The Globe: The most grievous security breach to threaten the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, constituted a “systemic failure” of the country's counter-terror protocols, President Barack Obama said Tuesday as evidence mounted regarding just how much warning U.S. authorities had about an attempt to bomb a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day.

Officials confirmed Tuesday that the government had intelligence from Yemen before Christmas that a branch of al-Qaeda was discussing the preparation of “a Nigerian” to execute a terror attack, and that the CIA met with the father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian accused of trying to detonate plastic explosives on the Northwest Airlines Flight 253.
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