Obama to examine probes into foiled airliner attack

President Barack Obama planned to ring in the New Year by plowing through initial probes into the botched bombing of a US plane, after slamming "systemic" intelligence failures.

The top US intelligence official Dennis Blair, meanwhile, delivered a sobering warning that future attacks would be harder to stop, as Al-Qaeda deepens its knowledge of US defence systems and how to get past them.

Mr Obama, angered by how narrowly tragedy was averted in a country still scarred by the September 11, 2001 attacks, said he was expecting to receive two reports on reviews he demanded into the Christmas Day attack later in the day.

He went to see the Hollywood blockbuster Avatar with his children and friends and then played golf on Thursday, but aides said he would make an in-depth study of the reports in the evening.

After reviewing the assessments over the weekend, the President plans to meet heads of intelligence agencies and government departments next week to discuss the findings after returning from vacation in Hawaii.

"On Tuesday, in Washington, I will meet personally with relevant agency heads to discuss our ongoing reviews as well as security enhancements and intelligence-sharing improvements in our homeland security and counter terrorism operations," Mr Obama said in statement.

The President spoke earlier on Thursday about the two reviews with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and his top counterterrorism advisor John Brennan.

Mr Obama has ordered one assessment of the no-fly list system and a separate probe into how suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab sneaked an explosive device past security at Amsterdam airport onto a plane bound for the United States.

"Intelligence itself, and the collection thereof is always going to be difficult and is not always going to result in complete information and he understands that," a senior US official said on condition of anonymity.

"But by the same token, when we do have good information ... the failure to share that information is not going to be tolerated."

Mr Obama has been receiving regular updates on the probes and issues related to the attack on paper and online and officials and US agencies were working overtime to plug gaps in the US aviation security system.

"It's a heck of a Happy New Year," the official said.

Mr Blair, the director of national intelligence, told his staff in a letter on Thursday that the fight against Al-Qaeda, which has claimed the Christmas Day attack, was about to get even tougher.

"What concerns me most now is not only stopping the types of attacks of the past, but also anticipating and stopping the different, more cunning attacks of the future," he said.