it failed when the intelligence community was unable to connect the dots that would have placed abdulutallab on the terrorist watch list. it failed when this terrorist stepped onto the plane in amsterdam with the same explosives used by the shoe bomber, richard reid, or than eight years ago. but today i want to discuss another failure, a failure that occurred after abdul mutallab had already been detained by authorities in the troy, an error that undoubtedly prevented the collection of valuable intelligence about future terrorist threats to our country. this failure occurred when the obama justice department unilaterally decided to treat this foreign terrorist as an ordinary criminal. abdul mutallab was questioned for less than one hour before the justice department advised him that he could remain silent and offered him an attorney at our expense. once of for the protection our constitution guarantees american citizens, this foreign terrorist lawyered up and stopped talking. when the obama administration decided to treat him as an ordinary criminal, it did so without the input of our

. >> steve: abdul gaddy. bryan-amaning had it knocked away. a foul will be called against max zhang. cal came in number one at 3-1. all the teams all the way down to ucla, bruins will host usc later today. and then you've got washington, who is likely going to go and even the record at .500 with a win here. then they will go to ucla on a game you can watch on pac-10 hoops next thursday. ben howland is preparing only for the trojans. he's a one game at a time coach. i'm sure, when that game is over with usc, he'll talk to his fellows and show them this video and say, we're in for a buzz saw when washington comes to pauley. >> marques: 7:30 p.m. matchup against the bruins. another turnover. another example of washington getting down and dirty on the floor. another example of great ball movement. great decision by isaiah thomas. abdul gaddy hasn't done anything spectacular, but he's played a real solid game this afternoon. i think he's really starting to come into his own as a collegiate basketball player. >> steve: jerome randle with his first f

abdul gaddy working with miles yesterday. you beat him in horse. >> miles: we had always shoot around before the game. an excellent shooter. better than the numbers show. >> steve: gaddy going to the save and smashes against the protective area, the signage. but great hustle by the freshman. >> miles: a lot of people don't know that abdul gaddy just turned 18 this past tuesday. he'll an senior in high school getting ready for the washington state playoffs, instead he's in the heart of a pac-10 race at a young 18 years old. >> steve: i'm not going to say he's going to be like brandon roy, but i remember roy early in his career, young guy, struggled a little bit early, but came on as a brilliant player in this conference late and now a great start with the portland trail blazers. >> miles: abdul gaddy by the time his career is done will be one of the breast point guards in the conference. >> steve: if not the nation. >> miles: exactly. >> steve: you saw him in high school and you told me he was special. >> miles: unbelievable.

as we told you abdul farouk abdul mutallab's father warned he might be a threat.he terror suspect made what is being described as a final phone call to his father during which is he reportedly told his dad, this would be his last contact with the family. he says the people he was in yemen were about to destroy his cell phone's sim card rendering the phone useless and apparently led his father that his son might be planning a suicide mission and that's when dad, pictured here, contacted u.s. officials and now there are questions whether property weight was given to the father's warning and whether nigeria could be a safe haven for terrorists. greg burke filed this report from the suspect's home country of nigeria later today. >> this entire incident cast a spotlight on islam and nigeria, about 75 million muslims in the country. what is quite clear, the extremist version embraced by abdul mutallab is quite different from that of his family. while there are certain sections in the north of the country where the muslims can be extreme, friends of the family tell us th

six, he's trying ksm, khalid shaikh mohammed and other terrorists like abdul abdul an -- abdulmutallab. he issued no protests for italy for con vicinitying 23 u.s. cia and military officials in absentia, our guys. and nine, rather, finally, he unleashed the prosecute bush policymakers for their counterterrorism policy. you want to speak to that? >> yes. i think this absolutely plays into this whole area of modern and traditional confusion that was best summed up by the supreme court during the bush administration that decided people in guantanamo did deserve due process. in other words it's not just about obama versus bush. there is an independent judicial tradition taking place which the supreme court tried to establish. >> monica? >> the supreme court also ruled that enemy combatants held by the united states could be held indefinitely without due process. >> they did. >> for the length of the war. >> but the key thing, martin is, look, we get these fellas. what do you want out of this fella when you got this? immediate information and intelligence. no water boarding. >> you got that

the president said that 23-year-old nigerian, umar farouk abdul mutallab traveled to yemen, joined an al-qaeda linked group there and was trained, equipped with bomb components and sent to blow up the amsterdam to detroit flight on christmas day. yemen in response has said hundreds of troops to two

