IMMIGRATION & EDUCATION - LET IN MORE AFRICAN IMMIGRANTS (BLOOMBERG OPINION COMMENTARY)

EDUCATION & IMMIGRATION - LET IN MORE AFRICAN IMMIGRANTS (OPINION COMMENTARY):

CURRENT RESEARCH SHOWS IMMIGRANTS FROM KENYA, NIGERIA, NEPAL, GHANA AND SAUDI ARABIA ARE OFTEN WELL-EDUCATED & HIGHLY SKILLED.

WHILE IMMIGRANTS FROM MEXICO, HONDURAS, GUATEMALA, CENTRAL AMERICA AND EL SALVADOR ARE OFTEN THE LEAST EDUCATED & LOW SKILLED.


Post Sources: Bloomberg, Youtube


******* Want Educated Immigrants? Let In More Africans


~ Highly skilled? Check. Hardworking? Check. English-speaking? Check. Ready to integrate? Check.

The uproar over White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s comments about illegal immigration in an interview with National Public Radio last week still hasn’t entirely died down. I haven’t found the resulting discussion to be super-enlightening, so, as I did with an earlier Kelly comment about how nobody knows anybody in the military anymore, I decided to see if a few charts might clear things up.

To review, Kelly argued that most undocumented immigrants are “not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society.” He went on:

They're overwhelmingly rural people in the countries they come from — fourth, fifth, sixth grade educations are kind of the norm. They don't speak English, obviously that's a big thing. They don't speak English. They don't integrate well, they don't have skills. They're not bad people. They're coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws.

So … let’s dig into the data. More than 70 percent of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. are from Mexico and Central America, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Mexico is by far the most common country of origin, but the population of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. (both documented and undocumented) actually fell 6 percent from 2007 to 2015, according to the Pew Research Center, while the numbers of Salvadorans, Hondurans and Guatemalans in the U.S. continued to grow.

So when we talk about illegal immigration into the U.S., we’re mainly talking about immigration from those four countries, with El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala playing a growing role and Mexico a huge but shrinking one.

And yes, most of those who have come to the U.S. from these countries are probably of rural origin, although (1) there’s not much good data on that and (2) there are indications that the rural share has been getting less “overwhelming” in recent years as Mexico and El Salvador, the two biggest sources of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S., have urbanized.

Much better data is available on the characteristics of foreign-born people here in the U.S., most of it from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, an annual survey of about 2 million households first conducted in 2005.

The ACS does not sort immigrants by whether they have permission to be in the U.S. or not. 1 (Estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S., in fact, are arrived at by taking the totals from the ACS and subtracting out the numbers of temporary and permanent lawful residents provided by the Department of Homeland Security.)

Still, it offers much insight into the characteristics of different immigrant groups. To get back to Kelly’s comment, here are the countries from which immigrants in the U.S. have the least formal education, according to the 2016 ACS:

So yes, the people who have come to the U.S. from Mexico and Central America tend not to have a lot of schooling.

The European nations of Portugal, Italy and Greece are also on this list, although most immigrants from those countries arrived in the U.S. a long time ago so there’s understandably not much grumbling about them.

Meanwhile, the countries from which the most-educated foreign-born U.S. residents hail make for quite a diverse bunch.

Next, let’s examine Kelly’s comments about non-English-speakers. He’s right that immigrants from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras struggle with the language, although this time around, they cede first place to Myanmar:

The list of countries from which immigrants in the U.S. are least likely to struggle with English are, unsurprisingly, all English-speaking countries, so I’m not going to bother with a chart. Extra credit, though, to the Netherlands and Germany for making the top 10 despite having their own languages, and to Trinidad & Tobago for beating out the U.K. for first place.

It’s important to remember, though, that immigrants from non-English-speaking countries have always struggled with the language. Many millions of immigrants from Germany, Italy and other European countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries never did become fluent in English. But their children did!

The kids of today’s immigrants are learning English, too: Of people born in the U.S. who speak Spanish at home, reports the Census Bureau, 83 percent also speak English very well. The percentage is slightly higher — 87 percent — among those who speak other Indo-European languages at home, and is again 83 percent for those who speak Asian and Pacific languages at home.

Finally, there’s Kelly’s assertion that undocumented immigrants don’t integrate well. Language ability is one measure of integration. Employment is surely another one. When I ran a list of the countries from which immigrants in the U.S. have the highest employment-to-population ratio, some familiar names popped up:

The employment-population ratio for Mexican-born U.S. residents, by the way, is 65.5 percent, which ranks it 28th out of the 80 countries for which there’s data.

There are some caveats I should trot out here:

The immigrant populations from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are younger and more male than the overall U.S. population, which skews employment ratios upward, and since this data covers everyone age 16 and up, college and even high school students count against the total — which brings the ratio down among groups likely to pursue higher education. Still, their strong employment performance isn't a fluke; the Cato Institute's David Bier offers up lots of other evidence that Central Americans are integrating pretty well.

The foreign-born residents with the lowest employment-population ratios hail mainly from countries (Hungary, Italy, Greece, Germany) from which most immigrants arrived decades ago and are now in their 60s or older. The very lowest employment-population ratio, though, is for those born in Saudi Arabia, most of whom are in the U.S. for college or graduate school.

And while no other country of origin has a majority of its U.S. residents currently enrolled in higher education, Kenya, Nigeria, Nepal and Ghana have the highest percentages after Saudi Arabia. So immigrants from Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana are near the top in both employment-population ratio and higher-education enrollment, and those from Nigeria are also near the top in educational attainment.

With that, let me offer my two cents on Kelly’s statement: It appears to be factually accurate in most of its characterizations of today’s undocumented immigrants, and I think the people decrying it as “racist” are for the most part just devaluing the term “racist.” His “they don’t integrate well” comment grates, though, given that Kelly and most other Americans are descended at least in part from rural people with limited education who didn’t speak any English when they got here.

And while there is a case to be made that education and English are far more important to success in the U.S. than they were a century ago, one certainly can’t depict Central Americans in particular as sitting around twiddling their thumbs wondering how they will ever integrate into U.S. society. They’re too busy working.

