More evidence of terror threat than US admits: report

Top US national security officials failed to fully appreciate mounting evidence that Al-Qaeda might be preparing a new attack on the United States and of the dangers posed by extremists linked to Yemen, The New York Times reported Monday.

Earlier this month, the administration of President Barack Obama presented its findings about a failed Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound US airliner.

But a detailed review of the episode shows that there were far more warning signs than the administration has acknowledged, the newspaper said.

In September, a United Nations expert on Al-Qaeda warned policy makers in Washington that the type of explosive device used by a Yemeni militant in an assassination attempt in Saudi Arabia could be carried aboard an airliner, the report said.

In early November, US intelligence authorities say they learned from a communications intercept of Al-Qaeda followers in Yemen that a man named "Umar Farouk" -- the first two names of the jetliner suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- had volunteered for a coming operation, The Times noted.

In late December, more intercepts of Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen, who had previously focused their attacks on the region, mentioned the date of December 25, and suggested that they were "looking for ways to get somebody out" or "for ways to move people to the West," the paper pointed out, citing an unnamed senior administration official.

And an Al-Qaeda figure made ominous threats against the United States, according to the report.

"We carry prayer beads, and with them we carry a bomb for the enemies of God," a man describing himself as an Al-Qaeda fighter from Yemen announced in a video released on Al Jazeera satellite television, according to The Times. "The issue is between us and America and its allies, and beware, those who stand in the ranks of America."

The US intelligence network was clearly listening in Yemen and sharing that information, the paper said. Yet the inability to pull the data together or correctly interpret it produced the "systemic failure" that Obama has referred to.