and that would have placed abdul from the terrorist watch list. it failed when this terrorist stepped on to the plane in amsterdam with the same explosive used by the shoe bomber richard reed, more than eight years ago. and today, i want to discuss another failure, a failure that occurred after abdul had already been detained by authorities if detroit. and an error that undoubtedly prevented the collection of valuable intelligence about future terrorist threats to our country. and this failure occurred when the obama justice department unilaterally decided to treat this foreign terrorist as an ordinary criminal that will. and abdul was questioned for less than one hour before the justice department advised him that he could remain silent and offered him an attorney at our expense. once afforded the protection, our constitution guarantees a -- american citizens, this foreign terrorist lauered up and stopped talking. and when the obama administration decided to treat abdul as a ordinary criminal, it does -- did so without the input of our nation's t

we know, of course that abdul mutalla's father went to the u.s.bassy in nigeria in nomber and warned that his son was in yemen, and that he thought he was -- had fall in in with extremists. we know this young man bought a ticket with cash, that he didn't have have checked luggage. you talk about some of the other warnings. each one of them by itself may not have been enough to say, don't put that guy on that plane, but you would hope that you would have a computerized system wheref you took all of the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and put them all together that somebody would say, we've got to make sure this guy doesn't g on this plane. obviously the system didn't work. it's one of the big issues. we taunt with john brennan, how due make the system work more effectively so all of those dots get connected. >> certainly lots more questions to come, i'm sure. chris wallace, thank you for your time. >> reporter: you bet, thank you. >> chris will be talk with the assistant to the president on homeland security and intelligence. >>> hawaii is banking on the

they said 55-year-old abdul cartwright took his daughter alexis and she might be in danger. they are believed to be traveling in a blue 1993 dodge ram pickup. if you see them, you are asked to call police. you might want to give yourself some extra time if you plan on writing metro late at night. starting tonight, trains will use a single track on some lines. they will be replacing ralph fasteners and concrete slabs. writers should take an extra 30 minutes for their trip. >> coming up, bitterly cold temperatures in the area tonight and the threat of snow out in the forecast. as jim zorn coached his last game with the redskins? i know what he had today -- had to say today. >> authorities have caught up with a florida man wanted for allegedly killing four family members on thanksgiving day. >> i am really happy that the monster is in a cage. >> he appeared in court just hours after being arrested. the owner of a motel in the florida keys called police after seeing the suspects picture on "america's most wanted." several suspected immigrant smugglers are behind bars after polic

what we're seeing now is the second and third generation, abdul mutallab is a classic example of third generation, are going to cause us more problems than we thought. chris: what do you mean by third generation? >> the third generation, the people who are recruited by the internet, the pakistani nationals in britain, american muslims as joe is saying and people have thought that's not as bad of problem. and guess what? it may be. chris: the near-term threat. a guy, at falls church a in yemen. he was directing nadal hasan and directing the christmas bomber. is there someone in the -- is there someone in the chute right now coming at us receipt now that people think? >> there may well be. he was talking to him. we haven't yet proved that he was directing them. he was inspiring them. >> they think he was operational. >> they do? >> they do. >> not that i've ever -- but i think the bottom line -- chris: does he have a whole bunch of recruits coming at us? >> that's the mystery here. that is what they're trying to understand. they got to go back through all this information and reanalyze i

wayne gretzky, kareem abdul-jabbar and barry bonds. they've all won the a.p.able player awards four times in their respective sports categories. >>> this weekend las vegas is a high-tech haven. firms are showing off their trendiest smartbooks, laptops, and lots of devices. hln's joe carter is there and takes a look at something that soon you may not be able to do without. >> reporter: the big news here, tablets. lenovo has one. among the big news, tablets. tell us about the tablets. >> a tablet is like a small computer that has a touch interface, like a touch phone or iphone. it's bigger. you can actually read your web sites and stuff on it. it's something you might take into the kitchen or the living room, sit on your couch and read your e-mail, look at blogs and stuff like that. the one that we saw is the u-1 from lenovo. it's a tablet, but it fits on to a little keyboard portion that is a separate computer. and when you snap it on there, when you snap it into its little keyboard, it switches control over to the keyboard and you can type. it's kind of weird

with all of the measures currently in place, how did abdul mutallab aboard a u.s. bound aircraft? joining us now to talk about this is counterterrorism expert charles allen. mr. allen, thank you so much for coming in today. >> thank you very much. >> shannon: 47 years experience in the cia for you. several years with the department of homeland security. we know there are many working around the clock 24/7 protecting this country, but they've got a huge job to do. how does something like this slip through? >> well, they have a very hard job and it is seven by 24 and i worked seven days a week when i was at cia and when i was at homeland security just to help fight the terrorist threat. this has been a whole ten years of terrorism. you've got to remember a guy named rah seem tried to blow up lax, los angeles airport about ten years ago, now, we have attempt to bring down an airliner. we've built a very strong intelligence architecture over the past eight years, we've built a very strong homeland security architecture, i'm very pleased with what we have, but it's not perfect and mass

