Want to go deep into the bureaucratic chokepoints that failed to stop — for seemingly good reason, maddeningly enough — Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding Northwest Airlines flight 253? Beware, because this is going to get very bureaucratic.

Here’s a post about the actual procedures State has to go through to unilaterally revoke a visa. The bottom line: they simply don’t realistically allow consular officers to do that. What’s supposed to happen — and did happen, in Abdulmutallab’s case — is that State reports concerns like the one provided by Abdulmutallab’s father to a database run by TIDE out of the National Counterterrorism Center. But!

Daddy Mutallab’s information just wasn’t specific enough to do anything with, according to a U.S. intelligence official. The standard for passing such information along to a more-punitive database — one that would have compelled State to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa and land him on the no-fly list — is “specific derogatory information leading to reasonable suspicion” of involvement in terrorism. Dad’s information doesn’t make the grade. If the standard sinks to that level, the official told me, “We’d probably shut down air traffic.”

These are going to be some fun congressional hearings.