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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...

President Barack Obama on Tuesday blamed "human and systemic failures" for allowing a botched Christmas Day attack aboard a Detroit-bound airliner and a U.S. official said the incident was linked to al Qaeda. Interrupting a vacation in Hawaii for the second straight day to address the U.S. public, Obama listed several mistakes that allowed a 23-year-old Islamic militant from Nigeria to smuggle explosives onto a plane to the United States. "What is apparent was that there was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security," Obama told reporters. "There were bits of...

Like a football coach trying to explain away the trouncing his team just took by building up the opponent, Janet Napolitano is seeking to diminish the Obama administration's NWA 253 failure by exaggerating the cunning of the Christmas Day plot. The hapless Homeland Security head has a 679-word piece in today's USA Today basically promising to do better. She begins with this line [emphasis added]: Friday's attempted terrorist attack against Northwest Flight 253 near Detroit is a powerful illustration that terrorists will go to great lengths to try to defeat the security measures that have been put in place since...

The failure to stop Nigerian Islamic terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, before he could attempt to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day, has caused a media uproar over the failure of the American counter-terrorism system. Various intel agencies have released, or leaked, details of who knew what and when about Abdulmutallab. He was turned in by his father, to the American embassy in Nigeria, a month before the attempted bombing. As a result, Abdulmutallab was placed on a "persons of interest" list, along with another half million people. Abdulmutallab was not placed on the "no-fly" list, nor did anyone check...

In the days after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed attempt to kill himself and bring down Northwest Flight 253, the story followed a familiar pattern. First, there were the daily revelations of what various intelligence and other government agencies didn't do with what they had already known about Abdulmutallab's behaviour and associations: from his father's effort to alert US officials about his son's radicalisation, to Abdulmutallab's cash purchase of a round trip ticket and his checking in for the flight without luggage - both "red flags" that should have warranted secondary airport screening. As the full picture emerged, it became clear...

Take President Obama’s poor timing in response to a failed terrorist attack on a U.S. jetliner, add the politicization of that event by his surrogates and a ridiculous message by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and what do you get? A complete failure when it comes to a commander-in-chief’s most important job: Protecting Americans from harm. “It was arrogant and stupid,” one Democrat strategist, who supported Obama the candidate, admits privately. “The president needed to set the initial tone on a matter of such importance,” said Mark Rozell, professor of public policy at George Mason University. “Press secretaries don't calm...

Security: Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the attempted destruction of Flight 253 were released from Guantanamo two years ago. The case for indefinite detention has been made once again, and not in Illinois. Sometimes America's chickens do come home to roost. In a statement released Monday, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which counts among its leadership two former Guantanamo detainees, claimed responsibility for the attempted destruction of Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the crotch bomber, told FBI agents he was trained for his Christmas Day mission in Yemen by top leaders of the group who provided...

U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a "smoking gun" that could have prevented an alleged attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday. White House aide John Brennan cited "lapses" and errors in the sharing of intelligence and clues about the Nigerian man accused in the foiled attempt. "There is no smoking gun," Brennan said. "There was no single piece of intelligence that said, 'this guy is going to get on a plane.'" Brennan is leading a White House review of the incident. Obama has said there was a systemic...

HONOLULU (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday it appeared the man suspected of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas was a member of al Qaeda and had been trained and equipped by the Islamic militant network. Defending his administration's counterterrorism efforts amid scathing Republican criticism, Obama said he received preliminary results of the reviews he ordered into air travel screening procedures and a "terrorist watchlist system" and expected final results in the days to come. Obama, who is on vacation in Hawaii, had called for an immediate study of what he termed "human and systemic...

President Barack Obama received a high-level briefing only three days before Christmas about possible holiday-period terrorist threats against the US, Newsweek has learned. The briefing was centered on a written report, produced by US intelligence agencies, entitled "Key Homeland Threats", a senior US official said. The senior Administration official, who asked for anonymity when discussing sensitive information, said that nowhere in this document was there any mention of Yemen, whose Al-Qaeda affiliate is now believed to have been behind the unsuccessful Christmas Day attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down a transatlantic airliner with a bomb hidden in his...

