STEVE INSKEEP, host:
It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning. I'm Steve Inskeep.
MADELEINE BRAND, host:
And I'm Madeleine Brand, sitting in for Renee Montagne.
Let's run down some facts about the attempted airline bombing on Christmas Day.
INSKEEP: Four months before Christmas, U.S. intelligence intercepted a message: leaders of a branch of al-Qaida spoke of using a Nigerian bomber.
BRAND: One month before Christmas, a Nigerian man's father appealed for help. He wanted to find his missing son in Yemen.
INSKEEP: Information about the son went to the National Counterterrorism Center, but still, he allegedly carried explosives on a plane from Amsterdam to Detroit. Only a faulty detonator and alert passengers saved lives.
BRAND: President Obama may consider those facts when he meets intelligence leaders today. He wants to prevent future attacks.
We start our coverage with NPR's Scott Horsley.
SCOTT HORSLEY: President Obama has blamed a systemic failure for allowing the young man to board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 carrying potentially deadly explosives. The CIA had been warned weeks earlier that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab might pose a threat. And Mr. Obama acknowledged there were other bits and pieces of information that should have been put together to prevent Abdulmutallab from getting on that plane. Of course, former CIA officer Bruce Riedel points out connecting the dots is easier after an attack than when it's still in the planning stages.
Mr. BRUCE RIEDEL (Former CIA Officer; Brookings Institution): Think if you have a puzzle with a thousand pieces, but you only have maybe 200 of them and you're trying to figure out what that whole puzzle looks like. I think anyone who looks at it that way understands just how difficult and challenging a task this is.
HORSLEY: What's more, the 200 useful puzzle pieces have to sifted from thousands of worthless tips. Riedel, who's now with the Brookings Institution and consulted for the Obama administration, says the job's made harder than it has to be by an intelligence structure in the U.S. that he calls big, cumbersome and with a lot of moving parts.
Mr. RIEDEL: Even with the best of intentions, it's very hard for all of those different bureaucracies to interact with each other effectively.
HORSLEY: Mr. Obama is hoping to change that. He's made it clear that while he understands the difficulty in gathering intelligence, failure by agencies to share what they know will not be tolerated. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair says U.S. agencies have gotten better at collaborating since the 9/11 attacks. But counterterrorism expert Rick Nelson of the Center For Strategic and International Studies says there's still room for improvement.
Mr. RICK NELSON (The Center for Strategic and International Studies): We're going to have to take steps to change the culture of these institutions. The intelligence communities and the law enforcement community are going to have to take more risks. They'll go ahead and put some incomplete information out there and then make the evaluation instead of waiting for perfect information.
HORSLEY: As an example, Missouri Senator Kit Bond points to communications intercepted from Yemen last summer about a terror plot involving an unnamed Nigerian man. Bond, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, says that fragmentary information might have been more valuable had it been connected to the warning from Abdulmutallab's Nigerian father that his son had fallen under the influence of Yemeni extremists.
Senator KIT BOND (Republican, Missouri): That should have put a very, very big warning sign on his name, his visa and everything else.
HORSLEY: The Senate Intelligence Committee plans its own review later this month. Meanwhile, the Obama administration ordered tighter airport screening for passengers traveling to the U.S. from 14 suspect countries, including Yemen and Nigeria. A White House spokesman says safety and security measures are moving forward, even as the intelligence review goes on.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.