White House: No Xmas Day In-Flight Warning
The White House strongly refuted Thursday a report in the Los Angeles Times suggesting that significant new intelligence on a Nigerian man charged with trying to blow up a flight to Detroit led Border officials to plan interrogation of him upon landing.
According to the LA Times report, border enforcement officials found information in a database suggesting the alleged terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had extremist ties.
"The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection," a senior law enforcement official told the Times. "The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy - that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen."
Special Report: The Christmas Day Terror Attack
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior White House official told CBS News Thursday "there was no new information that emerged when the plane was in the air."
"Customs and Border Protection followed its normal procedures and checks as it prepared for arriving passengers and by doing so they accessed the suspect's TIDE-based record which is why they were going to ask him a few additional questions after he landed before allowing him admission into the country and why they didn't stop him in Amsterdam first," the official told CBS.
The White House said airport security officials "wouldn't have pulled him out for secondary screening or prevented him from flying in Amsterdam because, as has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab was not on the selectee, no-fly or even the terror watch list, and that is, of course, one of the failures the President has so strongly criticized."
The Times report claims that the intelligence was sufficient to have prompted additional questioning, and a possible body search, of Abdulmutallab before he boarded the plane.
"They could have made the decision on whether to stop him from getting on the plane," the official reportedly told the paper.
"The information was there," CBS News security analyst Juan Zarate tells "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith. "The agencies can't simply dump the information into databases and expect someone to magically find it. They've got evaluate it, flag it. That goes for the State Department, the CIA, that's part of the problem here; This information wasn't flagged and then put together in a way that alerted officials in time to stop him from getting on the flight."
Also Thursday, Yemen's deputy prime minister said Abdulmutallab met in Yemen with a radical American-Yemeni cleric linked to al Qaeda.
Rashad al-Alimi said Abdulmutallab met with cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and other al Qaeda leaders in Yemen.
Al-Awlaki, a cleric popular among al Qaeda sympathizers for his calls for jihad, or holy war, became notorious in the U.S. after he exchanged dozens of e-mails with U.S. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who allegedly killed 13 people in a mass shooting at the Fort Hood, Texas Army post on Nov. 5.
Special Section: Tragedy at Fort Hood
Al-Alimi said Yemen has arrested a number of al Qaeda elements who had contacts with the Abdulmutallab and is interrogating them.
Meanwhile, The public is getting its clearest look at the government missteps that allowed a suspected terrorist to slip through post-Sept. 11 security and threaten lives on American soil.
The White House on Thursday planned to make public a declassified account of the near-catastrophe on a Christmas Day, and President Barack Obama was to address the nation about its findings and recommendations. Mr. Obama was also to reveal new steps intended to thwart terrorist attacks, as he promised earlier in the week.
The president - facing charges that he's been weak on security - will demand changes when he speaks Thursday - and is expected to set deadlines for these changes including more air marshalls, more analysts and better communication, reports CBS News senior White House correspondent Bill Plante.
No firings over the December security debacle are expected - for now, at least.
For an administration rocked by the breach of security, the day was meant to be a pivot point from an incident that has dominated attention.
In an interview published Thursday by USA Today, national security adviser Gen. James Jones said people who read the report will feel "a certain shock."
Abdulmutallab, 23, was indicted Wednesday on charges including attempted murder and trying to use a weapon of mass destruction to kill nearly 300 people.
Abdulmutallab was traveling from Amsterdam when he tried to destroy the plane carrying by injecting chemicals into a package of pentrite explosive concealed in his underwear, authorities say. The failed attack caused popping sounds and flames that passengers and crew rushed to extinguish.
Court papers also reveal the device hidden by Abdulmutallab in his underwear was strikingly similar to the shoe bomb worn by Richard Reid in 2001, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr. Both were made of two "high explosives" - PETN and TATP - a deadly and popular combination favored by al Qaeda bomb-makers.
Read the indictment against Abdulmutallab
The grand jury's indictment said the bomb was designed to detonate "at a time of his choosing."