Also — and nothing Kelly said contradicted this, but some things his boss has reportedly said certainly have — what the charts above tell me is that if we want more high-skilled, hardworking, English-speaking, ready-to-integrate immigrants, it looks like the most obvious place to find them is in African countries where English is widely spoken.

The survey asks respondents whether they are citizens but does not ask the non-citizens to go into further detail.

These aren’t necessarily all immigrants who are planning to stay in the U.S. for good — a 25-year-old from India who is working on a doctorate at a U.S. university and planning to head home afterwards shows up, too. But close enough.

Umar Mutallab Cooperates With FBI; His Family Helped

White House Reveals Secret Cooperation With Abdul Mutallab's Family


Senior Obama administration officials revealed late Tuesday they've secretly gained the cooperation of family members of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab to help get the Christmas Day airline bomb suspect talking.

The cooperation effort has led to actionable intelligence that could help prevent terror attempts on U.S. soil, the senior officials said.

The revelation is part of an aggressive attempt by the White House to push back on Republican claims the Obama administration mishandled the terror investigation, with AbdulMutallab being read his Miranda rights shortly after he began cooperating with investigators.

After giving the U.S. some information in the early stages of the probe, AbdulMutallab stopped talking about his attempt to blow up an airliner with a bomb hidden in his underwear.

The senior administration officials disclosed that on January 1, just days after the attempted terror attack, two FBI agents secretly flew to Lagos, Nigeria, to meet with officials of the CIA and the State Department. They began an extensive investigation and tried to work with AbdulMutallab's family in hopes of gaining his cooperation.

The U.S. officials later traveled to Nigeria's capital city, Abuja, and eventually gained the trust of two unidentified relatives of the suspect.

On January 17, the FBI agents secretly flew back to the U.S. with the two relatives in order to work with the suspect.

One senior Obama administration official said the family members privately conveyed to the suspect they "had complete trust in the U.S. system" and they believed he "would be treated fairly" by the Obama administration.

The senior administration officials said that since AbdulMutallab began talking to investigation again last week, he has been cooperating on a daily basis. The officials added the information gained from the interrogations has been disseminated throughout the intelligence community.

One of the senior Obama officials, who bluntly said the Republican attacks have "frustrated the hell out of me," asserted that gaining the trust of the family was the best way to handle the case and helped the administration gain valuable intelligence from the suspect, who is believed to have ties to an al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen.

"It could be used to disrupt other attacks," one of the senior Obama officials said of the intelligence gleaned from AbdulMutallab in the interrogations, who added the president has been getting regular updates on what the suspect has been revealing.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, charged Saturday in the GOP weekly radio and Internet address that the White House botched the handling of AbdulMutallab.

"The Obama administration appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the war on terrorism," she said.

In releasing the new information, senior administration officials were direct about saying they're trying to show the case has been handled properly and the Obama administration is doing all it can to keep the country safe from future attacks.

One of the senior administration officials said, "We are in a very active war against al Qaeda" and "very experienced individuals who know what they're doing" are handling the interrogations well, despite the charges by Republicans.

"We'll leave it to them, not politicians in Washington," said this senior administration official.

A second senior administration official suggested that the U.S. did not lose any valuable intelligence by taking extra time to get the suspect's cooperation through his family.

Pressed on reports suggesting the intelligence being gained in the new interrogations is not stale, this second official said: "I would not disagree with that at all."

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U.S. Says Airline Terror Suspect Cooperating


The Nigerian man accused of trying to use a bomb hidden in his underwear to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day has been cooperating with investigators since last week and has provided fresh intelligence in multiple terrorism investigations, officials said Tuesday.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's cooperation could prove to be a national security victory and a political vindication for President Barack Obama, who has been under fire from lawmakers who contend the administration botched the case by giving Abdulmutallab the right to remain silent, rather than interrogating him as a military prisoner.

In the days following the failed bombing, a pair of FBI agents flew to Nigeria and persuaded Abdulmutallab's family to help them. When the agents returned to the U.S., Abdulmutallab's family came, too, according to a senior administration official briefed on the case. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

FBI officials continue to question Abdulmutallab, working in collaboration with CIA and other intelligence authorities, the official said. Obama has received regular updates on the interrogation, according to the official.

While the interrogation continued, White House and intelligence officials quietly seethed as political rivals accused them of putting lives at risk. That criticism peaked last weekend when Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, in the weekly Republican address, accused the administration of having "a blind spot when it comes to the war on terrorism."

Collins said the administration "undoubtedly prevented the collection of valuable intelligence about future terrorist threats to our country."

Valuable information

Authorities had hoped to keep Abdulmutallab's cooperation secret while they continued to investigate his leads, but details began to trickle out during testimony on Capitol Hill, where FBI Director Robert Mueller and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair confirmed authorities continued to get intelligence in Abdulmutallab's case.

"It is also my understanding that Mr. Abdulmutallab has provided valuable information. Is that correct?" Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., asked.

"Yes," Mueller replied.

"Thank you," Feinstein said, "and that the interrogation continues despite the fact that he has been Mirandized?"

"Yes," Mueller said again.

In Detroit, U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade declined to comment. A message seeking comment was left with Abdulmutallab's lawyer, Miriam Siefer.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, politicians and the courts have wrangled with the thorny question of how to treat suspected terrorists. The Supreme Court has not weighed in on whether the government has the right to hold a civilian as a military prisoner, and both times it appeared the court would get the chance to decide, President George W. Bush opted instead to bring the cases in civilian criminal courts.

Also unsettled is which system is better for gathering intelligence. The Bush administration, which authorized secret CIA prisons for interrogations, also repeatedly used the U.S. court system to prosecute terrorists. Some detainees at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have provided valuable intelligence, while others have refused to cooperate.

Some suspects in the criminal system refuse to talk once they have a lawyer. Others, like Abdulmutallab, can be persuaded to keep talking.



