Lee Hamilton Warns That U.S. Cannot Produce 'Flawless' Intelligence System

As President Obama confronts failures in the U.S. intelligence system that allowed a Nigerian man to board a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas with hidden explosives, former 9/11 Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton warned Thursday that the task is so formidable, the nation "cannot get this down to zero mistakes."

Asked about security challenges over the next decade in the wake of the foiled bombing of Northwest Flight 253 and the suicide bombing in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA agents, Hamilton said, "I think they will go where we're not. These guys are not stupid."

Hamilton, who now serves on the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council, made his sobering remarks at a breakfast for journalists sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. The event came in advance of Obama's 3 p.m. (Eastern) comments on a review by his national security team, which looked into how all the intelligence about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab never was connected to identify him as a potential threat before he boarded the Northwest flight. At 3:45 p.m., Napolitano, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security John Brennan, and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will brief reporters on findings of the report Obama had demanded, which is being released today.

Hamilton advised against placing a priority on firing officials or fixing blame -- there have been calls from Republicans for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to resign -- and instead emphasized looking for fixes. "Our focus at this point should not be who is at fault," he said, noting that no matter how many assets are devoted to preventing terrorist attacks, the U.S. is unlikely to "produce a system that is totally flawless."

He said the nation needs to be in "an ongoing psychological war" to keep ahead of the terrorists. He painted a gloomy picture of officials plugging a hole in their intelligence and security operations, only to find terrorists "know the vulnerabilities of our system."

Hamilton also advised against a wholesale call to reorganize the nation's various intelligence entities. The Homeland Security Department was created in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in order to ensure the sharing of intelligence information. "Right now, you have to deal with the system that you've got," he said.

Abdulmutallab was charged Wednesday in a six-count indictment with attempted murder on a plane, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and related offenses. After he tried to ignite the explosives, which were hidden in his underwear, passengers and crew subdued him and put out the fire he started on the plane.

Obama said Abdulmutallab was trained by an al-Queda affiliate in the Arabian Peninsula, which "equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed to America."

In the wake of the foiled attack, a series of stepped-up airport security screening measures have been put in place, and citizens from 14 countries associated with terrorism will be subject to automatic secondary searches before being allowed on any plane headed to the U.S.

Hamilton said he "doubted" a secondary screening would have caught Abdulmutallab's smuggled explosive packet. And he noted that dealing with the Islamic world "is one of the great foreign policy challenges of the next generation."