you have an obsession with paula abdul. she is leaving "american idol." >> she will end up on an -- on another number 1-ranked show. here is the downside. we had to traitor to north korea for the two girls because kim jong il's fancying himself a broadway singer. they think she is the only judge sympathetic enough to go over there and tell him he has a future. >> you are one of a kind. >> that is why we got the girls. we treated her to p'yongyang. bill: you never know what drives anybody. >> it is a career move. >> ♪ hello larry ♪ >> there was another show called "valerie." that is what it was called. she asked for too much money and sandy duncan is planning balladry. you have to tuck away your ego and thank god that you have the job. it gets cold up there. if i quibble with you too much, next week, it is penelope ann miller time. >> i feel ridiculous. bill: if she available? coming up, miller sounds off on kim jong-il and press secretary robert gibbs. >> i am watching his daily press conferences and he has an eye patch and

abdul maal lab from getting on the plane. >> we see mr. abdulmutallab was on the radar last may when the united kingdom revoked his visa to travel from britain. the national security agency, cia, national counterterrorism center and homeland security had pieces of this puzzle. nobody put the information together. he bought a ticket for cash. he boarded an airplane in amsterdam without a checked bag and had explosives in his underwear. what got in the way? >> first of all, when the british turned down mr. abdulmutallab for a visa because of immigration concerns. he put on his form a school that he wasn't -- that didn't exist. that was not related to terrorism at all. we had the information throughout the course of the summer and the fall about al qaeda in the arabian peninsula's plans to carry out attacks. we had information about umar farouk but didn't have any type of information that really allowed us to identify mr. abdulmutallab. the system did fail. everybody -- a lot of people buy their tickets in africa with cash. that is the way th

abdul halik, a member and businessman, is now spokesman for the mega mosque project.ow, we're not allowed in. >> it's not secret at all. the doors are quite open. it's just they do not engage with the media and that's why it's not known to the people. their philosophy is you should have islam within you in such a way it should reflect from you. >> reporter: but that peaceful image does not sway tablili critics. >> there are a number of people who have become terrorists, who have become suicide bombers, who are closely associated with tabliki yjimet, including the leader of the london 7-7 bombers, mohammed sidique khan. so an association between what they are teaching and the terrorists and the suicide bombers. >> reporter: the fbi, french intelligence, is looking at tabliki yjimet because of its potential links to terrorism, fundamentalism, its potential influence, and people are scared. >> people need not be scared. they have investigated for a long time. what have they found? there are millions of people following this organization. do you not think after all that t

cbs news has learned that british intelligence has confirmed what the terror suspect umar farouk abdul mutallab told investigators. that close to 20 other young muslim men were being prepared in yemen to use the same technique to blow up planes. >> the bottom line here is there are hundreds and hundreds of these terrorists around the world that have gone through training camps not only in afghanistan and pakistan but in yemen and other countries that want to attack us in the united states. >> but this family from finland says they will keep flying and trust that security is doing their job. >> we have to live our lives. >> reporter: he says if not, then the terrorists have won. >> karen brown, cbs news, newark, new jersey. >> friends of the suspect say he's a good person and meant no harm at the airport. >>> here in maryland, police are trying to track down a man potion as a fire inspector. police are warning business owners, the man pretended to be a fire official in order to get inside then steal property. police say the man has already gained full access to at least six businesses i

and what didn't happen, avery, one of the issues as we look, trying to dig into the background of abdulb. clear he came from an affluent family yet is using this court-appointed attorney for this trial in detroit. why? >> yeah. big time lawyer. the chief of the public defender's office in the u.s. district court, brooke, will be handling the defense. by? because the family has a lot of money, fwhaut doesn't mean he does, and the fact is, that merriam seefrd, the chief public defender and all federal courts have them. richard will tell thaw, too. he's one into that also in new york. the same thing. he will have competent legal representation. i think, however, the defense realistically, brooke, is going to be very difficult. what's he going to do? flying in for a pistons game? there is nothing. >> what is his argument? the best defense art? >> you know what? the question that precedes that, brooke, will he even cooperate with his defense lawyers? there's a question about that. but there are so many witnesses. there is so much evidence involved in this case, that the best the defense can

