The original content of Democracy Now! Headlines appears under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 3.0 License (United States). For more, including their other shows and media, visit www.democracynow.org. December 30, 2009 Obama: "Systemic Failure” Occurred in Nation’s Security System -------------------------------------------------------------- On Tuesday, President Obama acknowledged there had been a systemic failure of the nation’s security system. Obama also revealed the US had gathered some intelligence about a possible attack and that critical information was not shared between government agencies. President Obama: “When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could have cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred. And I consider that totally unacceptable. The reviews I’ve ordered will surely tell us more, but what already is apparent is that there was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security.” .