Obama to reveal more about plane bombing attempt

Barack Obama will disclose more today about the botched airline terrorist attack - and what else he will do to beef up security.

The White House is not expected to announce any immediate sackings for intelligence failures over the Christmas Day incident as a passenger jet was about to land at Detroit.

But eager to fix a glaring breakdown in intelligence-sharing and put the incident behind him, the US president will speak about a declassified account of the near-catastrophe.

The White House also plans to release a copy of the report, with some detail stripped away for security reasons.

US officials say a 23-year-old Nigerian man with ties to al-Qaida tried to detonate an explosive device aboard the Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

The suspect, former London student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was indicted last night on charges of attempted murder and other crimes.

His banker father had warned US officials of his extremist ties but that threat was never identified fully, a breakdown that has drew intense criticism from the president himself who told intelligence chiefs this week it was a "screw-up".

It remains unclear whether any top officials from Mr Obama's not-quite-year-old administration will eventually lose their jobs over the debacle.

No-one lost their job or was censured after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people nine years ago in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania.

"I don't know what the final outcome in terms of hiring and firing will be," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

But the spokesman added that he would "very seriously" doubt any announcement of abrupt personnel changes during today's flurry of activity.

Richard Ben-Veniste, a member of the 9/11 commission, a bi-partisan panel that investigated the 2001 attacks, said sackings or disciplinary action may be necessary if the investigation determined that the alleged bomber got on the plane because officials failed to do their job.

"We need to look at Christmas 2009 as a wake up call where we dodged the bullet and should use our good fortune in that respect to improve the system and to find out why we continue to have vulnerabilities," he said.

The commission made more than 40 recommendations to improve national security.

Mr Ben-Veniste said many of the recommended changes have been put in place, but the problem in this instance was that they were not all followed.

Another member of the 9/11 commission, Jamie Gorelick, said the intelligence failures that led to the Detroit incident appeared to be failures in execution, not failures of policy or a lack of funding.

"People need to be better at doing their jobs," he said.

The Los Angeles Times, citing law enforcement sources, said today that US border security officials learned of Abdulmutallab's alleged extremist links while he was on his way to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed.

A government database noted State Department concern that Abdulmutallab may have been involved with extremism in Yemen and officials decided to interview him when he arrived in the US, a senior law enforcement official told the Times.

The newspaper said it was not clear whether the intelligence was strong enough for Dutch officials to stop Abdulmutallab from flying had they learned of it before the flight's departure.

The Department of Homeland Security had no immediate comment on the Times' report.