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The Obama administration’s handling of the Christmas Day terror plot has been “schizophrenic” says King. “It’s reflective of their handling of other incidents. They still haven’t given us any information on Fort Hood. Even with the gate crashers, they’ve refused to give us on information on communications between the White House social secretary and the Secret Service. They’re giving us nothing and Democrats in Congress are very reluctant to have any meaningful investigations.” Politics, not national security, is driving these decisions, says King. “They’re holding back because they don’t want to share embarrassing material.”

As I noted previously, Kurt Haskell - a passenger who was on board Northwest Airline flight 253 on Friday - claims that after the flight had landed, a bomb-sniffing dog was sent in to check the bags, and that something was detected in a passenger’s carry-on bag. Mr. Haskell retold the story to Fox News anchor, Gregg Jarret on Monday. The following is an excerpt from the interview: JARRETT: Fast forward... The plane lands safely, although, obviously, given the terror attack or the attempted terror attack, a great deal of commotion. And then you see someone else being arrested other...

Top administration officials are getting nervous that they may not be able to proceed with one of their most controversial national-security moves: trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other accused 9/11 conspirators in federal court in New York City. Last November Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. portrayed the trial as a way to showcase the American justice system to the world and to accelerate President Obama's stalled plans to shut down the U.S. prison at Guantánamo Bay. But because of shifting political winds in Congress, the trial is now "potentially in jeopardy," a senior official, who did not want to...

The lawyer appointed to represent the man accused of attempting to bomb Northwest Flight 253 had prior success helping to defend an alleged terrorist. Miriam Siefer, the chief public defender in Detroit, also has handled cases involving disturbances on other Northwest flights, including one in which a man pleaded guilty after illegally transporting ammunition and saying he was traveling overseas to kill Osama bin Laden. Defense lawyers with experience in terrorism-related cases say Ms. Siefer's latest job -- representing 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was charged with trying to blow up a Christmas Day flight to Detroit -- will be...

You may not have noticed, because most of the plots were foiled, but 2009 saw an unprecedented surge in terrorism events on U.S. soil. When analysts tally these events, they refer to anything from a disrupted plot to U.S. citizens traveling abroad to seek terrorism training or a lone gunman running amok in the U.S. And by the calculations of Rand Corp. expert Brian Jenkins, more terrorist threats were uncovered in the U.S. in 2009 than in any year since 2001. "There appears to be an increase in [terrorist] activity in the U.S.," warns Jenkins, who calculates that there have...

Most Americans have never heard of Anwar al Awlaki, but the radical Muslim cleric who may have inspired a young Nigerian man to try to blow up a plane on Christmas Day has been linked to the alleged perpetrators of the deadliest terror attacks on U.S. soil this decade, from 9/11 to the massacre at Fort Hood....

Keying off an article in the UK Times Online about Northwest Airlines flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab organizing an antiwar seminar called "War on Terror Week", I did some quick research before the links get scrubbed.From the Times:According to isocnews.com, an online magazine for Muslim students, War on Terror Week at University College London was one of the events of the year in 2007. There was a slick video advertisement for the event, an eye-catching poster and packed lecture theatres for five days of discussions about Guantánamo Bay, allegations of torture and the subject of “Jihad v Terrorism”. The...

A Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a US jetliner on Christmas Day was a student at the satellite campus of an Australian university just months ago before disappearing. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was studying for a master's degree in international business at the University of Wollongong's campus in Dubai, vice-chancellor Gerard Sutton said on Tuesday. Abdulmutallab took classes for about seven months, from January to the middle of 2009. He defied his family's pleas to remain at the university and graduate by travelling to the terrorism hotbed of Yemen to study Arabic and Sharia law, the Wall Street...

Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, tells National Review Online that he’s “disappointed” with President Obama following the president’s remarks this afternoon on the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253. “We almost lost 270 American lives on Christmas Day and the president has decided to review a watch list. This is about more than a watch list,” says Hoekstra. “It’s about leadership.” Criticism of Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary, for her handling of the incident, “should be directed to President Obama, since she’s taking her lead from him on this,” says...

In Online Posts Apparently by Detroit Suspect, Religious Ideals Collide By Philip Rucker and Julie Tate December 29, 2009 The 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American airliner apparently turned to the Internet for counseling and companionship, writing in an online forum that he was "lonely" and had "never found a true Muslim friend." "I have no one to speak too [sic]," read a posting from January 2005, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was attending boarding school. "No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not...

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents. American officials agreed to send the two terrorists to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an "art therapy rehabilitation program" and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.