and, indeed, that was exactly what happened in the case of abdul mutallah. he had provided some valuable information to law enforcement officials in the hours immediately after his capture, and we surely would have obtained more information if we had treated this foreign terrorist as an enemy belligerent and had placed him in the military tribunal system. instead, once he was read his miranda rights, given a lawyer at our expense, he was advised to cease answering questions and that's exactly what he did. that poor decision making may well have prevented us from finding out more of yemen's role in training terrorists and more about future plots that are underway in yemen targeting american citizens, in this country or abroad. good intelligence is clearly critical to our ability to stop terrorist plots before they are executed. we know that lawful interrogations of terrorist suspects can provide important intelligence. to charge abdulmutallab in the civilian criminal system without even consulting three of our nation's top intelligence officials simply defies

you have some kind of fixation with paula abdul. now, paula's leaving american idol. know if that's the greatest career move. >> she'll land on her feet. no doubt she'll end up on another number one ranked show where she can show up two days a week a little loaded for ten million a year, that's not fair, billy. the down side to the north korea story, we have the trade paula to north korea for the two chicks because you know, kim jong-il fancies himself a broadway singer ♪ give my regards to broadway . >> they say she's the only judge sympathetic enough to tell him he has a future. >> you're one of the kind. >> that's how we got the girls out of there. we trade paula to pyongyang. >> you never know what lives anybody. >> it's an mcchain stevenson hello larry move. >> i remember valerie harper had rota and another show called valerie. it was called valerie for god's sake ♪ >> she asked for too much money the next week i'm watching valerie, sandy duncan is playing valerie. you know, at some point you've got to tuck your ego away and take the chuck and thank god you've go

umar farouk abdull mutallab boarded the plane despite the fact he might pose a threat.as no warning sign pointing to an imminent attack. republicans continue to attack president obama's response to that attempted bombing. >> clearly the system didn't work. we had a problem in terms of why abdulmutallab got on that plane. there's no smoking gun piece of intelligence out there that said he was a terrorist, he was going to carry out an attack against the aircraft. we had bits of pieces of information that didn't give us the clarity we needed to be able to map it and atash it to abdul ma tag lab. what we need to do as an intelligence community, as a government is be able to bring those pieces of information together so we prevent mr. abdulmutallab from getting on the plane. >> we need to take the politics out of this. but there's no question the president has down played the risk of terrorists since he took office. he is investigating the cia rather than to build them up. he is not focused on building the security and intelligence apparatus in our country. the last administ

there are a million pele out there like the nigeria >> reporter: omar ruk abdul mutall, the nigeriannt with explosives in his underpants, who put qaeda back on the p. he stued arabic last summer at th language school in sanaa. it seems a sanand civilized ple of learning, now tainted by the actions of onnotorious pupil. ose teacher say he was smart the best in the ass, not a man to blow up a plane mid-flit. >> ( translated like the whole rld i was wrong about him. amsterdaairport was wrong about him. he waslways smiling. >> reporter: sming, like the friely former bodyguard of the wods most wanted man. who now lives qutly in this dirt poor capital city, ere al qaeda stilinspires young men to wage war agnst the west. >> lehrer: now marret warner looks at what the yen terrorism conntions mean for guantanamo dainees. >> warr: ever since taking office, president oba has worked to nor his pledge to shut the prison at guantanam bay, cuba. but his januy 2010 deadline has already ipped. w the apparent connection between the suspect in t christmas day pl has raised a new hurdle. nearly 100 yeme

jennifer lopez, ben stiller, benicio del toro and paula abdul. let's start with jennifer. >> yes? what prompted you to come out to this? >> well, just like everybody else, i've been watching at it home with my family and incredibly moved and just saddened by everything you're seeing. there's something inside you that just says, you know, what can i do? you know, where can i use my energies. you know? and that's why. >> larry: ever been to haiti? >> i never have, no. >> larry: i imagine you might be going soon. >> maybe. >> larry: yeah. paula, what brought you here? >> the same thing. just the overwhelming despair and families not knowing who's a live and not being able to even be accounted for. seeing all that is just -- >> larry: this is what people in entertainment can do. give their time and help people send in money. benicio, are you moved by this? >> of course, yeah. >> larry: to see all this tragedy. >> yeah. and also, probably also moved about how long the process to get it to become better is going to take. it's a long race in my opinion. >> larry: you've been there, ben.

