Security Adviser Jones: White House's flight 253 report has 'certain shock to it'

The White House's report on the Flight 253 plot has a "certain shock to it," National Security Adviser James Jones said Wednesday.

According to Jones, "the man on the street will be surprised" by the study's conclusions about what went wrong prior to the Christmas Day plot to bomb an airliner over Detroit.

The report, commissioned by the president shortly after the attempted attack, is due this afternoon.

"There were a number of things that could've triggered a prevention of this individual getting on an airplane," Jones told USA Today in an interview, published Thursday

"The average citizen, when he reads this, will be a little bit surprised to see it in print," he added.

Many of the details of the White House's internal report are already well-known, and most seem to contradict the administration's early assessment of the Christmas Day terror plot.

Initially, President Barack Obama described Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as an "isolated extremist" acting independently. But a survey of available intelligence shortly after the failed attack revealed that Abdulmuttallab was working closely with an al Qaeda affilitate in Yemen. He received both training and explosives there, prior to boarding Flight 253 in Amsterdam.

The Nigerian suspect also maintained close ties to Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, U.S. officials admitted last week. Al-Alwaki's name has been on the White House's radar since it became known he exchanged e-mails with Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan prior to the Fort Hood shooting last November.

Consequently, the possibility that both attacks are in some way linked remains concerning to the White House, Jones suggested during his interview on Wednesday.

"I think the president takes this very seriously," he said, noting the investigation will continue even after the release of Thursday's report. "In the aftermath of Fort Hood, and this event, he is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available... [and] were not acted on. That's two strikes, and he certainly doesn't want that third strike, and neither does anybody else."

Concerns about additional attacks have prompted the White House to introduce a bevy of new security and screening measures, the president himself announced during his speech on Tuesday.

So far, Obama has ordered more air marshals to patrol domestic flights, tasked advisers with overhauling the country's no-fly list and dispatched more security to domestic airports. Meanwhile, efforts are underway to convince international airports to strengthen their screening procedures. A number have responded by introducing full-body scanning technology and commissioning analyses of their own security architecture.

Further domestic reforms will depend considerably on the "specific recommendations for corrective actions" the White House has asked key advisers to submit this week, the president said on Tuesday.

A number of lawmakers remain critical of the president's handling of the Flight 253 aftermath. Some have charged the president has approached terrorism lukewarmly until now, jeopardizing national security.

But Jones on Wednesday insisted there was "no theater here, in terms of how the president reacts." He said the president was working hard to correct those errors and prevent a similar security breach in the future.

"We know what happened, we know what didn't happen, and we know how to fix it," Jones said. "We don't have to reinvent anything to make sure it doesn't happen again."

This post was updated at 11:42 a.m.

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