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and 11 other countries, the AP reported.

The country’s government has added dozens of “suspected terrorists” to its list and also those barred from flights to the United States.