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Sources: CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Youtube, Google Maps

Afghan, Cuba, Iraq & Nigeria Slam Obama's Call For Tighter Airport Security

Iraqis, Afghans Slam Airport Crackdown


Obama’s call for tighter security on travelers from 14 countries is unfair and won’t make Americans any safer, Iraqi and Afghan diplomats in Washington tell The Daily Beast’s Benjamin Sarlin.

President Obama’s strict new security guidelines for air travelers from high-risk countries is drawing criticism from officials in some of the targeted nations, including American allies Iraq and Afghanistan.

As part of an array of new measures enacted after the failed Christmas Day bombing of Detroit-bound Flight 253, airport-security officers are patting down passengers from 14 countries, most of them in the Middle East and Africa.

While the Transportation Security Administration has justified the move as a proactive means of keeping out potential terrorist threats, the Iraqi and Afghan ambassadors to the United States oppose the singling out of their citizens.

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast on Tuesday, Iraqi Ambassador Samir Sumaida’ie slammed the new guidelines and warned that they “will not deliver Peace and Security” to travelers.

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“I don’t think its fair,” Sumaida’ie said. “Furthermore, I don’t believe that it’s effective to just look at all Iraqis, or all Egyptians, or all Saudis as terrorists—it’s counterproductive. First off, it alienates people, and second, the fact is that they are not all terrorists and they are not all even reasonably suspect.”

The new restrictions, the ambassador added, do not reflect the circumstances of the latest attack.

“The cause of all this has been this young man from Nigeria, but it seems that there was plenty of intelligence about him to indicate that he was a threat,” he said. “How about improving the handling of intelligence? That would have helped eliminate that particular threat and probably most similar threats.”

Sumaida’ie said the United States should expect formal complaints from Iraq and other nations targeted by the policy.

“We intend to raise the matter with the American administration, and I’m sure we will not be the only people who will feel this way,” he said.

Afghanistan’s ambassador to the United States, Said Jawad, echoed the Iraqi diplomat’s opposition to the measures.

In a statement, Jawad told The Daily Beast that terrorist threats “are a global concern, not just a precise problem originating within the borders of a handful of countries.” Al Qaeda, he said, “is an organization made of up individuals who do not carry legitimate passports, and in fact, actively recruit individuals from all over the world, especially in Europe and the United States.”

Added Jawad: “It’s unfair to single out all Afghans for extreme scrutiny, especially when there has never been an instance of international terrorism carried out by an Afghan; the exception being an Afghan refugee who was raised in Pakistan and lived in the United States”—an apparent reference to Najibullah Zazi, a suspected al Qaeda terrorist arrested in Colorado last year.

“Afghans completely understand the need for stronger security measures since everything and everyone is a target of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan. But we must not let our fear force a missed opportunity to produce meaningful security measures which don’t ostracize innocent travelers, brings us all closer to fighting a common enemy and allows everyone to travel the globe in relative safety.”

Officials from Nigeria, the suspected bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s country of origin, are also up in arms over their inclusion on the list. Nigerian Foreign Minister Ojo Maduekwe told reporters on Tuesday that the security measures are “an unacceptable New Year’s gift.” Cuba, also on the list, criticized the move in a state-run newspaper as “anti-terrorist paranoia.”

In addition to Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Cuba, the countries on the list are Algeria, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.

Airline groups are on board with the new security measures and announced their support of the plan on Monday.


“We believe the new guidelines enhance security for the flying public, and they’re being implemented in the most convenient manner,” David Castelveter, a spokesman at the Air Transport Association, told The Wall Street Journal.

A call to a TSA spokesman for comment was not immediately returned.



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Sources: The Daily Beast, MSNBC, NY Times, Reuters, TIME, Wall Street Journal, Google Maps

TSA Agents Issue Subpoenas To Bloggers For Leaking Secret Gov't Info.

TSA Threatens Blogger Who Posted New Screening Directive


Two Bloggers received home visits from Transportation Security Administration agents Tuesday after they published a new TSA directive that revises screening procedures and puts new restrictions on passengers in the wake of a recent bombing attempt by the so-called underwear bomber.

Special agents from the TSA’s Office of Inspection interrogated two U.S. bloggers, one of them an established travel columnist, and served them each with a civil subpoena demanding information on the anonymous source that provided the TSA document.

The document, which the two Bloggers published within minutes of each other Dec. 27, was sent by TSA to airlines and airports around the world and described temporary new requirements for screening passengers through Dec. 30, including conducting “pat-downs” of legs and torsos. The document, which was not classified, was posted by numerous bloggers. Information from it was also published on some airline websites.

“They’re saying it’s a security document but it was sent to every airport and airline,” says Steven Frischling, one of the Bloggers. “It was sent to Islamabad, to Riyadh and to Nigeria. So they’re looking for information about a security document sent to 10,000-plus people internationally. You can’t have a right to expect privacy after that.”

Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said in a statement that security directives “are not for public disclosure.”

“TSA’s Office of Inspections is currently investigating how the recent Security Directives were acquired and published by parties who should not have been privy to this information,” the statement said.

Frischling, a freelance travel writer and photographer in Connecticut who writes a blog for the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, said the two agents who visited him arrived around 7 p.m. Tuesday, were armed and threatened him with a criminal search warrant if he didn’t provide the name of his source. They also threatened to get him fired from his KLM job and indicated they could get him designated a security risk, which would make it difficult for him to travel and do his job.

“They were indicating there would be significant ramifications if I didn’t cooperate,” said Frischling, who was home alone with his three children when the agents arrived. “It’s not hard to intimidate someone when they’re holding a 3-year-old [child] in their hands. My wife works at night. I go to jail, and my kids are here with nobody.”

Frischling, who described some of the details of the visit on his personal blog, told Threat Level that the two agents drove to his house in Connecticut from DHS offices in Massachusetts and New Jersey and didn’t mention a subpoena until an hour into their visit.

“They came to the door and immediately were asking, ‘Who gave you this document?, Why did you publish the document?’ and ‘I don’t think you know how much trouble you’re in.’ It was very much a hardball tactic,” he says.

When they pulled a subpoena from their briefcase and told him he was legally required to provide the information they requested, he said he needed to contact a lawyer. The agents said they’d sit outside his house until he gave them the information they wanted.

