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WASHINGTON — NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said Tuesday that President Barack Obama has asked him to “find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries” as the White House pushes the space agency to become a tool of international diplomacy. NASA chief Charlie Bolden

President Obama and senior advisers last month considered—and rejected—the notion that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused Christmas Day underpants bomber, should be handed over to the U.S. military for interrogation and detention, NEWSWEEK has learned. The subject of whether Abdulmutallab should be transferred to military custody came up at a meeting the president held in the White House Situation Room in early January, shortly before the Justice Department announced it would proceed against him in the civilian court system, according to little-noticed statements made by one or more "senior administration officials" who gave a background briefing to White House reporters...

Andrew C. McCarthy February 5, 2010 Holder on Holder AG is unconvincing about ‘his’ decisions on Christmas bomber.  Attorney General Eric Holder has responded to criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, with an “all’s well that ends well” letter to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. Holder’s missive vigorously defends what he says was his decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant, to impose peacetime law-enforcement protocols on his interrogation, and to charge him in civilian court. He argues that the use of the criminal-justice system has been vindicated because the terrorist is...

THERE IS, it seems evident, more than enough blame to go around in the botched handling of the botched Christmas bombing. Not for some Republicans. With former vice president Richard B. Cheney in the lead, they have embarked on an ugly course to use the incident to inflict maximum political damage on President Obama. That's bad enough, but their scurrilous line of attack is even worse. The claim that the incident shows the president's fecklessness in the war on terror is unfounded -- no matter how often it is repeated. These critics have set up a straw Obama, a weak...

Today, after a vacationing President Barack Obama conceded that both human and systemic failures of U.S. Intelligence had failed to bar a Nigerian man posing a reported security risk from boarding that Detroit-bound jetliner - a near-''catastrophic" breakdown in security - Obama left the reporters taking his words in Hawaii and went snorkeling. The president was wearing a navy blue suit and white striped shirt with no tie, and spoke only to reporters - unlike a televised appearance sans-tie that he had made the day before. Today, his words seemed sterner. Today, he was acknowledging a troubling breakdown in Intelligence...

HONOLULU — President Obama declared Tuesday that there had been a “systemic failure” of the nation’s security apparatus after being told about more missed signals and uncorrelated intelligence that should have prevented a would-be bomber from boarding a flight for the United States. The president was told during a private briefing on Tuesday morning while vacationing here in Hawaii that the government had a variety of information in its possession before the thwarted bombing that would have been a clear warning sign had it been shared among agencies, a senior official said. Two officials said the government had intelligence from...

(CBS) CBS News has learned that as early as August of 2009 the Central Intelligence Agency was picking up information on a person of interest dubbed "The Nigerian," suspected of meeting with "terrorist elements" in Yemen. Sources tell CBS News "The Nigerian" has now turned out to be Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. But that connection was not made when Abudulmutallab's father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria three months later, on November 19, 2009. It was then he expressed deep concerns to a CIA officer about his son's ties to extremists in Yemen, a hotbed of al Qaeda activity. In...