US intelligence lapse facilitated Nigerian bomber to board Detroit-bound flight

Washington, Dec. 30 (ANI): The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had received a lead on a person dubbed "The Nigerian" suspected for meeting "terrorist elements" in Yemen as early as August 2009, but it failed to establish a link when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria in November to express concerns about his son's ties with al Qaeda.

In fact, the connection was not established until after the attempted Christmas Day bombing.

"We must get better at collecting these bits of information, putting them together at a central point, analysing them and then acting," CBS News quoted Lee Hamilton, the vice-chair of the 9/11 Commission, as saying.

Many experts are comparing the global security breach with the kind of system failure detailed in the 9/11 Commission Report.

"We're sharing information better than we did prior to 9/11, but this incident surely illustrates we've got a long ways to go," Hamilton said.

In a statement on Tuesday, the CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said: "We learned of him in November, when his father came to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria and sought help in finding him. We did not have his name before then."

"This agency, like others in our government, is reviewing all data to which it had access - not just what we ourselves may have collected - to determine if more could have been done to stop Abdulmutallab," he added.

Meanwhile, Yemeni Foreign Minister warned that there may be hundreds of trained young militants ready to follow in the footsteps of Abudulmutallab.

"They may actually plan attacks like the one we just had in Detroit. There may be hundreds of them - 200 to 300," he added. (ANI)