we'll break it all down with fran townsend, jeanne meserve and richard ben venista. "state of the union" "sount of sunday" for january 3rd. >>> the president's point man on the war on terror was on the defensive this morning over the christmas day terror plot. >> clearly the system didn't work. we had a problem in terms of why abdulmutallab got on that plane. there is no smoking gun piece of intel sdwre india intelligence out there. >>> the former chairman of the 9/11 commission says some of the blaeft rests at the white house because he says president obama's plate just might have been too full. >> the problem was not now, but the fact before that this administration i think was distracted. that's understandable. heaven sakes, if you're in this huge health care fight and worried about the economy and global warming, that's what they were cons tralting on. i think they weren't giving this enough attention. it's understandable, but not acceptable. >>> the former director of the cia warns the american people of tough choices ahead in the balance between privacy and sec

as homeland security correspondent jeanne meserve reports, authorities could learn some valuable lessonst. >> reporter: there is no new intelligence indicating an increased threat to aviation, but because this is a haevy holiday travel weekend, security is going to be even more enhanced. there will be more canine detection teams, more federal air marshals and requirements for 100% inspection of passengers coming into the country remain in force. in addition, the state department is telling embassies around the world, when you send a cable about a suspicious individual, include information on whether they have a visa. this because cables about umar farouk abdulmutallab did not mention the very significant fact that the 23-year-old had a valid multiple entry visa to enter the united states. experts say the failures exposed by this episode will likely catalyze change. view it as an opportunity, a painful one, but view it as an opportunity to solve some of the things that have been stuck in either the budget process, the policy process, get things done. >> reporter: communications intercepts

let's check in with jeanne meserve, cnn homeland security correspondent in washington. the terror suspect's in court tomorrow. what are we expecting? >> we are expecting him possibly to enter a plea tomorrow. he's facing six charges. one of them carrying life in prison. that would be having a weapon of mass destruction. some of the other charges relate to attempting to kill the 289 people on that northwest airline flights. six charges in all. he will be there, we expect. possibility of a plea. we're not absolutely certain that's going to happen, larry. >> larry: this is his criminal arraignment? >> that's correct. this is his arraignment tomorrow. they'll also be dealing with the matter of detention. you know, there's so much on the table already. we aren't expecting the government to put a lot of new information out there for us. >> larry: that's jeanne meserve, our homeland security correspondent. let's check in with paul bremer in washington. former ambassador at large for counterterrorism. former head of coalition prevention authority in iraq. good to have him back.

we go to our correspondent jeanne meserve. >> reporter: 50,000 transportation security officers screen question, and observe at the nation's airports to keep dangerous people and items off planes. senator jim demint believes giving them collective bargaining rights would hurt security. >> collective bargaining would standardize things across the country, make it much less flexible, much harder for the agency to adam to changing threats around the world. >> reporter: harder, for instance, to react to something like the christmas day bombing attempt or the 2006 plot to blow up airplanes with liquid explosives. within hours of learning of that, the tsa ramped up security and temporarily banned carry-on liquids. the union representing 12,000 tsos says demint's argument is rubbish, pointing out the federal protective service and others all have full union representation. >> you know, no one talked about union membership when the cops and the firefighters went up the stairs at 9/11 at the world trade towers. no one talks about our two officers, two union members, who took down the shooter at

also here in washington are our homeland security correspondent jeanne meserve and former homeland security inspector general clark kent irvin. thanks to all of you for coming in. clark, let me start with you. the president says for now he's not interested in firing people. but you believe people should be fired. >> i do, wolf. it is terrific the president took responsibility and, of course, ultimately he's responsible. that's the politically smart thing to do too. but the president himself can't be fired, certainly. and further, the president himself doesn't run the government. the bureaucracy does. unless heads roll in the bureaucracy, we'll be talking about this in years to come. >> who would you fire? >> it seems there were multiple mistakes and multiple agencies as the president has said. therefore it seems there should be multiple resignations in the nctc. >> the national counterterrorism center. >> that's right. in the central -- >> that's headed by michael leiter. >> it is. i know michael leiter. he's a consummate intelligence profession professional. people in the bureaucracy who d

. >> larry: that's jeanne meserve, our homeland security security correspondent. former head of the coalition provisional authority in iraq. good to have him back. what did you make of the president today, paul? >> i think, first of all, this whole thing proves bremer's first rule of counterterrorism intelligence which is it's always easier to find the needle when the haystack has been taken away. there's good news and bad news in what the president did today. the good news he acknowledged clearly he we're at war with al qaeda and this was a terrorist attack. secondly he took responsibility. the bad news is that the president never really conveyed a sense of urgency to the country or his team about this incide incident. this is two weeks after the incident, and his counterterrorism adviser apparently told one of the senior counterterrorism analyst to take six days vacation the day after this incident. the second bad news piece is more serious, and that is that the administration seems to be entrapped in its commitment to the failed counterterrorist policy of the 1

accountable, what he's referring to is there have been wide reports already, as you know, from our jeanne meserve and others that basically the cia may have had some information before this attempted terror attack, suggesting the future suspect had ties to extremists and it wasn't necessarily shared across the board. sort of what happened before 9/11. all of that was supposed to be fixed, a post- 9/11, and so what i think we should be looking ahead to is on tuesday, his first full day at the white house, the president's calling in the head of the cia, leon panetta, other intelligence chiefs, the attorney general and others, to basically, you know, call them on the carpet, what went wrong and more important pointing at things so they can fix it and prevent future attacks. that's the point of all of this, brooke. >> do me favor, stand by. i want to bring in another voice in the conversation here. the director of the south asia center of the atlantic council of the united states. he also penned a book titled "crossswords, pakistan, its army and the war within." mr. navez, thank you for joining me fr