There’s substantial push-back to that New York Daily News story I linked to earlier on NCTC director Michael Leiter’s vacation in the wake of the 12/25 attack. Jake Tapper reports:

The White House and allies of Michael Leiter, the director of the National Counter Terrorism Center, disputed a New York Daily News report Thursday claiming Leiter “decided not to return to his agency’s ‘bat cave’ nerve center in McLean, Va., until several days after” the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253. The story says that Leiter “remained on ski slopes” after Christmas, but Denis McDonough, National Security Staff Chief of Staff, refutes that, saying that “Leiter was — throughout the events of December 25, 2009 — indeed at the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, Virginia, and intimately involved in all aspects of the nation’s response to the attempted terrorist attack — to include coordinating intelligence, examining terrorist watch-listing, and briefing Members of Congress.” Leiter stayed late at the NCTC on December 25, an intelligence official tells ABC News, and the next morning he held secure communications working the issue with many in the U.S. government. He did go on vacation the day after the attempted attack, but a close associate of Leiter says that the leave was quite different than the carefree “ski trip” being depicted. Leiter is divorced, and the purpose of the ski trip was to take “his seven-year-old son for his birthday to meet his grandparents,” both of whom are in their late 70s, the close associate tells ABC News. He did so only “after explicit consultations with both the White House and the Director of National Intelligence,” McDonough said, adding it “did not affect in any way his ability to remain engaged with all elements of the United States Government.”

This little bit at the end is interesting: “after explicit consultations with both the White House and the Director of National Intelligence.” In other words, this was an excused absence. And why wouldn’t it be? On December 26, the “system had worked.”

Family life is important, and divorces do create restrictions with vacation schedules, but this seems to me to be more evidence that the administration did not immediately understand the significance of what had happened on Christmas Day.