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From 60 Minutes last night: Susan Rice: Lesley, it’s been worth what we’ve done to protect the United States. And the fact that we have not had a successful attack on our homeland since 9/11 should not be diminished. But that does not mean that everything we’re doing as of the present ought to be done the same way in the future.

In congressional testimony on January 20, the nation’s top intelligence official, Dennis Blair, acknowledged that the U.S. government mishandled the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian terrorist who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day. Specifically, Blair was not happy that Abdulmutallab was charged as a common criminal and read his rights, rather than being questioned by the elite interrogation unit announced by President Obama as a replacement for the CIA teams used by the Bush administration. “I’d been a part of the deliberations which established this high-value interrogation unit [HIG],” Blair explained at a...

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to bring down Northwest flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 with an underwear bomb, said he was was "proud to kill in the name of God" before he was sentenced to multiple life sentences today in a Detroit courtroom. "Today is a day of victory and God is great," said Abdulmutallab, 25. He also said that al Qaeda would one day be victorious, and that acts like his will continue until "the righteous servants of Allah inherit the world." "The defendant has never expressed doubt or remorse about his mission," said Judge Nancy...

Two years ago as two-hundred eighty-nine people sat on a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit studying their watches, flipping through their Kindles and hoping they would make it home in time, among them sat a devout Muslim with a packet of Pentaerythritol tetranitrate sewn into his underwear. At his trial Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab said, “In late 2009, in fulfillment of a religious obligation, I decided to participate in jihad against the United States. The Koran obliges every able Muslim to participate in jihad and fight in the way of Allah, those who fight you, and kill them wherever...

Detroit (CNN) -- The judge in the federal trial of alleged "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab refused Tuesday to prevent the prosecution from calling the device he allegedly carried a "bomb." U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds also refused to exclude a photo of AbdulMutallab's burned genitals from the evidence. Before the prosecution began its opening statement, defense standby counsel Anthony Chambers asked that the prosecutors not be allowed to use the words "explosive device" or "bomb" during the trial. It's up to the jury to decide whether the device AbdulMutallab was carrying was a bomb, Chambers argued. "I'm going to...

According to a Federal Grand Jury, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called Christmas Day Underwear Bomber, was not alone in his attempt to blow up commercial Northwest Airline Flight 253 headed for Detroit. A new charge of Conspiracy to Commit an Act of Terrorism Transcending National Boundaries, for which the maximum sentence is life imprisonment. The new charge is spelled out in Count One of the court document released today by the United States District Court of Michigan Southern Division. It says "From in or about the year 2009, continuing up to and including December 25,2009, defendant Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and...

Obama says he has not made a final decision to move the 9/11 trial out of New York City but he indicates the trial and security costing a mere billion dollars from “his stash,” i.e. taxpayer dollars, will not be the deciding factor. Wherever it is held, Attorney General Eric Holder wants transparency. Apparently, Obama has finally found something he is willing to see C-SPAN conduct non-stop coverage of: the 9/11 trial. Do they still prefer a federal show trial? You betcha! Meanwhile, Obama’s “intelligence” choir is singing the praises about a Bush 43 intelligence failure: Richard Reid being allowed...

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday he made the decision to charge the Christmas Day terror suspect in the civilian system with no objection from all the other relevant departments of the government. In a letter to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, the attorney general wrote that the FBI told its partners in the intelligence community on Christmas Day and again the next day that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would be charged criminally.

Michael Hayden, the former CIA director, penned a superb op-ed in the Washington Post on Sunday. Succinctly, he tallies the wages of having Attorney General Eric Holder make national-security decisions. Unlike the attorney general, Hayden is a real general, and very much worth heeding. He shows that these decisions have been premised on left-wing political calculations that always shortchange intelligence collection and the pursuit of American interests. Holder’s judgments are not based on what America’s safety requires or on what the law maximally permits U.S. intelligence to do in wartime. As Hayden points out, the policy decisions that President Obama...

A bipartisan revolt is brewing in the Senate over the Obama administration's handling of accused Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. A small but growing number of lawmakers is asking the president to undo what many regard as the disastrously wrong-headed decision to grant Abdulmutallab full American constitutional rights. Once he was told he had the right to remain silent, the accused terrorist stopped talking to U.S. investigators, possibly denying them valuable intelligence about the threat from al Qaeda. The revolt started last week when top administration counterterrorism officials testified they had not been consulted about the decision to read Abdulmutallab...

