Friend Says Abdulmutallab Was Not Extremist In London

CBS News' Sheila MacVicar spoke with a former friend and classmate of Christmas Day would-be bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab early Wednesday. MacVicar was told Abdulmutallab showed no signs of extremism during his schooling in London.

The friend "says there was nothing that he saw here," MacVicar, appearing on "Washington Unplugged," told host Kimberly Dozier. "That his positions were not extreme. That he did not in any way raise eyebrows."

"In the view of this young man," MacVicar added, "Whatever happened to Abdulmutallab happened to him in an intellectual, psychological sense after he left London" in June of 2008.

Marisa Porges, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that the connections made between the young Nigerian and al Qaeda in Yemen were "legitimate." She said the social and religious atmosphere in Yemen fosters radicalization in the country.

"Hopefully we will begin to understand just how the process of radicalization took place for him because it will confirm how that may happen again in the future on a wider basis," Porges said.

Watch the full roundtable above.