a warning is the first public comment from the national counterterrorism center director michael leiterstmas day terror attack. joining us now is "daily news" reporter james gordon make. always a pleasure to have you on. >> hello, david. >> president obama's top counterterrorism official saying there was no smoking gun, that u.s. agencies should have found ahead of the christmas day attempted attack. what do you make of that? >> there was no smoking gun, but there were a lot of parts of the gun, a lot of shell casings lying around that probably should have been taken together and some assumptions should have been made. as we've reported in "the daily news," you know, there was some intelligence, there was information from this suspect to try to blow up the plane bound for detroit. his own father, who was a prominent former nigerian economics minister and banker, had come in and talked to the cia and u.s. embassy in nigeria and warned them about his son possibly being tied up with extremists in yemen, which is a hotbed for activity of al qaeda's regional branch in the arabian peninsula.

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 did not share the information widely, didn't connect the dots, should answer for it, it seems to me. >> janet napolitano is the homeland security secretary. as far as we know, no one has offered a resignation. >> that's right. the president did say, though, yesterday, of course, there are going to be accountability mechanisms within agencies. i'm not sure what he means by that. perhaps he means inspector general investigations. but if we don't have ultimately resignations or firings, it seems to me we'll talk about this again. >> you had a chance to sit down with janet napolitano this week, jeanne. you got a sense of where she approaches all of this and we saw her later in the week at that briefing at the white house. how is she dealing with all the pressure on her right now, because she is sort in of in the bull's eye. a lot of republicans are saying, you know what, she didn't step up to the plate.

>> i would only amplify on what director michael leiter said. the search tools that we now have depend upon certain characteristics. i do not want to describe them here. there also have blind spots that to not allow this sort of global-like idea -- google-like idea that we have on our own computers. i think that the other thing i have learned from this is that almost all of our energy was focused on building systems and search engines. we do not have enough of a testing regime so that we do the what ifs before we have one of these incidences and fix them for ourselves. continued self testing is going to be a great part going forward so we can make some of these mistakes for practice before we make them for real. >> there is a sense of real urgency to bring out after improving the search capacity across the databases you have to come up with linkages. >> correct. this is not a new problem from our perspective. we have not gotten to the point we need to get and we are trying to accelerate that now. >> the other way to deal with this is to assign c

>> i would only amplify on what director michael leiter said. the search tools that we now have depend upon certain characteristics. i do not want to describe them here. they also have blind spots that do not allow this sort of google-like idea that we have on our own computers. several of those shortcomings came up in this case, which we can fix. i think that the other thing i have learned from this is that almost all of our energy was focused on building systems and search engines. we do not have enough of a testing regime so that we do the what ifs before we have one of these incidences and fix them for ourselves. continued self testing is going to be a great part going forward so we can make some of these mistakes for practice before we make them for real. there is a sense of real urgency to bring out after improving the search capacity across the databases you have to come up with linkages. >> correct. this is not a new problem from our perspective. we have not gotten to the point we need to get and we are trying to accelerate that now. >>

could be some political pressure on, say, dennis blair, the director of national intelligence, or michael leiter, the guy in charge of the national counterterrorism center. but again, it's going to be weeks, maybe months before we know for sure if somebody individually gets held accountable, lester. >> chuck todd and richard engel tonight with us. thank you very much. >>> now to the weather. and this year is getting off to a cold start across much of the country, even by january standards. and the cold snap came just as many americans are on the move after the holidays. from the great plains to the northeast, ice, snow, and frigid cold were the order of the day. we get more from nbc's jeff rossen. >> reporter: whiteout conditions in buffalo, new york as the bills battle the colts. fans could barely see the players. >> yeah! >> reporter: perhaps the players could barely see these fans. the weather channel's mike seidel was there this morning. >> let me tell you how cold it is. my face feels like it's going to crack, my eyes are watering up and i can't even feel my fingertips this morning. >> repo

