President Obama said yesterday that a "mix of human and systemic failures" allowed a Nigerian student allegedly carrying an explosive to board an airplane on Christmas Day, and he vowed to quickly fix flaws that could have doomed a flight carrying nearly 300 passengers and crew members.

The president and his top advisers now believe there is "some linkage" with al-Qaida, and the administration is "increasingly confident" that the terrorist group worked with suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to secure the deadly chemical mixture that he took aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253, a senior administration official said yesterday.

"A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable," Obama said in brief remarks to reporters near his vacation retreat in Kailua.

Obama was critical of unspecified U.S. counter- terrorism and homeland security agencies for failing to act on information that Abdulmutallab's father, a respected Nigerian banker, provided to the U.S. Embassy in the capital of Abuja six weeks before the attacks.

'RED FLAGS'

U.S. intelligence officials said yesterday the information involved how Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, may have become dangerously radicalized and involved with militants in Yemen.

The president also hinted that U.S. intelligence agencies missed or ignored other clues before Abdulmutallab boarded a Northwest Airlines flight in Amsterdam with a valid U.S. visa and, allegedly, a hidden packet of military-grade explosives.

"Even without this one report, there were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have and should have been pieced together," Obama said.

"Had this critical information been shared, it could have been compiled with other intelligence and a fuller, clearer picture of the suspect would have emerged."

The warning signs would have triggered red flags, and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America, the president said.

"We've achieved much since 9/11 in terms of collecting information that relates to terrorists and potential terrorist attacks, but it's becoming clear that the system that has been in place for years now is not sufficiently up to date to take full advantage of the information we collect and the knowledge we have."

A senior administration official, briefing reporters in Hawai'i under the condition of anonymity, said Obama's remarks came shortly after receiving a conference call update on the investigation from National Security Adviser Jim Jones; John Brennan, Obama's counter-terrorism adviser; and Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.

"It now is clear to us that there are bits and pieces of information that were in the possession of the U.S. government in advance of the Christmas Day attack that had they been assessed and correlated could have allowed us to disrupt the attack," the senior official said.

The official said the information the government had related to "where the suspect had been, what some of his thinking and plans were, what some plans of al-Qaida were."

"If this all were correlated in a way that allowed us to get a bigger and brighter picture ... I think it would have been a different outcome," the official said.

The official also said that "some of the new information that we've developed overnight does suggest that there was some linkage there" between Abdulmutallab and al-Qaida, but that "I'm never going to verify anything al-Qaida says and I'm not in a position to suggest that we know conclusively that they were for it, that they planned it."

Obama said that he wanted a preliminary report by tomorrow on what went wrong on Christmas Day.

NOVEMBER WARNING

It will take weeks for a more comprehensive investigation into what allowed Abdulmutallab to board the airplane he is accused of trying to blow up with more than 300 people aboard.

Law enforcement officials believe the suspect tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation.

Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to destroy an aircraft, is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Mich.

A CIA official declined to comment on whether CIA personnel in Nigeria sent a cable to headquarters in Washington that was not disseminated to the wider intelligence community.

But Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, said the agency was reviewing what its case officers and analysts did, to see what might have gone wrong.

"We learned of Abdulmutallab in November, when his father came to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and sought help in finding him. We did not have his name before then," Gimigliano said.

"Also in November, we worked with the embassy to ensure he was in the government's terrorist database — including mention of his possible extremist connections in Yemen. We also forwarded key biographical information about him to the National Counterterrorism Center."