BBC NEWS | Americas | US terror plot intelligence 'old'

Mr. President - quit playing politics with everyone's day-to-day lives. How about the 9/11 family members who work in downtown New York? How are you making them feel when an alert goes out for the very area they're supposed to be working in? The very area that they lost loved ones. How do you answer when it's brought up that some of the data you've based this decision on was collected before you were even President? What's taken so long?

Homeland security adviser Frances Townsend said some of the information recovered was collected in 2000/2001.

But she added: "It appears that some of it may have been updated as recently as January of this year."