The Daily Wrap: What We Learned About the Intelligence Failure

More details emerged this evening about the US government's failure to stop a 23 year old Nigerian terrorist from attempting to carry out an attack on Christmas Day.

First there was the declassified review of the incident released by the White House which, according to its summary "highights human errors and a series of systematic breakdowns failed to stop Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he was able to detonate an explosive device onboard flight 253."

Then the  President spoke out about the review: "... ultimately the buck stops with me. As president, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people, and when the system fails, it is my responsibility. Over the past two weeks, we've been reminded again of the challenge we face in protecting our country against a foe that is bent on our destruction. And while passions and politics can often obscure the hard work before us, let's be clear about what this moment demands. We are at war. We are at war against Al Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.

And finally, the President's top counter terrorism advisor, John Brennan, and his secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano briefed reporters.

Here are the highlights:

While no heads rolled today over the lapse to connect the intelligence dots, Brennan candidly admitted that the told the President that in this instance, the intelligence community did not rise to the level, "I told the President today, I let him down,"Brennan said, "I am the President's Assistant for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and I told him I will do better and we will do better as a team."

Brennan also admitted that he was the one to authorize National Counter Terrorism Center Director Michael Leiter's vacation time for the days following the attack.

"I asked Mike about whether or not he had a full complement of folks and his deputies were going to be in place. Mike said he did. And I said, "Mike, no, you deserve this vacation. You need to be with your son." So I was the one who told him he should go out there."

Asked what he found to be the most shocking aspect of the review, Brennan said it was Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's progress in launching an attack against the US. "The fact that they had moved forward to try to execute this attack against the homeland I think demonstrated to us -- and this is what the review sort of uncovered -- that we had a strategic sense of sort of where they were going, but we didn't know they had progressed to the point of actually launching individuals here. And we have taken that lesson, and so now we're all on top of it," Brennan explained.

Napolitano agreed, "the tactic of using an individual to foment an attack, as opposed to a large conspiracy or a multi-person conspiracy, such as we saw on 9/11, that is something that affects intelligence. It really emphasizes now the renewed importance on how different intelligence is integrated and analyzed and threat streams are followed through."

As for reports that U.S. authorities were ready to question Abdulmullatab after he arrived in Detroit, Napolitano explained that while the suspect's name did not appear on any terrorist watch list, he was listed in the TIDE database - which authorities in Detroit had access to, "and so they were ready when he landed in Detroit to question him about that -- that ping against the TIDE database," she said.

Brennan also acknowledged that the US is concerned about Africa being a breeding ground for extremism "that Al Qaeda preys upon, that they particularly are looking in Africa for recruits."

So what's next?  Brennan has 30 days to report back to the President on the progress regarding the corrective actions  that the various intelligence agencies have been directed to do so by Mr. Obama.