WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence agencies had enough “bits and pieces” of information to thwart the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing, a senior administration official said Tuesday, but they failed to properly analyze and share it.

Instead, what President Barack Obama called a potentially catastrophic “mix of human and systemic failures” allowed the 23-year-old Nigerian suspect to board a U.S.-bound airliner, allegedly with an explosive device that could have killed nearly 300 people.

“A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama told reporters near his vacation retreat in Hawaii. Full story.

Perhaps we should stop referring to them as "intelligence agencies." Just a thought.

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