Obama: 'Systemic Failure' Led to Terrorist Allowed on Flight 253

President Obama said warning signs that would have prevented suspected terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding Detroit-bound Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day were ignored, calling the breach a "systemic failure."

Breaking from his Hawaii vacation to read a statement, Obama again confronted the first major intelligence failure on his watch.The president highlighted flaws in the intelligence and screening systems the U.S. government installed after the 9/11 attacks.

He noted that Abdulmutallab's father, a Nigerian banker, told U.S. authorities about his son's radicalization "weeks ago." Abdulmutallab's U.S. visa remained valid. His name was put on a terrorist watch list, but the father's information, Obama said, was "not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect's name on a no-fly list."

That the government had information about a man Obama called a "known extremist" but still failed to connect the dots demonstrated that "systemic failure has occurred and I consider that totally unacceptable . . . What already is apparent is that there was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security."

Three congressional panels -- two in the Senate and one in the House -- already have January hearings planned on the failures that led to the incident.