abdul? >> let's have the meeting, which is happening in about 20 minutes. let's have that meeting and then we will let you know of this issue came up. >> no reaction on the clash? >> i will take the question. i don't have anything in my book. >> do you have any plans to send ambassador came to north korea? >> ambassador king? he doesn't have-- has no plans to go to north korea. >> do you think ambassador kaine will attend the future six-party talks? >> ambassador king is our ambassador at large for human rights in north korea. obviously ecolab rates vary closer with ambassador steve bosworth and ambassador sung kim where they have very complementary roles. they are in the region on a regular basis consulting with our partners but his role is different than the six-party process. >> when ambassador king visits south korea next week, wilham besser king discuss with the south korean government about the north korean human rights issues? >> yes. >> also, he will have an interview with the north korean defectors and south korea? >> yes. >> and also he will have

peacekeepers trying to board a flight in somalia, apparently with a device very similar to that of umar abdul mub. so the question is if we put all of our effort, start focusing exclusively on yemen what's going on in those other franchise areas like somalia, this is a multitiered threat. >> so complicated. but we've known for a long time about afghanistan, obviously. pakistan. now yemen. yemen number two in the amount of money it was given in the pentagon's counterterrorism program. but, $67 million just in the big picture, that doesn't sound like a lot. where do you think the united states needs to be focusing those counterterrorism dollars? >> well, i think most importantly, we have to look at yemen and we have to understand why al qaeda has managed to flourish there. the two main reasons, obviously number one the arrival of a group of ex-saudi guantanamo bay detainees who were released in 2007, who have really given a big jump-start to this organization. we have to try to go after those folks. but number two, most importantly, why has al qaeda managed to achieve a base there? the reason i

. >> suarez: it's been almost a month since umar farouk abdul- mutallab allegedly tried to blow up northwestflight 253. since then, the debate over how to keep the flying public safe has intensified, and a chief focus has been the use of so- called "body scanners." >> we currently have 40 machines >> suarez: top security officials have sped up deployment of the scanners. currently, there are only 40 machines in 19 of the 450 commercial airports in the united states that follow t.s.a. security procedures. 450 more will come online this year to screen passengers for items concealed under layers of clothing. 350 of those were ordered with recently allocated funds. the machines cost upwards of $150,000. but there are concerns from those who claim that the health and privacy of travelers would be at risk. there are two kinds of machines. the first, millimeter wave, is a booth that uses harmless electromagnetic waves to create a three dimensional image. the other kind, a backscatter machine, takes a double x-ray to create a two-sided image. dr. mahadevappa mahesh, chief physicist at johns hopkins

what happened, it appears another man, not abdul mutallab was handcuffed, someone suspicious, we have earlier in the week, two toerattorneys aboard e flight who saw something and denied by government officials, here is what they saw. >> the dog found something in one individual's bag and they took this individual away into a room and then about 45 minutes or an hour later they brought him back out, put him in handcuffs and took him away, so, we don't know if it was just to take him to another area to question him further, if he was arrested, we're not really sure. >> not arrested. he was not arrested he was released. >> that's what they're federal agents are saying. >> shortly there of. >> anything they're saying is slightly suspect, it took this many days, that was a week ago this happened and took them this many days to come out and confirm lori haskell's story she told on tuesday they had seen the other man taken away in handcuffs. interestingly, they told us another part of the story, back at check-in in abbimsterda, they saw mutallab accompanied by a well-dressed man, they though

is overwhelmed with the relevant information that even when you get information about umar farouk abdulutallab, it is there among hundreds of thousands, not millions of names, and you do not have enough people to deal with it. therefore, the watchless have to be reduced to the most known ineffective criteria that judges' behavior but not political affiliations. on the watch list, senator ted kennedy was on it. nelson mandela was on it. for god's sake, why do we have these people on this list? if you have, hundreds of thousands of names on this list, you will not have enough manpower to go through the list and detect the actual suspects that need to be put on the no- fly list. host: our guest is the executive director for the american- islamic council of relations. if you want to ask him questions, the numbers are on your screen there was a poll put out about the topic of profiling. it shows that 59% favor russia best ethnic profiling force -- favre racial-ethnic profiling. guest: whenever we go through this difficult and challenging time, he motions will be high and people may have a kn

first abdul from north carolina. good morning. caller: how you doing this morning. you in this - i think it was a poor choice of words. you can just about know what's in a man's heart. only god knows what's really in his heart but senator reid is trying do the right thing and he just made mistakes. steve, i want to say one last thing. the lady that called you last sunday. her name was patty. i think she really disrespected the program when she came in and she got about 3-5 minutes. i think that was wrong. you have an excellent show and then, the lady from california, called the president a punk. i think when you hear that type of commentary from anybody, you know you - i think you should say, look this is very disrespectful. you don't have to agree with what the president says but don't call him a punk. >> it's a fine line in an open forum. caller: that was extreme. one last thing i want to say. i'm a muslim. i have family members service all the wars from maybe possibly during the civil war. i served this country and my wife and i, we do have a program once a week.

