john brennan

Brennan: Intel lapses about Flight 253 attack not the same as those before the 9/11

The intelligence failures surrounding the Flight 253 terror plot were nothing like those that preceded 9/11 attacks, the White House's top counterterrorism official said Sunday.

Many of those lapses were "human errors," Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan told Fox News. Others were the result of an intelligence system that cannot process "millions upon millions of bits of data" as effectively as it should, he said on ABC.

But none of those errors, Brennan cautioned throughout the morning, were the result of communication failures or turf wars -- the two biggest criticisms levied at the intelligence community prior to 9/11.

"Well, in fact, prior to 9/11, I think there was a reluctance on the part of a lot of agencies and departments of sharing information," Brennan told "This Week. "There's no evidence whatsoever that any agency or department was reluctant to share.."

Despite Brennan's assurances, it has been a tough week for the nation's intelligence community. The president himself described the Christmas Day attempt to bomb Flight 253 in Detroit as a "systemic failure" on the part of counterterrorism officials to stop threats before they materialize.

The White House is still probing why; its initial findings are not yet public. But that has not stopped lawmakers, national security experts and pundits from questioning whether the Flight 253 terror plot signals the intelligence community is just as ill-equipped in 2010 as it was in 2001.

The Obama administration has stressed the threats are real, but the country is still safer than it was after 9/11. When asked by host Terry Moran why Facebook, a network of millions of users, can parse billions of bits of data but the U.S. intelligence community could not, Brennan stressed the intelligence community has handled countless threats before with more success.

"Well, in fact, we do have the sophistication and power of Facebook, and well beyond that," he said. "That's why we were able to stop Mr. Najibullah Zazi, David Headley, other individuals from carrying out attacks, because we were able to do that on a regular basis."

"In this one instance, the system didn't work," he added. "There were some human errors; there were some lapses. We need to strengthen it."