HONOLULU — Talking publicly for the first time since a failed Christmas Day plot to blow up a Detroitbound airliner, President Barack Obama on Monday called it “a serious reminder” of the need to continually adapt to the terrorist threat.
But even as Obama vowed to use “every element of our national power” to keepAmericans safe, news arrived that a State Department warning had failed to trigger an effort to revoke the attacker’s visa. And officials in Yemen confirmed that the would-be bomber had been living in that country, where terrorist elements quickly sought to take credit for his actions.
The explosive purportedly concealed by Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his underwear could have blown a hole in the side of his Detroit-bound aircraft if it had been detonated, according to two federal sources briefed on the investigation.
Authorities said they are still analyzing a badly damaged syringe purportedly employed as a detonating device. But preliminary conclusions indicate the use of 80 grams of PETN - almost twice as much of the highly explosive material used by convicted shoe bomber Richard C. Reid.
Abdulmutallab is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Mich. A court hearing that had been scheduled for Monday to determine whether the government can get DNA from him was postponed until Jan. 8. No reason was given.
Members of Congress, meanwhile, questioned how a man flagged as a possible terrorist managed to board a commercial flight into the United States carrying powerful explosives and nearly bring down the jetliner. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Monday that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he chairs would hold hearings in January.
Meanwhile, al-Qaida-inthe-Arabian-Peninsula claimed responsibility for the thwarted attack as retaliation for a U.S. operation against the group in Yemen. Yemeni forces, helped by U.S. intelligence, carried out two airstrikes against al-Qaida operatives this month in the lawless country that is fast becoming a key front in the war on terror. The second was a day before Abdulmutallab, 23, allegedly attempted to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight as it prepared to land in Detroit.
Resolving one mystery of Abdulmutallab’s pre-Detroit path, the Yemeni Foreign Ministry said Monday that he was in Yemen from August until early December. He had received a visa to study Arabic in a school in Sana. Citing immigration authorities, the statement said Abdulmutallab had previously studied at the school, indicating it was not his first trip to Yemen.
Obama, on vacation in his birthplace of Hawaii, acknowledged the attack showed the need to increase the United States’ defenses. He detailed the pair of reviews that he has ordered to determine whether changes are needed in either the watch-list system or airport-screening procedures.
“This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face,” he said. “It’s absolutely critical that we learn from this incident.”
Obama’s remarks Monday were the first heard from him on the Christmas Day scare three days earlier.
Officials said that was deliberate - an effort by the White House to balance the need for the president to show concern but also to not unduly elevatea botched incident and thereby encourage other would-be attackers.
“The United States will more than simply strengthen our defenses,” the president said. “We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us.”
U.S. officials say Abdulmutallab came to the attention of American intelligence over the past month when the father, prominent Nigerian banker Alhaji Umar Mutallab, reported his concerns to the American Embassy in Abuja.
These concerns landed him among the about 550,000 names in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, which is maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. Other, smaller lists trigger additional airport screening or other restrictions,but intelligence officials said there wasn’t enough information to move him into those categories.
Britain had refused to grant him a student visa in May, but there was no apparent effort to revoke his U.S. tourist visa, issued in June 2008 and good for multiple entries over two years.
People who have visa applications refused in Britain are placed on a watch list, which is then divided into different categories depending on the risk they pose. Abdulmutallab’s name was placed on the list as a matter of routine, not because he was thought to pose a threat, according to a spokesman for the Home Office who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson said U.S. authorities should have been informed that Abdulmutallab had been placed on Britain’s list.
The embassy visit by Abdulmutallab’s father triggered a Nov. 20 State Department cable from Lagos to all U.S. diplomatic missions and department headquarters in Washington. It was also shared with the interagency National Counter Terrorism Center, said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly.
The center then reviewed the information and found it was “insufficient to determine whether his visa should be revoked,” Kelly said.
The Obama administration suffered blistering criticism for another day from national security experts and Republican lawmakers who demanded changes to the airline-screening system and the use of more intrusive technology to detect explosives. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledged on NBC’s Today show Monday that “our system did not work in this instance. No one is happy or satisfied with that.”
Standard magnetometers can’t detect explosives such as the kind that Abdulmutallab purportedly carried onto Flight 253.
The Transportation Security Administration has been adding other machines, which use millimeter waves or lowlevel X-rays, to find explosives. There are 40 millimeter-wave machines at 19 airports, and the agency is buying 150 new X-ray units, it said on its Web site.
Lieberman said the machines should be used more widely.
“There have been privacy concerns expressed about the use of these whole body-imaging devices, but I think those privacy concerns, which are, frankly, mild, have to fall in the face of the ability of these machines to detect material like this,” Lieberman said on Fox News Sunday.
The terror attempt prompted stiffer airport boarding measures, and authorities warned Christmas travelers to expect extra delays as they returnhome this week and later.
Airline officials familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because the changes had not publicly been announced, said the in-flight rules had been eased. At the captain’s discretion, passengers can once again have blankets and other items on their laps or move about the cabin during the tail end of flight.
In Canada, however, officials have banned most carry-on luggage for U.S.-bound passengers. To alleviate backlogs at security checkpoints, Transport Canada said Monday that passengers may only carry medical devices, small purses, cameras, laptop computers, canes, walkers, diaperbags, musical instruments and “life-sustaining items.” Information for this article was contributed by Philip Elliott, David Koenig, Dan Strumpf, Kathy Matheson, Karen Hawkins, Shannon McCaffrey, John Heilprin, Jennifer Loven, Matt Lee, Eileen Sullivan, Lolita Baldor, Pamela Hess, Ed White, Sheila Norman-Culp, Jon Gambrell, Donna Abu-Nasr, Meera Selva, Mark Niesse and Rob Gillies of The Associated Press, and by Jonathan D. Salant, Roger Runningen, Jeff Bliss, Nicholas Johnston and Linda Sandler of Bloomberg News, and by Carrie Johnson, Sudarsan Raghavan, Karla Adam, Aminu Abubakr, Anne E. Kornbllut, Carol D. Leonnig and Julie Tate of The Washington Post.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/29/2009