The head of the intelligence services in the United States has vowed to make amends after stinging criticism from President Obama that they failed to stop last month's attempt to bomb an American airliner.

In a statement the National Intelligence director, Dennis Blair, said the intelligence community needed to boost efforts to anticipate new kinds of attacks.

After an earlier meeting with his security advisers, President Obama said US intelligence services had enough information to place the Nigerian suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, on a no-fly list, but had failed to connect the dots, adding: "That's not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it".

Janice Kephart is director of National Security Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington and served as counsel on the 9/11 commission.

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First broadcast 6 January 2010