AP - President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the intelligence community had bits of information that should have been pieced together that would have triggered "red flags" and possibly prevented the Christmas Day attempted terror attack on a Detroit-bound airliner.

AP - The Obama administration claim that "the system worked" after a failed aircraft bombing wasn't quite as jolting as President George W. Bush's "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" while New Orleans sank under deadly Hurricane Katrina. But both raised disturbing questions about presidential response in a time of crisis.

AP - Two federal agencies charged with keeping potential terrorists off airplanes and out of the country have been without their top leaders for nearly a year.