CIA Had File on Detroit Bomber for a Month, Didn't Share

The "intelligence community" agency that President Obama said fumbled security in the Detroit bomb plot was apparently the CIA, which compiled a report on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab after speaking to his father but sat on the file for 5 weeks instead of circulating it to other agencies, reports CNN. The Nigerian's attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit could have been stopped if the report had been shared, according to a "reliable source."

A federal official says information held by different agencies would have meshed if the system was working properly. "We ended up in a situation where a single point of failure in the system put our security at risk, where human error was compounded by systemic deficiencies in a way that we cannot allow to continue," said the official.
(More CIA stories.)