Frischling says he received the document anonymously from someone using a Gmail account and determined, after speaking with an attorney, that he might as well cooperate with the agents since he had little information about the source and there was no federal shield law to protect him.

The Gmail address consisted of the name “Mike,” followed by random numbers and letters. Frischling had already deleted the e-mail after publishing the document but said he had learned from previous correspondence with the source that he had been hired as a screener for the TSA in 2009.

The agents searched through Frischling’s BlackBerry and iPhone and questioned him about a number of phone numbers and messages in the devices. One number listed in his phone under “ICEMOM” was a quick dial to his mother, in case of emergency. The agents misunderstood the acronym and became suspicious that it was code for his anonymous source and asked if his source worked for ICE — the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The agents then said they wanted to take an image of his hard drive. Frischling said they had to go to WalMart to buy a hard drive, but when they returned were unable to get it to work. Frischling said the keyboard on his laptop was no longer working after they tried to copy his files. The agents left around 11 p.m. but came back Wednesday morning and, with Frischling’s consent, seized his laptop, which they promised to return after copying the hard drive.

Frischling wrote on his blog that he decided to publish the TSA directive to clear up much of the confusion and speculation that was circulating among the public about changes that were being instituted in airport security procedures after a passenger unsuccessfully tried to ignite a bomb Dec. 25 using a syringe and explosive chemicals hidden in his underwear.

“We are a free society, knowledge is power and informing the masses allows for public conversation and collective understanding,” Frischling wrote on his blog. “You can agree or disagree, but you need information to know if you want to agree or disagree. My goal is to inform and help people better understand what is happening, as well as allow them to form their own opinions.”

A former federal prosecutor who asked not to be identified told Threat Level that the TSA is being heavy-handed in how it’s handling the matter.

“It strikes me that someone at TSA is apoplectic that somehow there’s a sense that they’re not doing their job right,” he told Threat level. “To go into this one reporter’s house and copy his computer files and threaten him, it strikes me that they’re more aggressive with this reporter than with the guy who got on this flight.”

Christopher Elliott, who is based in Florida and writes a column for the Washington Post, MSNBC and others, received a visit from a TSA special agent named Robert Flaherty around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Elliott wouldn’t discuss the details of the visit with Threat Level, due to pending legal issues, but he describes in his blog post how he got a knock on his door shortly after finishing dinner and putting his three young children in the bathtub.

Flaherty showed him a badge and said he wanted information about the source of the document he published. When Elliott told him he’d need to see a subpoena, Flaherty pulled one out and handed it to Elliott.

Elliott told Threat Level they talked for 10 to 20 minutes, but he refused to cooperate. Flaherty left but called Wednesday to remind Elliott that he had until the end of the business day to comply with the subpoena.

“I really don’t think they thought this one through,” said Elliott about the TSA tactics.

Elliott could face a fine and up to a year in jail for failure to comply, according to a statement on the subpoena.

The TSA directive was issued Christmas Day, the date of the attempted attack on Northwest Flight 253, and indicates that the directive will expire Dec. 30. The directive applies to anyone operating a scheduled or charter flight departing from a foreign location and destined for the United States.

It requires all passengers to undergo a “thorough pat-down,” which should concentrate on their upper legs and torso, at the boarding gate. It also requires physical inspection of all “accessible property” accompanying passengers at the boarding gate, “with focus on syringes being transported along with powders and/or liquids.” It also indicates that restrictions against liquids, aerosols and gels should be strictly adhered to. Heads of state can be exempted from the special screening.

Passengers are also required to remain seated during the last hour of flights, and cannot access carry-on baggage or have blankets, pillows or other personal belongings on their lap during this time.

Aircraft phones, internet service, TV programming and global positioning systems are to be disabled prior to boarding and during all phases of flight. Flight crews are also prohibited from making any announcements to passengers about the flight path or the plane’s position over cities or landmarks.

The TSA was embarrassed earlier this month after a contract worker posted an improperly redacted sensitive screening manual on a government site.

That document revealed which passengers are more likely to be targeted for secondary screening, who is exempt from screening, TSA procedures for screening foreign dignitaries and CIA-escorted passengers, and extensive instructions for calibrating Siemens walk-through metal detectors.

Five TSA workers were put on leave pending an internal investigation into how that document got posted.



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Sources: AP, Wired, Google Maps

CIA Forewarned Of Umar Mutallab, Didn't Connect Dots

CIA Also Knew About Suspect



The CIA received a vague warning four months ago about the Nigerian suspect in the Christmas Day bombing attempt, although officers did not learn his name until last month, administration officials said Tuesday night.

The revelation, first reported by CBS News, increases the footprint of data about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab that is known to have existed within the U.S. government before he attempted to blow an Airbus 330 out of the sky using a bomb stitched into his underwear.

The CIA learned the man’s name in November, when his father came to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria and sought help in finding him, officials said.

A U.S. intelligence official defended the agency’s handling of the elliptical information, telling POLITICO: “Abdulmutallab’s father didn’t say his son was a terrorist, let alone planning an attack. Not at all. I’m not aware of some magic piece of intelligence that suddenly would have flagged this guy — whose name nobody even had until November — as a killer en route to America, let alone something that anybody withheld.”

President Barack Obama said in a statement to reporters Tuesday in Hawaii: “[T]here were bits of information available within the intelligence community that could have and should have been pieced together.”

Armen Keteyian, CBS News’ chief investigative correspondent, reported on the “CBS Evening News” that the Central Intelligence Agency had received information in August about a person of interest dubbed “The Nigerian,” suspected of meeting with terrorist elements in Yemen.

“Sources tell CBS News ‘The Nigerian’ has now turned out to be Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab,” Keteyian reported.

“But that connection was not made when Abdulmutallab’s father went to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria three months later — on Nov. 19, 2009 — and gave that warning to the CIA about his son’s ties to suspected al Qaeda operatives in Yemen. In fact, CBS News has learned that none of this information was connected until after the attempted Christmas Day bombing.”

CNN’s Jeanne Meserve quoted “a reliable source” as saying on Tuesday: “The father of terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab talked about his son with someone from the CIA and a report was prepared, but the report was not circulated outside the agency.”

