Why Did the "Hot Pants" Jihadi Slip Through Security?

Turns out the pants-bomber was on a "watch list" but not on a "no-fly" list because, as the Guardian reports,

The US government created a record of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab last month in the intelligence community's central repository of information for known and suspected international terrorists, but there was not enough negative data to place him on a "no-fly" list, a US official said.

However, "Officials acknowledged it was possible Abdulmutallab may have cropped up on the peripheries of other counterterrorism investigations."

Oh, you mean he was on the fringe of the fringe? Wow, that sounds really remote. No wonder they failed to snag him before his pants escapade.