National Security Adviser Says Airline Bomber Report Will 'Shock' Americans

In an interview Wednesday with USA Today, White House national security adviser James Jones said President Obama "is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on."

"That's two strikes," he was quoted as saying, referring to the failed Northwest jet attack and the shooting massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, in November. The Army base attack left 13 dead after officials failed to act on intelligence identifying suspected gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a threat to fellow soldiers.

Jones, a retired four-star Marine general, told the paper that Obama "certainly doesn't want that third strike, and neither does anybody else."

The White House on Thursday plans to make public the declassified account of the near catastrophe on Christmas Day, and President Obama was to address Americans about its findings and recommendations. Obama, too, was to reveal new steps intended to thwart terrorist attacks, as he promised earlier in the week.

(...) For nearly the last two weeks, Obama and his team have spent enormous time responding to the crisis of a 23-year-old Nigerian man who was in a database of possible terrorists and managed to fly from Nigeria through Amsterdam to Detroit with an explosive concealed on his body. The White House is eager to start putting public attention back to its efforts to expand health care and boost the economy, while careful to say Obama will be monitoring security improvements.

The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was indicted Wednesday on charges of attempted murder and other crimes for trying to blow up an airliner.

(...) Two legislative officials familiar with intelligence matters, one in the House of Representatives and one in the Senate, said Wednesday that it appeared unlikely that anyone in the Obama administration would be fired over the incident. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.