national counterterrorism center director michael leiter saying the failed christmas day attack was a threat. in the weekly radio address, barack obama blames the flight 253 attempt on the group al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula and vowed those behind it would be held to account. bundle up. bitter winter weather is gripping the eastern two-third of the country. ocean storm moving to northern new england bringing lots of snow. forecast erers say it will stick around over the weekend. maine, new hampshire could get up to a foot-and-a-half of snow. the storm is expected to leave the northeast by monday. i'm julie banderas. now back to "huckabee." for the latest headlines go to foxnews.com. >> mike: we have had the pleasure of being joined by the amazing kreskin a couple of times and both times he boggled our mind with the incredible ability to read our minds. the last time he was with us, he handed me this sealed envelope and said it was a prediction inside. here to see what is in the envelope and find out if it's correct, welcome the amazing kreskin. welcome back. >> happy new year. >>

michael leiter. thank you for being here. >> it is my pleasure.ee that was most instrumental in creating ntsb. i want to open with a assertion. abdulmutallab should not have stepped onto a plane on christmas day. the counter-terrorism system collectively failed and i, along with director blair and nepal to non-oil and others want to tell you and the -- knowledge, and others, we need to do better. we have been reminded again how unceasing our enemy is and how committed they are to attacking the united states and how committed we need to be in protecting americans. to begin with, but like to take a rigid make a short rundown of the bombing attempt to give you a perspective of what we did mess. i want to start by debunking what has become conventional @@@@@ @ @ @ @ k >> and there was that this failure was just like 9/11. in fact, it was not. it was not a failure to share intelligence. instead, it was a failure to connect, integrate and understand the intelligence we have collected. terrorism agency has long known about the threat of al qaeda, we did

do you feel, senator kyl, that either the homeland security secretary napolitano or michael leiter theional counterterrorism center who went on the skiing vacation, or presidential advisor john brennan who said that leiter could go on the vacation, should any of them be fired? >> i think the president was right when he said, "the buck stops with me." the problem is he can't be fired right now. so what he has to do is provide a sense of urgency with the people who work for him. i don't blame them as much as i do him. and i don't blame the people in the cia for example, or the counterterrorism center as much as i blame the heads of those groups, who obviously are reflecting the sentiments of the president, which is we can just treat these people as common criminals and forget the intelligence they can provide to us and still win a war, as he says, that we're in. and you can't do that. you have to get intelligence, and then it's got to be actionable. and he's right that he's the person responsible for setting the tone of this. >> chris: senator reed? >> well, first of all, the fbi immedia

director robert mueller; national counterterrorism director, michael leiter, and the homeland securityrector, janet napolitano, were not -- were not consulted about the decision to read abdulmutallab his miranda rights. we know as soon as this terrorist was told of his right to remain silent, that's what he did. he stopped talking. it is unfathomable that these individuals were not even consulted before this hugely important decision was made. after the hearings conducted last week and interviews over the weekend, it appears that it was ultimately the attorney general who made the decision to read miranda and place abdulmutallab in the court system. there is ambiguity to show just how this decision came to be maismed were there any deliberations or meetings that occurred prior to this decision? was the president brought into this discussion? all of these ambiguities need to be cleared up so that we do not make the same mistakes again. as a member of one of the committees charged with oversight of homeland security, i will be asking for a written response from the administration on this

michael lighter, the head of the national counterterrorism center, trying to counter the terrorism that's affecting our country, i had the opportunity, mr. president, to question directodirector leiter, and alte was careful not to contradict the administration, it's clear to me that he would rather we treat these enemy combatants as what they are, not as common criminals. so who made this decision? was it the attorney general of the united states? was it the president? mr. president, whomever made this decision, we need to know that. that information needs to be before the united states senate because it is a questionable call at best. in fact, mr. president, i would submit it's the wrong call to treat these non-american citizens as if they had all the rights that we do. we are losing the war on terrorism if we do not gain the valuable information to stop terrorist attacks before they start. someone, mr. president, from this administration needs to come forward and own up to this decision. and i call upon the administration to do so. the american people deserve answers. our policymakers have to come clean. and we should be able to ask them questions and ask the right person's questi