Sources tell POLITICO that the warning from the father is not that unusual — a reminder of the torrent of disturbing information that government officials confront on a daily basis.

George Little, a CIA spokesman, said in a statement: "[I]n November, we worked with the embassy to ensure he was in the government's terrorist database-including mention of his possible extremist connections in Yemen. We also forwarded key biographical information about him to the National Counterterrorism Center. This agency, like others in our government, is reviewing all data to which it had access — not just what we ourselves may have collected — to determine if more could have been done to stop Abdulmutallab."

During Tuesday’s appearance, the president also said: “It's been widely reported that the father of the suspect in the Christmas incident warned U.S. officials in Africa about his son's extremist views. It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community, but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect's name on a no-fly list.”

That “component” is apparently the NCTC, created on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. It’s not clear what analysts there should have done with the information. One possibility would have been to alert FBI agents.

The U.S. intelligence official said: “The United States government set up NCTC — and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — to connect the dots on terrorism. If somebody thinks it could have been done better in this case, they know where to go for answers.”

Dennis C. Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, said in a statement: "I am committed to working with the President on the review of watchlist policies, practices and procedures. I have assured the President that we will confront any problems head on. While the Intelligence Community has drastically improved information sharing procedures since 9/11 that have made America safer, it is clear that gaps remain, and they must be fixed."


Sources: Politico, CNN, Huffington Post

Nigerian Officials Allowed Umar Mutallab To Board Plane To U.S.

Missed Warning Signs



As investigators say Al Qaeda planned a Nigerian man's Christmas Day attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253, sources tell Gerald Posner that signs point to a security slip-up at the Lagos embassy.

The first goal of government investigators this Christmas weekend? “Trying to figure out if the guy is a nut or an operator,” said a senior U.S. intelligence official, referring to 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian national who unsuccessfully tried to ignite an explosive device on an incoming Northwest airlines flight to Detroit on Christmas Day.

Al Qaeda or angry loner?

The second goal is almost as urgent. How did someone whose father, the recently retired chairman of Nigeria’s First Bank, had apparently warned American embassy officials several weeks ago that his son’s religious views had become increasingly extreme and militant, gain access to a plane heading to the United States?

Although his father’s warning got Abdulmutallab on a broad list, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment repository, along with 550,000 other people, The Daily Beast has learned that no one evidently tagged the information from the Lagos embassy as a priority and then highlighted it so he would be placed into a more-active suspect database (the Terrorist Screening Database).

If they had, according to one Counter Terrorism official who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity, security procedures could have promptly moved Abdulmutallab to a no-fly list.

(The information passed from Lagos was so generic that, according to what an unnamed U.S. administration official told Reuters on Saturday, it was not negative enough to include him on any banned flying list.)

This incident isn’t viewed by Counter Terrorism officials to whom I spoke as a general flaw in the aviation security system, but rather as the isolated failure of local embassy intelligence officers to make the warning they received more specific and word it in a way that would set off the system’s warning bells. A senior administration official told The New York Times that “The information was passed into the system, but the expression of radical extremist views were very nonspecific. We were evaluating him, but the information we had was not a lot to go on.”

Ultimately then, the attempted terror attack failed not because of good intel, but because two of the 278 passengers jumped Abdulmatallab immediately after he tried activating a powdery mix he had strapped to his thigh, with a chemical solution he mixed in from a hypodermic needle that he managed to slip past security both in Lagos, Nigeria, and at Amsterdam’s packed Schiopol Airport. Lagos is notoriously lax for security, but Amsterdam is considered one of the better European capitals at screening.





On Saturday, in a federal criminal complaint filed against Abdulmutallab, the government revealed that a preliminary FBI analysis of the device revealed it contained PETN—pentaerythritol—a high explosive.

Abdulmatallab suffered severe second-degree burns but is expected to survive. He’s being treated at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor.

Not surprisingly, the eyewitness accounts of the panicked scene varied. But at least one person on the plane reportedly claimed they heard Abdulmutallab express anger over Western intervention in Afghanistan.

The suspect later told investigators that he obtained the explosive chemicals from a Yemeni bomb expert who is closely associated with al Qaeda. The al Qaeda wing that operates in Yemen is run by an extremist Yemeni cleric, who Abdulmutallab says he was in touch with via by the Internet.

He also reportedly told FBI interrogators that he was directed by al Qaeda to set off the device on a U.S. plane over American soil.

One Counter Terrorism official, who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity, said it was not clear if that boast “was simply aspirational.” But Jane Harman, the House representative who is chief of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence told reporters, that “The facts are still emerging, but there are strong suggestions of a Yemen-Al Qaeda connection….”

Now, instead of arresting Abdulmutallab, who flew under his real name when he presented his ticket in Lagos, all international fliers to the U.S. will instead be inconvenienced by this communications snafu. Airline rules announced Saturday instituted extra baggage screening, additional personal inspections, and a stricter enforcement of an existing rule that permits passengers to only bring one carry-on bag.

In addition, all passengers on U.S.-bound international flights will not be able to move about the cabin during the last hour of the flight. That’s intended to thwart the continuing fascination that terrorists have with wrecking havoc in U.S. aviation, especially when there’s a chance to do so over American soil.

Of course, that doesn’t take into account the first hour of any flight that originates in the U.S. American authorities are still confident they can prevent an active bomber from boarding a plane at a domestic airport.

The lack of confidence is in foreign security. But given the apparent failure to recognize the importance of the warning received at the Lagos embassy, the problem can also be the failure to assess and pick out the key info that floods the complex Counter Terrorism matrix.



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Sources: The Daily Beast, AP, BBC, Sky News, NY Daily News, Youtube, Google Maps

Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab's Lonely Life Style

In Online Posts Apparently By Detroit Suspect, Religious Ideals Collide


The 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an American airliner apparently turned to the Internet for counseling and companionship, writing in an online forum that he was "lonely" and had "never found a true Muslim friend."

