Jet suspect 'flagged' for screening
Source: Agencies |
January 8, 2010, Friday
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Print Edition
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SECURITY officials flagged the name of the Christmas Day airline bombing suspect for extra screening after he was already in the air, United States officials said yesterday as President Barack Obama planned to outline government missteps in the near-catastrophe and order fixes.
The White House was to make public a declassified report of how the suspected terrorist slipped through post-September 11 security to board the plane with an explosive. Obama was to address the nation about its findings later yesterday. A government official said the president will order US agencies to move faster and more accurately in adding suspects to a watch list designed to stop terrorists before they strike.
This would mean that individuals, like the Nigerian bombing suspect, with potential ties to terrorist organizations or violent extremists would be included in the watch list more rapidly.
Obama promised earlier in the week to disclose new steps to thwart future terror plots.
In an interview published yesterday by USA Today, national security adviser General James Jones said people who read the report will feel "a certain shock."
Jones said: "The man on the street will be surprised that these correlations weren't made" between clues pointing toward a threat from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Even though the 23-year-old Nigerian was in a database of possible terrorists, he allegedly managed to fly from Nigeria through Amsterdam to Detroit with an explosive concealed on his body.
Homeland Security officials say they had flagged Abdulmutallab as someone who should go through additional security screening on landing. The department said the alleged bomber's potential ties to extremists came up in a routine check of passengers en route to the US from overseas.
Customs and Border Protection officials screen passengers against terrorist watch lists before international flights leave for the US, then check names against a different database while the flight is in the air. It was during this second check that officials caught information Abdulmutallab's father had provided to the US embassy in Nigeria a month earlier, warning the US that his son had drifted into extremism in the al-Qaida hotbed of Yemen.
The White House was to make public a declassified report of how the suspected terrorist slipped through post-September 11 security to board the plane with an explosive. Obama was to address the nation about its findings later yesterday. A government official said the president will order US agencies to move faster and more accurately in adding suspects to a watch list designed to stop terrorists before they strike.
This would mean that individuals, like the Nigerian bombing suspect, with potential ties to terrorist organizations or violent extremists would be included in the watch list more rapidly.
Obama promised earlier in the week to disclose new steps to thwart future terror plots.
In an interview published yesterday by USA Today, national security adviser General James Jones said people who read the report will feel "a certain shock."
Jones said: "The man on the street will be surprised that these correlations weren't made" between clues pointing toward a threat from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Even though the 23-year-old Nigerian was in a database of possible terrorists, he allegedly managed to fly from Nigeria through Amsterdam to Detroit with an explosive concealed on his body.
Homeland Security officials say they had flagged Abdulmutallab as someone who should go through additional security screening on landing. The department said the alleged bomber's potential ties to extremists came up in a routine check of passengers en route to the US from overseas.
Customs and Border Protection officials screen passengers against terrorist watch lists before international flights leave for the US, then check names against a different database while the flight is in the air. It was during this second check that officials caught information Abdulmutallab's father had provided to the US embassy in Nigeria a month earlier, warning the US that his son had drifted into extremism in the al-Qaida hotbed of Yemen.
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