at the amsterdam airport, abdul mutallab was subjected to the same screening as other passengers. he was required to show his documents, including a valid u.s. visa. his carry-on was x-rayed. he passed through a metal detector. but it cannot detect the kind of explosives in his clothes. the screening technologies that might have detected these explosives are in use at the amsterdam airport, but not at the security check. -- he passed through. most airports in the united states do not yet have this technology. there is no silver bullet to securing the thousands of flights domestic and international. it will require significant investments in many areas. that is why, even before the christmas attack, we increased investments in homeland security and aviation security. this includes $1 billion in new systems and technologies that we need to protect our airports -- more passenger and baggage screening and more advanced explosive detection capabilities, including those to improve our ability to detect explosive used on christmas. these are major investments and they will make our skies

at the amsterdam airport, abdul mutallab was subjected to the same screening as other passengers. he was required to show his documents, including a valid u.s. visa. his carry-on was x-ray. he passed through a metal detector. but it cannot detect the kind of explosives sewn into his clothes. the screening technologies that might have detected these explosives are in use at the amsterdam airport, but not at the security check. he passed through. most airports in the united states do not yet have this technology. it will require significant investments in many areas. that is why, even before the christmas attack, we increased investments in homeland security and aviation security. this includes $1 billion in new systems and technologies that we need to protect our airports -- more passenger and baggage screening and more advanced explosive detection capabilities, including those to improve our ability to detect explosive used on christmas. these are major investments and they will make our skies safer and more secure. as i announced this week, we have taken a range of steps to impro

at the amsterdam airport, abdul mutallab was subject -- subjected to the same screening as other passengers. he was required to show his documents, including a valid u.s. visa. his carry-on was x-ray. he passed through a metal detector. but it cannot detect the kind of explosives down into his close. -- dewn into his clothes. the screening technologies that might have detected these explosives are in use at the amsterdam airport, but not at the security check. he passed through. most airports in the united states do not yet have this technology. it will require significant investments in many areas. that is why, even before the christmas attack, we increased investments in homeland security and aviation security. this includes $1 billion in new systems and technologies that we need to protect our airports -- more passenger and baggage screening and more advanced explosive detection capabilities, including those to improve our ability to detect explosive used on christmas. these are major investments and they will make our skies safer and more secure. as i announced this week, we have taken

that abdul screwed up in making this device work.d as helen said a lot of people the president and his administration simply blew it. would he agree with that? >> i don't think i'm going on a limb the president said there was a systemic intelligence failure. yes. >> the average person would say they just blew it. is that going too far? >> i don't know what the substantive difference between the two are. >> okay. so it's the same thing, basically. >> i think the president quite clearly said that a failure of our intelligence service happened in allowing what we saw on christmas day to potentially transpire, absolutely. i think the president said that about a week ago. >> does the president take any permanent blame for that. did he believe he did not pay enough attention to these issues? >> no. i don't think that's the case, no. >> so the fact that he had this incredibly full plate did not, as we say, distract him from spending the time needed? >> we spent an awful lot of time talking about -- you've asked me a lot of questions most of

remember, paula abdul is out, ellen degeneres is in. >>> they logon and linger.e house customer who takes up a whole table and feels no reason to move. some businesses were once all about cracking down on the campers who might not spend any money. now theare trying to lure these laptop loiterers. jim handly reports. >> reporter: call them camp e-squatters or the new loiterers. they are crowding coffee houses with their laptop computers, some for hours on ends. how long have you stayed? >> oh, i'm embarrassed. i stay like 1 hours sometimes. >> reporter: really. this medical studentrrives here early at adams morgan. she uses another word to describe herself and her fellow computercampers. >> you look for a place. who will get up first. i feel like a vulture. >> reporter: owners notice business backing out the door. >> people come in. they would see seats available but no tables available. people have this idea if you see a table, they are waiting for somebody or that's their space so we can't really intrude on it. >> reporter: with tables slow to turn over they dec

