On Tuesday, President Obama acknowledged there had been a systemic failure of the nation’s security system. Obama also revealed the US had gathered some intelligence about a possible attack and that critical information was not shared between government agencies.

President Obama: “When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could have cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred. And I consider that totally unacceptable. The reviews I’ve ordered will surely tell us more, but what already is apparent is that there was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security.”