"I have no one to speak too [sic]," read a posting from January 2005, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was attending boarding school. "No one to consult, no one to support me and I feel depressed and lonely. I do not know what to do. And then I think this loneliness leads me to other problems."

The Washington Post reviewed 300 online postings under the name "farouk1986" (a combination of Abdulmutallab's middle name and birth year). The postings mused openly about love and marriage, his college ambitions and angst over standardized testing, as well as his inner struggle as a devout Muslim between liberalism and extremism. In often-intimate writings, posted between 2005 and 2007, he sought friends online, through Facebook and in Islamic chat rooms: "My name is Umar but you can call me Farouk." He often invited readers to "have your say" and once wrote, "May Allah reward you for reading and reward you more for helping."

A U.S. government official said late Monday that federal intelligence officials were reviewing the online postings but had not independently confirmed their authenticity.

Many of the biographical details in the writings, however, match up with facts already known about Abdulmutallab.

Farouk1986 wrote of being born in 1986 and having attended an elite British boarding school in Togo, where many of his classmates were British expatriates and students from around West Africa.

The postings also reference visits to London, the United States and other countries, including Egypt and Yemen. Department of Homeland Security officials said Monday that Abdulmutallab traveled to the United States in July 2004 to Washington and in August 2008 to Houston.

Farouk1986 wrote about considering applications to U.S. and British universities, including University College London, where officials said Abdulmutallab enrolled in a mechanical engineering course from September 2005 to June 2008. He also wrote about his family's wealth; Abdulmutallab's father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a frequent visitor to the United States, retired this year as chairman of First Bank of Nigeria and still sits on the boards of several prominent Nigerian firms.

All of the postings are on the Islamic Forum Web site (http://www.gawaher.com), which uses a commercially available chat-forum software called IP.Board that automatically assigns dates to users' posts as they are created. Many of Farouk1986's postings drew comments from other forum members on the day they were written

Taken together, the writings demonstrate an acute awareness of Western customs and a worldliness befitting Abdulmutallab's privileged upbringing as a wealthy Nigerian banker's son.

Embracing Privilege

In a June 2005 posting, Farouk1986 wrote that he was in Yemen for a three-month Arabic course, saying that "it is just great." He described how many British people and Americans were in Sanaa, gushing about the capital's shopping and global cuisine (including, he noted, Pizza Hut and KFC).

The Yemeni Embassy said Monday that Abdulmutallab was in Yemen between August and December of this year to study Arabic at a language institute. He earlier spent time at the same institute, the embassy said.

Farouk1986 wrote often of the college admissions process, once describing his plans to study engineering at Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley or the California Institute of Technology. But he also wrote of his disappointment in scoring a 1200 on the SAT. "I tried the SAT," he wrote in March 2005. "It was a disaster!!!"

On Facebook, Abdulmutallab's profile features a photo of him smiling, standing alongside two friends and wearing a sharp-looking pink polo shirt and sunglasses. He has 287 friends.

Fabrizio Cavallo Marincola, 22, who studied with Abdulmutallab at University College London, said Abdulmutallab graduated in May 2008 and showed no signs of radicalization or of links to al-Qaeda. "He always did the bare minimum of work," Marincola said of his classmate, who he said was nicknamed "Biggie."

"When we were studying, he always would go off to pray," Marincola continued. "He was pretty quiet and didn't socialize much or have a girlfriend that I knew of."

As a student at the British boarding school in Togo, Farouk1986 wrote that he was lonely because there were few other Muslims. "I'm active, I socialise with everybody around me, no conflicts, I laugh and joke but not excessively," he wrote in one posting seeking counseling from online peers. "I will describe myself as very ambitious and determined, especially in the deen. I strive to live my daily live [sic] according to the quran and sunnah to the best of my ability. I do almost everything, sports, TV, books . . . (of course trying not to cross the limits in the deen)." The deen is a religious way of life.

Ideals colliding

In his January 2005 posting about his loneliness, Farouk1986 wrote about the tension between his desires and his religious duty of "lowering the gaze" in the presence of women. "The Prophet (S) advised young men to fast if they can't get married but it has not been helping me much and I seriously don't want to wait for years before I get married," he wrote.

At 18, he added, he had not started searching for prospective partners because of social norms such as having "a degree, a job, a house, etc. before getting married." But, he said, "my parents I know could help me financially should I get married, even though I think they are also not going to be in favour of early marriage."

He also wrote of his "dilemma between liberalism and extremism" as a Muslim. "The Prophet (S) said religion is easy and anyone who tries to overburden themselves will find it hard and will not be able to continue," he wrote in 2005. "So anytime I relax, I deviate sometimes and then when I strive hard, I get tired of what I am doing i.e. memorising the quran, etc. How should one put the balance right?"

In December 2005, Farouk1986 wrote that his parents were visiting him in London and that he was torn about whether he could eat meat with them. "I am of the view meat not slaughtered by Muslims . . . is haram [forbidden] for consumption unless necessary," he wrote. "My parents are of the view as foreigners, we are allowed to . . . eat any meat. It occured [sic] to me I should not be eating with my parents as they use meat I consider haram. But I fear this might cause division and other complicated family problems."

He pleaded: "Please respond as quickly as possible as my tactic has been to eat outside and not at home till I get an answer."

Abdulmutallab, the youngest of 16 children and the son of the second of his father's two wives, was raised at the family home in Kaduna, a city in Nigeria's Muslim-dominated north. At boarding school, Farouk was easygoing and studious, earning the sobriquet "Alfa," a local term for Muslim clerics, because of his penchant for preaching Islam to colleagues, according to family members.

"Farouk was a devoted Muslim who took his religion seriously and was committed to his studies," said an uncle. "He was such a brilliant boy and nobody in the family had the slightest thought he could do something as insane as this."

Although Farouk hardly ever stayed in Nigeria and would visit only for holidays, family members and neighbors on Ahman Pategi Street in the rich Unguwar Sarki neighborhood in Kaduna also said he was easygoing and passionate about Islam. "He was of course a very religious, polite and studious fellow," said a cousin, "but it was unthinkable that he would do anything close to attempting to bomb a plane."


