President Barack Obama was railed against “systemic failures” of the nation’s security system today after it was revealed that the US had missed a myriad of “signals” relating to the Christmas lap bomber.

According to officials, they had information that Yemeni al-Qaeda was talking about “a Nigerian” being groomed for an imminent attack, in addition to already known warnings about Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, including those coming from his family.

But exactly where did the failure occur? No one is standing up to take responsibility, but plenty in the intelligence community are eagerly standing up to point the finger at one another.

Mostly those fingers are pointing at the National Counterterrorism Center, which is supposed to be helping to coordinate data from the various agencies into an overall view, a result of post-9/11 concerns that the agencies more often compete instead of cooperating.

But some defended the NCC, saying that the CIA, among others, had compiled data which would have made the threat more obvious, but withheld it from the other agencies. The culture of competition between the agencies, it seems, is continuing.

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