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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House was poised to release a report on Thursday that top aides said will shock Americans about security lapses that allowed a Nigerian man to come close to blowing up a Detroit-bound airliner on December 25.

President Barack Obama was to outline steps the U.S. government is taking to try to shore up airline security, mindful of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States involving hijacked airliners.

The White House was due to release a declassified review of what went wrong to allow the Christmas Day bombing attempt in which Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, is accused of trying to detonate explosives sewn into his underwear.

By releasing the review, Obama may be seeking to limit the political damage to his administration ahead of expected congressional committee reviews of the attempted attack. Obama already has acknowledged a security "screw-up."

White House national security adviser James Jones told USA Today of the report: "Once people read it, I think, there's a certain shock to it. ... The man in the street will be surprised that, you know, these correlations weren't made."

What was shocking, said another official, was the fact that various strands of intelligence were available that, if put together properly, would have made clear that the bombing suspect should have been put on a "no-fly" list preventing him from boarding.

Among the lapses was the fact that Abdulmutallab's father had gone to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria and told officials that his son had taken up radical views. This information was never properly acted upon.