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Sources: AP, Washington Post, The Daily Beast, NY Daily News, Youtube, Google Maps

Obama Promises To Keep Pressure On Al-Qaida, Condemns Iranian Gov't

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obama: U.S. To Keep Pressure On Enemies



President Barack Obama said Monday he has ordered a review of the nation's watch list system and of its air safety regulations and has asked his national security team to keep up the pressure on terrorists aiming to attack the U.S.

Obama said U.S. officials are doing everything in their power to ensure Americans are safe in the wake of the Christmas Day attack on a Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit.

The president, issuing a statement Monday during his holiday vacation in Honolulu, said U.S. authorities will not rest until they find everyone involved in the attack in Detroit and hold them accountable.

Obama's remarks were his first in public about a 23-year-old Nigerian man's alleged attempt to bring down the airliner.

Al-Qaida in Arabian Peninsula on Monday claimed responsibility for the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253, saying the attack was in retaliation for a U.S. operation against the group in Yemen.

In a statement posted on the Internet, the group said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab coordinated with members of the group.

Yemeni forces, helped by U.S. intelligence, carried out two airstrikes against al-Qaida operatives in the country this month. The second one was a day before the attempted bombing of the plane.

The group said the would-be bomber used explosives manufactured by al-Qaida members.

Abdulmutallab reportedly bought his airline ticket before the first strike in Yemen, which came on Dec. 17.

In a statement, the Yemeni Foreign Ministry said Abdulmutallab was in Yemen from early August until early December after receiving a visa to study Arabic in a school in San'a.

Monday's statement said Abdulmutallab had previously studied at the school, indicating it was not his first trip to Yemen.

It said he was granted a Yemeni visa after authorities were reassured that he had "several visas from a number of friendly countries," the statement said. It noted that Abdulmutallab had a valid visa to the United States, which he had visited in the past.

"Authorities are currently investigating who he was in contact with in Yemen and the results of the investigation will be delivered to those concerned with investigating the terror plot in the United States," the ministry said.

Security under scrutiny

In earlier developments, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded that the aviation security system failed when a young man on a watch list with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

A day after saying the system worked, Napolitano backtracked, saying her words had been taken out of context.

"Our system did not work in this instance," she said on NBC television's "TODAY" show. "No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way."

Billions of dollars have been spent on aviation security since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, when commercial airliners were hijacked and used as weapons. Much of that money has gone toward training and equipment that some security experts say could have detected the explosive device that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is accused of hiding on his body on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Abdulmutallab has been charged in federal court with trying to detonate the device as the plane approached Detroit.

Abdulmutallab had been wearing a specially made undergarment over his briefs, an FBI official told NBC News. The device burst into flames instead, according to authorities, and he was subdued by passengers. The plane landed safely.

A Federal judge in Detroit postponed until Jan. 8 a hearing on a request by the government to obtain a DNA sample from Abdulmutallab. No reason was given.

Harold Demuren, the head of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, said Abdulmutallab paid cash on Dec. 16 for the $2,831 round-trip ticket from Lagos, Nigeria, to Detroit via Amsterdam. He said Abdulmutallab's ticket came from a KLM office in Accra, Ghana.

Demuren said Abdulmutallab checked into his flight with only a small carry-on bag.

On Sunday, Napolitano said, "One thing I'd like to point out is that the system worked." On Monday, she said she was referring to the system of notifying other flights as well as law enforcement on the ground about the incident soon after it happened.

The top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee took issue with Napolitano's initial assessment.

Airport security "failed in every respect," Rep. Peter King said Sunday on CBS television's "Face the Nation." "It's not reassuring when the secretary of homeland security says the system worked."

A congressional hearing is planned in January to examine security and screening measures.

Explosives aboard Flight 253

Investigators are piecing together Abdulmutallab's brazen attempt to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Dec. 25. Law enforcement officials say he tucked below his waist a small bag holding his potentially deadly concoction of liquid and powder explosive material.

Abdulmutallab had been placed in a U.S. database of people suspected of terrorist ties in November, but there was not enough information about his activity that would place him on a watch list that could have kept him from flying.

British officials placed Abdulmutallab's name on a U.K. watch list after he was refused a student visa in May. However, adding him to the list was a matter of routine, not because he was thought to pose a threat, according to a Home Office official. She spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government policy.

Profile emerges

Home Secretary Alan Johnson said police and security services are looking at whether Abdulmutallab was radicalized in Britain.

Abdulmutallab received a degree in engineering and business finance from University College London last year and later applied to re-enter Britain to study at another institution. Johnson said Monday he was refused entry because officials suspected the school was not genuine and they then put his name on the list.

Johnson says that people on the list can transit the U.K. but cannot enter the country.

Officials said he came to the attention of U.S. intelligence last month when his father, Alhaji Umar Mutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker, reported to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria about his son's increasingly extremist religious views.

In a statement released Monday, Abdulmutallab's family in Nigeria said that after his "disappearance and stoppage of communications while schooling abroad," his father reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago. The statement says the father then approached foreign security agencies for "their assistance to find and return him home."

The family says: "It was while we were waiting for the outcome of their investigation that we arose to the shocking news of that day."

The statement did not offer any specifics on where Abdulmutallab had been.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the government will investigate its systems for placing suspicious travelers on watch lists and for detecting explosives before passengers board flights.

Both lines of defense were breached in the improbable series of events Christmas Day that spanned three continents and culminated in a struggle and fire aboard a Northwest jet shortly before its safe landing in Detroit.



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Al-Qaida Warns U.S. More Yemen Trained Bombers On The Way

Al-Qaida Group Says It Was Behind Detroit Bound Jetliner Attack


Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula on Monday claimed responsibility for the attack on a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas Day, saying it was retaliation for a U.S. operation against the group in Yemen.

Federal authorities met Monday to reassess the U.S. system of terror watchlists to determine how to avoid the type of lapse that allowed a man with explosives to board the flight in Amsterdam even though he was flagged as a possible terrorist.

In a statement posted on the Internet, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab coordinated with members of the group, an alliance of militants based in Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Yemeni forces, helped by U.S. intelligence, carried out two airstrikes against al-Qaida operatives in the country this month. The second one was a day before Abdulmutallab attempted to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight as it prepared to land in Detroit.

