WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has ordered an investigation into possible U.S. security gaps that enabled a Nigerian man of known extremist leanings to keep his U.S. visa, smuggle explosives aboard a Christmas Day passenger flight and ignite them, the White House said Sunday.
Since Friday, aviation authorities have introduced additional screenings for departing passengers, and many airlines have announced tighter restrictions on carry-on bags.
Members of Congress said the foiled attack exposed apparent security weaknesses.
Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, called it “a miracle on Christmas Day” that 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to blow up the plane before passengers subdued him and put out a fire that had reached the aircraft wall. Lieberman urged the government to expand the use of full-body scanning devices, now deployed in 19 cities, saying they could have detected the explosives.
He spoke on “Fox News Sunday.”
Fox News quoted a former senior Homeland Security official as saying that Abdulmutallab ignited the powder while sitting in seat 19A, next to the aircraft’s wall and over the fuel tanks and a wing, a location where an explosive blast would be more likely to bring a plane down.
Investigators said Sunday the suspect tucked a small bag holding his deadly concoction on his body, using an explosive that would have been easily detected with the right airport equipment.
Airport “puffer” machines that blow air on a passenger to collect and analyze residues would probably have detected the powder, as would bomb-sniffing dogs or a hands-on search using a swab, law enforcement officials said, but most passengers in airports only go through magnetometers, which detect metal rather than explosives. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that Obama had ordered inquiries to ensure that screening systems keep terrorists and plastic explosives off passenger jets.
Napolitano said her agency will do “a minute-by-minute, day-by-day scrub” of the handling of a warning to the U.S. embassy in Lagos last month from Abdulmutallab’s father, a prominent Nigerian banker, that his son had taken a turn toward Islamic radicalism.
Inquiries of suspect, security
Abdulmutallab’s name was placed on a watch list containing 550,000 names, but Napolitano said law enforcement agencies had no “specific information” warranting his inclusion on the much narrower “no-fly” list of 14,000 names or a “selectee list” of 4,000 names, each requiring secondary airport screening. She spoke on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”
Gibbs said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that there would be a separate inquiry into the adequacy of airport detection devices.
Abdulmutallab was released from a Michigan hospital in the custody of federal marshals Sunday after being treated for burns. He is charged with attempting to destroy an aircraft and placing a destructive device in a plane.
Abdulmutallab’s lawyer said Sunday that he is now in a federal prison in Milan, Mich.
Abdulmutallab told authorities after his arrest that his plan originated with al-Qaeda’s network inside Yemen, a link the U.S. government has avoided making so far. Napolitano said there was no indication yet that Abdulmutallab is part of a larger terrorist plot, although his possible ties to al-Qaeda are still under investigation.
Nigerian Information Minister Dora Akunyili said Abdulmutallab, who was living in London, sneaked back into Nigeria to catch the flight that would take him to Amsterdam and Detroit. She did not elaborate on how he entered the country.
Abdulmutallab had a U.S. visa issued in June 2008 and valid through June 2010.
Just as passenger shoe searches became the order of the day after Richard Reid tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in 2001 with PETN hidden in his shoes, the latest attempted assault could bring new layers of screening and delays. Among the possibilities: fuller and more frequent body pat-downs and scanning.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