Sahara Reporters has obtained a copy of the international passport (#A-392-1640) of Farouk Umar AbdulMuttalab, the 23-year-old Nigerian who was arrested on Christmas day following a failed plot to bomb Northwest flight 253 as it was preparing to land in Detroit. The document was issued in Lagos on September 15 2005 and is set to expire on September 15, 2110. Kurt Haskell, a Michigan attorney who was on board the plane, has told various new outlets that he had seen a well-dressed man attempt to help Mr. Abdulmutallab board the flight in Amsterdam without a passport. But apparently, a passport...

"Big Sis" Janet Napolitano reassured nervous Americans not to worry -- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253 did not indicate a larger terrorist plot. In an effort to respectfully restrain from jumping to conclusions, the Homeland Security Secretary refused to confirm whether Abdulmutallab had a connection to al-Qaida. Less than twenty-four hours later, Napolitano reconsidered her statement, admitting that maybe Abdulmutallab "should not have been allowed on the airplane." Napolitano said, "What I would say is our system did not work in this instance [emphasis mine] -- no one is happy or satisfied with that."...

The security services knew three years ago that the Detroit bomber had “multiple communications” with Islamic extremists in Britain, it emerged this weekend. Counterterrorism officials said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was “reaching out” to extremists whom MI5 had under surveillance while he was studying at University College London. Officials said the 23-year-old Nigerian was “starting out on a journey” in Britain that culminated in his attempt to bring down flight 253 as it prepared to land in Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day. None of the information was passed to American officials, which will prompt questions about intelligence failures prior to the...

On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh? But the Pantybomber wasn't the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the TSA swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions. Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed a slew of constraints against you. At Heathrow last week, they...

The Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. We are. On Christmas Day, a gentleman from Nigeria succeeded (effortlessly) in boarding a flight to Detroit with a bomb in his underwear. Pretty funny, huh? But the Pantybomber wasn’t the big joke. The real laugh was the United States government. The global hyperpower spent the next week making itself a laughingstock to the entire planet. First, the bureaucrats at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) swung into action with a whole new range of restrictions. Against radical Yemen-trained Muslims wearing weaponized briefs? Of course not. That would be too obvious. So instead they imposed...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Last week's failed plot to bomb a U.S. passenger jet has exposed lingering fissures within the U.S. intelligence community, which had information from interviews and clandestine intercepts but did not put the pieces together, officials said.Turf wars between U.S. spy and law enforcement agencies are nothing new. But lapses that allowed a Nigerian suspect to board a Detroit-bound plane with a bomb on Christmas Day, and the finger-pointing that followed, have raised questions about sweeping changes made to improve security and intelligence- sharing after the September 11, 2001, attacks.President Barack Obama has ordered preliminary findings by Thursday...

... [M]eet Umar Abdulmutallab’s lawyer, Miriam Siefer, whose salary you are paying. [...] During the Detroit terror cell case, she represented Karim Koubriti, an Islamic terrorist in a cell, which plotted to blow up the U.S. Air Force Base in Turkey, where U.S. AWACS and Israeli F-16s are based and from where they took off. They also plotted to blow up hotels and casinos in Las Vegas and planned to detonate in Disneyland. During the course of her “representation” of terrorist Koubriti, Siefer and her fellow public defender, Richard Helfrick a/k/a Rick Helfrick (who will probably also assist her in...

The accused "underwear bomber" made a dramatic final call to his father that he found so alarming, the father approached Nigerian officials who took him directly to the CIA's station chief in the Nigerian capital, sources told ABC News.

In an incident eerily similar to the Christmas Day crotch- bomb plot, airport guards in Somalia nabbed a suspected terrorist last month trying to smuggle a syringe, acid and more than 2 pounds of explosive powder aboard a Dubai-bound flight, authorities revealed yesterday. The Somali terrorist was carrying more than 13 times the amount of explosives that al Qaeda-linked operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was packing in his undies in his failed attempt to blow up a jet over Detroit. "We don't know whether [the November suspect is] linked with al Qaeda or other foreign organizations, but his actions were the...

In hindsight, there were clues that alleged would-be "underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had become a dangerous person, and President Obama has said that it was "unacceptable" that those clues weren't spotted and acted upon. timeline During Abdulmutallab's transformation from the privileged son of a wealthy Nigerian banker to an al Qaeda trainee being taught to kill, he left a series of red flags. Now American and international law enforcement officials are trying to determine how Abdulmutallab was able to come so close to causing more terror in the skies. Here is a look at the trail of clues Abdulmutallab...