questions on this topic after the holiday, the fbi had an opportunity to interrogate omaumar farouk abdulmutallab. they got intelligence that was transmitted back to officials throughout the government. this was done by experienced fbi interrogators. that is all i have on that. >> 50 minutes is not too long >> that is information i have someone to pull up. >> it says the national security team were advised on the decision to try to mark not as a enemy combatant -- not to try a umar farouk abdul mutallab as not an enemy combatant. >> i did not see that. >> if you reduce the rate of payments on student loans, will that make the loan more expensive overtime? >> there will be briefing on this and a few minutes that i would point you to. as kjared and you go through that. >> house central was changing the way washington works to the campaign? why is he a real arguing the case now. ? is this going back to his original argument during the campaign? this is not a new idea for him. >> i am positive that not all those ideas have been heard and implemented. you will hear him talk about reforming was

even absent the intelligence information that we apparently had back in the fall and august about abdul even absent that specific information about his radical muslim aspirations he fit a certain profile. he was young, single, he was a male, he was muslim and he was ruthless. he had no permanent connections to his home country. he traveled the world extensively. he was paying everything with cash, and yet this person got a temporary visa to be here in the united states for a two-year period? there are already existing regulations in the state department and in federal law with that flag this kind of person as someone who should be inadmissible and should not be getting a visa in this country. but there is a major opposition to profiling of any kind and mind you this is not simply racial or ethnic profiling. it has to do with a certain type of behavior and a certain type of class profile so this is a theme of both invasion and in defense of internment. we have a very precise and very specific about what we mean when we say profiling and both of those books i think are in great detail wha

screening and perhaps even under certain circumstances, i would argue those circumstances existed in the abdulnology, whole body imaging, other things. all of that made perfect sense. which leads to the second point that is since they are so obvious and common sensical, why are they just now being instituted nine years, almost, after 9/11? eight years after the creation of t.s.a., seven years after the creation of the department of homeland security, and what became the national counterterrorism center, it was initially the terrorist threat immigration center, and six years after the creation of the direct rat of national intelligence? if there are -- if there is anything good, it seems to me, that comes out of the christmas day incident, aside from of course the obvious, the fact that the plot was foiled, not of course through our own government, but through the heroism of the passengers and the ineptitude of the terrorist, it's that, the incident, has served again to concentrate the national mind on the urgency of the terrorist threat. and i would close with two additional quick thoughts. on

person in the civil courts, i think, having access to the information that, by most accounts, that abdul muttallab was giving up about al qaeda in yemen would be beneficial to us, but once he was put into the court system and given miranda rights, he stopped giving us information that could be valuable to us and make us safer. i think they have made policy decisions that were mistakes relative to our safety. i think it was a mistake to try khalid sheik mohammed in new york city. that said, he has also done other things. the administration has maintained some of the practices of the bush administration, which is a good thing, so, you know, i will leave that for others to assess. i do know this, i'm confident in saying after the attacks of september 11, president bush and and vice president cheney made us safer as a country. i want to make a point about being as bad as the current administration in congress, when republicans ran the mace, it's just not factually accurate. taxes were lower under president bush and the republicans in congress. democratic congress and this administration prop

testified before the senate concerning the attempted christmas day attack by the nigerian terrorist abdul batalla. this testimony was troubling indeed and left some wondering why the administration is subjecting this terrorist to criminal prosecution instead of gaining the valuable intelligence that is needed in our war on al qaeda. admiral dennis miller, the director of national intelligence, stated quite frankly that the christmas day bomber should have been questioned by the detainee interrogation group. he went on to say that neither he nor other important intelligence officials were even consulted on the matter. this raises several troubling questions. first, why were mir annika rights given to the obvious terrorist after only a brief session of questioning which predictably ended his cooperation? second, at what level of authority was this decision taken to treat him as a criminal defendant instead of an unlawful enemy combatant? who made that decision? i asked this question last night of john brennan, the president's senior counterterrorism advisor three times. i asked him the ques

here with a guy who is flanking him to his right side, almost in every video from 2005 forward, named abdul ashami, this is a guy i thought of, but he's right next to al-libbi. one of his bagram escapees. they had been grooming him to be the next al-libbi and he's served as the lap dog for him, right there at his side. so you start to see him on these various poses and he's instructing tactical training, which i don't think he has any ability to instruct, but everything comes to a head in november-december of 2005, when he releases a letter to abu musab al-zarqawi. now, if you know, there's three letters that were written from al qaeda's senior command to zarqawi. one was from sawarhi, and it was a desperate plea for money, information, news. they said brother, we know you're doing great things in iraq, you're also killing a whole lot of people, could you stop that and by the way, i've written a number of books, this is what zawahiri was saying, and we feel irrelevant and could you send us a couple hundred thousand dollars, because we're broke. well, that had no impact. zarqawi kept going.

