Will you be putting your children on a plane soon? How does this make you feel?

Intel Chief Admits Dropping Ball on Christmas Plot, 'New Mistake' Inevitable. Blames Bush Administration.

FOXNews

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, in a candid assessment of what went wrong before and after the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight, said he had wrongly caved to external "pressure" to trim the no-fly list and even admitted the intelligence community would probably drop the ball in the future.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, in a candid assessment of what went wrong before and after the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas, said he had wrongly caved to external "pressure" to trim the no-fly list and even admitted the intelligence community would probably drop the ball in the future.

The visibly frustrated director spoke Wednesday alongside other top officials in a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security Committee. The intelligence director as well as Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, both said at the outset that the system failed and they are making changes to correct it.

In one specific criticism, Blair said suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should have been questioned by the recently created High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG. As he explained the need to use the interrogation unit for such cases in the future, he made an offhand remark that carried a touch of defeatism.

"We'll make a new mistake. We won't make that one," he said.

It was one of several startlingly blunt remarks from the intelligence chief.

In another exchange, Blair expressed disappointment that so many leaks about who knew what when have emerged in the course of the internal review.

"I wish people would just shut the hell up," he said.

Blair also said criteria for adding people to the government's "no fly" list was too legalistic. He said that in recent years there has been pressure to shrink rather than expand the list because of a cascade of complaints from people getting "hassled" by authorities.

"Why are you searching grandmothers?" was a too-common refrain, he said.

Though the Obama administration has since moved to expand the list in the wake of the terror attempt, Blair said analysts were being told to cast a "very fishy eye" on including more names for "several years before 2008."

His assessment was essentially a repudiation of the way the United States has been processing this information for years. Since the Christmas episode, the list has been expanded, he said.

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