The administration announced two sweeping formal
reviews into the incident, and Republicans accused the government of
not taking al-Qaida or the safety of air travelers seriously enough.
The incident, in which a 23-year-old Nigerian allegedly tried to set off an incendiary device as Flight 253 from
On Sunday, another Nigerian man aboard the same
flight triggered alarm when he spent about an hour in the bathroom.
Fearing another suicide bomber, the pilot asked authorities to meet the
plane.
Law enforcement rushed to the scene, sirens blaring.
The FBI determined that the young man was sick, not plotting to blow up
the plane, one FBI official said in
President
On Sunday morning talk shows, Napolitano sought to
reassure a jittery public, saying that commercial flying had been safe
before the incident on Christmas and was even safer now because of
intensified security measures that U.S. authorities and their allies
have put in place.
She said the accused suicide bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, appeared to be acting alone.
After his arrest, Abdulmutallab said he had obtained
a specialized explosive chemical compound and a syringe from a bomb
expert in
But Napolitano said, “Right now we have no indication that it is part of anything larger.”
She acknowledged that U.S. authorities had placed
Abdulmutallab on a general counter-terrorism watch list that contains
about 550,000 names, which is shared with airlines and foreign security
agencies. Administration officials acknowledged Abdulmutallab was
placed on that list about a month ago after his father, a respected
Nigerian banker, went to U.S. authorities in
Napolitano said without specific and “credible”
evidence of suspicious activity, Abdulmutallab could not be formally
classified as the kind of greater security risk that would bar him from
traveling to the U.S.
Republicans sharply criticized the administration.
Some said that U.S. officials had failed to follow up appropriately on
the father’s concerns, an action that likely would have placed him on a
heightened watch list that would have either barred him from flying or
subjected him to a thorough search that might have found the explosives.
“It only makes common sense,” Senate Minority Leader
“There is much to investigate here,” McConnell said.
“It’s amazing to me that an individual like this, who was sending out
so many signals, could end up getting on a plane going to the U.S.”
Meanwhile,
Abdulmutallab, who had studied engineering at
University College London, apparently did not raise any red flags on
the first leg of his flight from
Other Republicans, and independent Sen.
should have done more to screen Abdulmutallab and to prevent him from
getting on the plane with a package containing an easily detectable
military grade explosive known as PETN.
“We ought to, in our age, be able to put 500,000
names on a computer and have everybody who’s trying to come to the U.S.
go through that list,” Lieberman, chairman of the
said on Fox. “That doesn’t mean they’re convicted of any wrongdoing.
But it would be basis enough to take this guy out of the line in
“When you have a very credible source, the father of
this alleged terrorist, a highly respected banker, we needed to act
quickly and responsively to what he alerted our embassy about,” Cutler
said.
“If you want to profile a terrorist, this kid lands
squarely in the middle box,” Cutler said. “There were measures that
could have been taken to verify the father’s information but we’re not
hearing that any of them were taken. If they were, we should be hearing
about them.”
The reviews ordered by Obama,
that explosive could get on a plane, and on decisions related to the
name databases.
{::PAGEBREAK::}
On
that one review focus on whether “why an individual with the chemical
explosive he had on him could get on a plane in
In addition, Gibbs said, authorities will review all
decisions about including — or omitting — Abdulmutallab’s name in
various government databases related to known or suspected terrorists.
That review also will focus on the broader issue of
whether appropriate policies and procedures are in place related to
watch-listing, a complicated and often controversial process that
involves the FBI-administered Terrorist Screening Center, the National
Counterterrorism Center, the CIA and other intelligence agencies and
the Departments of Homeland Security and State, an administration
official said.
The official also said that after Abdulmutallab’s father brought his concerns to the
that “the U.S. government took action and shared the information with
relevant agencies across the government,” resulting in his name being
added to a database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart
Environment, which contains 550,000 names. He said officials will try
to determine why Abdulmutallab was not included in a more refined
no-fly list of 4,000 people who are barred from flights to
The second review will focus on whether adequate detection capabilities are in place, in
Authorities also continued their intensive investigation into Abdulmutallab, who was released from a
One
“This guy was all over the map, not just in
One U.S. intelligence official said authorities are on the ground in
and other locations, looking for clues as to how he became radicalized
and what ties he might have to militants and al-Qaida operatives there.
The focus, he said, continues to be
which U.S. officials consider to be a growing safe haven for al-Qaida
members not only from that impoverished country, but from neighboring
One
government official conceded that militants in his country are a
growing and serious threat. Meanwhile, some terrorism experts,
including RAND’s
failed ignition of the explosive mixture may suggest that Abdulmutallab
and any co-conspirators may have been operating independently of
al-Qaida’s experienced bomb makers.
PETN was also used by
But law enforcement sources said that in the latest
case, the PETN, short for pentaerythritol tetranitrate, was probably
not compacted correctly because it flamed instead of exploding.
According to witnesses, Abdulmutallab also may not have had the right
detonator to set it off.
“I’m suspicious of his claimed al-Qaida connections because al-Qaida’s people know how to make a bomb,” Jenkins said.