might al-loki because he's written things in the past criticized, he has been -- he was declared by abdul the faisal -- ceramica arrested for prostitution krug to the eckert -- charges. speed there's a lot of things we could be talking about al-loki and from the communications standpoint would be great for us as a nation to be talking about to undermine this guy. but we have a problem when somebody like this comes up that we always seem to elevate. what we need to do is look at these people as human beings because it is their human nature that is their weakness and that is how we exploit them and get them. they are not 10 feet tall, none of them. >> thank you. i think this has been a great session, and sitting and listening to this reminds me of all the names i don't recognize, it reminds me of the importance for why we need to study these things and it's shocking to me eight or nine years into this conflict there is still not an organized format and organized funded way to study this and i think it's shocking if you look back during the cold war there is a whole science of criminology an

abdul from boarding the plane.reality it was our enemies poor bomb wreckings skills in the courage of passengers and crew that save the flight. but as before the problem arose from a lack of action on the table intelligence. was a hesitation to interfere and one person travel plans, policies are arising from that or failure to connect the dots and individual failure somewhere or systemic failure. perhaps all. it's clear eight years after 9/11 there's still holds in the counterterrorism system. al qaeda has openly declared war on our country. they have attacked us and are still attacking us. this administration cannot wish that reality away and i don't think they intend to. the threat cannot be negotiated away. but we must do is acknowledge this reality and work to vote and interrupt the attacks and destroys the organizations that are at war with us. it is a different kind of war but real nonetheless. and this hearing can help us get insight into the failure that occurred and what we need to do in the future but unt

while the terrorist abdul was known in a terrorist identity database, he was not placed on a separate screening database and his u.s. visa was not revoked. clearly we did not connect the dots to notice that a man on a u.s. watch list also held a current u.s. visa. this is not the first time terrorists have obtained u.s. visas. several of the 9/11 hijackers did so as well. we need to strengthen the visa application process. we need to streamline the intelligence gathering and sharing process. we need to end the visa lottery. we need to ensure that terrorists are turned around before they get to the airport, before they even attempt to go through security. were it not for the quick action of passengers on that flight, 288 innocent lives would have been lost. passengers should not have to rely on last-minute heroics in order to travel safely. this administration must get serious about addressing this problem. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. for what purpose does the gentlelady from maryland rise? ms. edwards: to address the house

abdul from boarding the plane. in reality it was our enemies poor bomb wreckings skills in the courage of passengers and crew that save the flight. but as before the problem arose from a lack of action on the table intelligence. was a hesitation to interfere and one person travel plans, policies are arising from that or failure to connect the dots and individual failure somewhere or systemic failure. perhaps all. it's clear eight years after 9/11 there's still holds in the counterterrorism system. al qaeda has openly declared war on our country. they have attacked us and are still attacking us. this administration cannot wish that reality away and i don't think they intend to. the threat cannot be negotiated away. but we must do is acknowledge this reality and work to vote and interrupt the attacks and destroys the organizations that are at war with us. it is a different kind of war but real nonetheless. and this hearing can help us get insight into the failure that occurred and what we need to do in the future but

also concerned that the administration may begin to bargain or propose a plea deal to this terrorist abdultallab in order to obtain additional information. i feel this would set a very dangerous precedent for would-be terrorists in order to potentially have their jail time reduced. it is my understanding that the policy of the united states is not to negotiate with terrorists. we should comprehensively and effectively interrogate terrorists to gain the information that we need, not to negotiate with them for it. the only true way to gather this information is through an extensive interrogation of the terrorists by highly trained intelligence personnel. the definition of an extensive and comprehensive interrogation is not a 50-minute questioning while the terrorist is being prepped for surgery such as abdulmutallab underwent. extensive interrogations are conducted over a sustained amount of time with members of various government agencies included. they incorporate individuals from defense intelligence and have elements of uncertainty and surprise. this means that those conducting the inter

the father of umar farouk abdul mutallab went to our embassy in lagos and told us he thought his son was a terrorist. he was afraid of that. the folks in lagos road cables back and said this guy may be a terrorist. the guys back home said ok, so we are going to put him in our database, and we did. everybody was doing the bureaucratic thing. but the system does not really work. it only works if you have inquisitive people back here, going beyond just shuffling paper from one paul to another. -- from one pile to another. you do not have that kind of initiative. everybody is basically doing cya work, and it is nobody's responsibility. i do not think the system works. i think we will see a re- evaluation of that system very soon, and trying to plug in at this notion. the model that may work is what the israelis have been doing in terms of air transport. they take on people, usually at universities, law students, medical students at the airport, have them talk to all the passengers coming in. those kids are young and very curious. if the story does not make sense, they keep on asking ques