The group said Abdulmutallab used explosives manufactured by al-Qaida members. "He managed to penetrate all devices and modern advanced technology and security checkpoints in international airports bravely without fear of death," the group said in the statement, "relying on God and defying the large myth of American and international intelligence, and exposing how fragile they are, bringing their nose to the ground, and making them regret all what they spent on security technology."

The Obama administration has ordered investigations into how travelers are placed on watch lists and how passengers are screened, as critics and administration officials questioned how Abdulmutallab was allowed to board the flight. A senior U.S. intelligence official said authorities were reviewing the procedures that govern the lists, which could include how someone is placed on or moved between the various databases.

"Why wasn't he flagged at a higher screening level?" Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "How did he get an explosive substance on to the plane? All of those are serious questions that we are now looking at."

Passengers have faced stiffer boarding measures since Friday. Authorities warned travelers to expect extra delays returning home from holidays.

The intelligence official said the review will look at what adjustments could be made to avoid the type of gap that allowed Abdulmutallab to fly into Detroit even though Britain had refused to grant him a student visa in May. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal review.

Congress is already starting to weigh in. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Monday that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee would hold hearings on the incident in January. Lieberman is chairman of the committee.

The White House press office, traveling with President Barack Obama in Hawaii, said Monday that the president would make a statement from the Kaneoho Marine Base in the midafternoon.

Abdulmutallab is accused of trying to detonate an explosive device hidden on his body as the plane approached Detroit on a flight from Amsterdam last Friday. Law enforcement officials say he tucked below his waist a small bag holding a potentially deadly concoction of liquid and powder explosive materials. The device burst into flames without exploding, according to authorities, and Abdulmutallab was subdued by passengers. The plane landed safely.

His name was one of about 550,000 in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, known as TIDE, which is maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. Inclusion in that database does not trigger mandatory additional airport screening.

Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed, backtracking from a statement Sunday in which she said the airline security system worked. She said her words had been taken out of context.

"Our system did not work in this instance," she said Monday on NBC's "Today" show. "No one is happy or satisfied with that. An extensive review is under way."

Harold Demuren, the head of the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority, said Abdulmutallab paid cash on Dec. 16 for the $2,831 round-trip ticket from Lagos, Nigeria, to Detroit via Amsterdam. He said Abdulmutallab's ticket came from a KLM office in Accra, Ghana.

Demuren said Abdulmutallab checked into his flight with only a small carryon bag.

Officials said he came to the attention of U.S. intelligence last month when his father, Alhaji Umar Mutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker, reported to the American Embassy in Nigeria about his son's increasingly extremist religious views.

In a statement released Monday, Abdulmutallab's family in Nigeria said that his father reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago. The statement says the father then approached foreign security agencies for "their assistance to find and return him home."

Abdulmutallab had been placed in a U.S. database of people suspected of terrorist ties in November, but officials say there was not enough information about his activities to place him on a watch list that could have kept him from flying.

In Britain, Abdulmutallab was placed on a standard watch list of people whose visa applications were rejected, but he was not flagged as a potential terror suspect, British officials said Monday.

Abdulmutallab, who graduated from a London university last year, had his subsequent visa application denied in May 2009. British officials said the school on his application form was not a government-approved institution.







Abdulmutallab: More Like Me In Yemen


American officials have cause to worry there may be more al Qaeda-trained young men in Yemen planning to bring down American jets.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253, told FBI agents there were more just like him in Yemen who would strike soon.

And in a tape released four days before the attempted destruction of the Detroit-bound Northwest plane, the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen boasted of what was planned for Americans, saying, "We are carrying a bomb to hit the enemies of God."

Yemen has become a principal al Qaeda training ground and the accused suicide bomber told the FBI he was trained for more than a month in Yemen, given 80 grams of a high explosive cleverly sewn into his underpants, undetected by standard security screening.

"They know that this is a weakness and an Achilles' heel in our airport security system," said ABC News consultant and former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.

Law enforcement authorities say tragedy was averted only because the bomb's detonator did not work.

"I think it's very clear it came very, very close," said Rep. Pete Hoekstra, ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee. "The explosive device went off, it became an incendiary device instead of an explosive device, which is probably what saved that airplane."

On Sunday, in its first communication since the failed Northwest Airline bombing, Al Qaeda in Yemen released a written statement about the December 17 air strike in Yemen. The statement called on "the people of the Arabian peninsula" to attack American military installations, ships and "spying embassies." The U.S. Embassy in Yemen was attacked by Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in September 2008, and the U.S.S. Cole, a U.S. Navy destroyer, was hit by Al Qaeda in 2000.

Abdulmutallab's Life of Privilege

Abdulmutallab led a life of privilege as the son of a prominent Nigerian banker.

He lived in an upscale neighborhood in London, attended top boarding schools and a London college.

Michael Rimmer, one of his former high school teachers, called him "a model student, very keen, very enthusiastic."

"He was a very nice, friendly person," said Efemena Mokedi, a former classmate. "He was a person who did a lot of good things."

In e-mails sent over the last six years, and obtained by ABC News, Abdulmutallab worried whether his religion would allow him to attend a high school prom, worried about low college SAT test scores, expressed opposition to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then prior to breaking with his parents, questioned whether it was okay to lie to deceive the enemy.

Explained Clarke, "The kind of person, who's being radicalized increasingly in the U.S. and in Europe, are people who are sons of the middle class, the upper middle class, sons of well educated families, people who have radicalized at long distance over the Internet."

The suspect's father was so concerned about his son's radicalization he actually alerted the U.S. embassy in Nigeria that his son could be a threat to America.

Abdulmutallab was put on a terror watch list, along with 550,000 others, but he was not put on the no-fly list and his U.S. visa, which he obtained a year and a half ago, was not revoked. He used the visa to board the flight to Detroit Christmas morning.



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Sources: AP, ABC News, Politico, MSNBC, The Daily Beast, AlJazeera English, Carnegie Endowment, NY Daily News, Google Maps