WASHINGTON - For hours after allegedly trying to use a bomb hidden in his underwear to blow up a Christmas Day flight to Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab talked and talked — to U.S. Customs officers, medical personnel, and FBI agents. He spoke openly about what he'd done and why, and provided valuable intelligence, U.S. officials told The Associated Press in a series of interviews that spell out for the first time the details of Abdulmutallab's arrest and questioning on Dec. 25. Badly burned and bleeding, the suspect tried one last gambit as he was taken from the plane: He claimed...

Investigators Say They Gained Valuable Information From Suspected Bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Badly burned and bleeding, the suspect in the Christmas Day flight to Detroit tried one last gambit as he was led away: He claimed there was a second bomb hidden on the plane he'd just tried to destroy, officials said. There was no second bomb, federal agents learned after a intense search. But the Nigerian suspect's threat began hours of conversations that are now the subject of a fierce political debate over the right way to handle terrorism suspects.

All seven Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee have signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder seeking to learn who made the decision to treat Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the accused Christmas Day terrorist bomber, as a criminal suspect rather than an enemy combatant. On the same day he tried to detonate a bomb aboard a Northwest Airlines plane in Detroit, Abdulmutallab, who was trained by al Qaeda in Yemen, was informed of his Miranda right to remain silent and given a government-paid lawyer. He then refused to cooperate with U.S. authorities. The letter is signed by GOP Sens. Jeff...

WASHINGTON – The nation's intelligence chief said Wednesday that the Christmas Day airline bombing suspect should have been treated as a terror suspect when the plane landed. That would have meant questioning him initially by special interrogators rather than standard law enforcement officers. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was interviewed by federal law enforcement investigators when Northwest Flight 253 landed in Detroit after he allegedly tried to detonate a homemade bomb sneaked through airport security in Nigeria and Amsterdam. Abdulmutallab is being held in a prison about 50 miles outside of Detroit. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the Senate Homeland...

Buried three paragraphs from the end of the report in today's Washington Post comes what ought to be the lede: Abdulmutallab remains in a Detroit area prison and, after initial debriefings by the FBI, has restricted his cooperation since securing a defense attorney, according to federal officials. It sounds like he was singing when they first got him, and of course we now know that the government already had enough information on him to justify sending a Blackwater hit team after him, but now that the people with all that information are finally in a position to ask the questions...

War On Terror: Our top counterterrorism officials were "shocked" that an "individual" conducted an al-Qaida plot. They must have been asleep when the shoe bomber struck eight years ago. Are they still asleep? White House counterterrorism czar John O. Brennan and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, the two highest-ranking officials charged with protecting America from terrorist attacks, say they failed to see the tree because they were busy looking at the forest. The two held a joint White House briefing after the president's statement last Thursday. They were asked, "What was the most shocking, stunning thing that you believe came...

Rep. Michele Bachmann, a well-known critic of the Obama administration, took a fresh swipe at the president this afternoon for giving the failed Christmas Day bomber access to a lawyer. "We should be using all legal means necessary to push this terrorist to release all his information, not allow him to lawyer up," Bachmann said -- in a statement that appeared to channel former Vice President Dick Cheney. "He should not be afforded the rights of American citizens like you and me. He is a terrorist, and he should be treated like one. "Abdulmutallab’s actions were an act of war...

A federal grand jury in Detroit today indicted Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on six charges for allegedly attempting to destroy Northwest flight 253 on Christmas Day. The indictment mirrors a previous criminal complaint against the alleged al Qaeda operative but reveals that the 23-year-old Nigerian used both pentaerythritol (PETN) along with a triacetone triperoxide (TATP) concealed in his underwear. Watch More on the Christmas Day Attempted Bombing on 'World News with Diane Sawyer,' tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET Both PETN and TATP are high explosives. The original criminal complaint had only listed PETN as the explosive but the government says a...

The Northwest Flight 253 bombing attempt has once again reignited the debate over using profiling as a security technique. Many have pointed out over the years that ethnic profiling could have stopped the attacks of September 11. And it probably could have. But profiling alone is not the solution. First of all let's concede that America's intelligence capabilities are virtually useless. Shoe bomber Richard Reid was spotted by the Israelis. British intelligence knew about Umar. Nidal Malik Hasan did everything but walk around within the military establishment carrying a sign, "I Will Kill You All". And had he even actually...