The nation's intelligence community has sound policies to address potential terrorist threats from abroad but engaged in a series of missteps that culminated in the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt, according to a federal audit agency.

The federal Government Accountability Office issued a 27-page report that is particularly damning to several US intelligence agencies, saying they failed to fully implement policies recommended in earlier GAO reports following 9/11.

The focus on the Christmas Day incident resumes this week with more congressional hearings, and the Obama administration is scheduled to release a federal budget that will include a spending plan for the Transportation Security Administration, the agency in charge of airport security issues.

The report was particularly critical of the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the TSA and the White House Homeland Security Council, which it said failed to "increase cooperation between agencies and install more advance screening technologies" in airports.

The federal-level audit came in response to congressional inquiries into the events surrounding at attempted bombing of Flight 253 on Christmas Day. That's the flight from Amsterdam on which federal officials say 23-year-old Nigeria native Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate an explosive strapped in his underwear shortly before landing in Detroit.

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