The Hill News

President Obama said it shouldn't "be any surprise" that al Qaeda is continuing efforts to attack the United States, but said of the recently foiled plot to deploy an underwear bomb on an American-bound airliner that he was "on top of this the entire time."

“I was briefed on this in April,” Obama told ABC News. “At no point were American lives in danger or American aircraft in danger.”

The president said that the American intelligence community is now "learning lessons" from the intercepted explosive device, now being studied at an FBI laboratory in Quanitco, Va. The device allegedly used nonmetallic explosive devices that were unlikely to have been caught during a routine screening before boarding an aircraft.

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