23-year-old umar farouk abdulmutallab bought his ticket with $2800 in cash on december 16th. he checked no bags. he boarded the plane in lagos and cleared security there as well as in amsterdam where the flight made a stop-over. the jet was on final approach to detroit when abdulmutallab allegedly tried to ignite explosives concealed under his clothing. authorities said he used a syringe to inject triggering chemicals into a small bag of crystal even explosives known as pcpn. instead of blowing up, the bag simply caught fire then passengers and crew subdued the suspect. abdulmutallab was treated for burns and sent to a low-security federal pli son in michigan, about 45 miles south of detroit. on sunday homeland security secretary defended the government's handling of the case. >> the system worked. everybody played an important role here. the passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action. within literally an hour to 90 minutes of the incident occurring, all 128 flights in the air had been notified to take some special measures in light of what had occurred on the

what we know about this particular case with umar farouk abdulmutallab is he already had a visa to enterhe united states. if my memory is correct, he obtained last summer, about six months ago. if you look of the time line, he already had a visa. at this point of his father had gone to the embassy in november. as you point out, he was already clear to come into the united states. the question is, once the father went to the embassy, was that really sufficient for the state department to take another look at that be set and decide whether it is still going to be good or ought to be canceled. host: new iberia, louisiana. daniel on the democrats' line. caller: good morning. this whole conversation -- the fortress america attitude. hello? guest: yes, go ahead. caller: no one has asked the question why people are willing to die and are so dedicated, what have we done to them? now, with this guantanamo situation it is basically to keep it so they could never testify in court as to why they did it. and the republican party mainly represents corporate america. corporate america and our military

yemen saying it was tightening restrictions on student visas like the one that allowed umar farouk abdulmutallab to end the country. we had a guest this morning on "washington journal" from the heritage foundation. homeland security policy analyst jena mcneill talking about the attempted airline hijacking an attack. it runs about half an hour. we will show it to you now. spirit our guest jena mcneill with the heritage foundation which is a home in security policy analyst. thanks for joining us. >> guest: thanks for having me. >> host: katydid ministrations response to what happened on christmas day trip to the administration took a look at this and find admitted that we really do have a terrorist threat in this country, and that reed they really wanted to emphasize that we're going to start to work on the problem. i think that's important but i also want to see more details about how they're actually going to make changes. not just by adding security at airports. just starting to tackle our intelligence problems. >> host: how do you think that best will be resolved or worked towards? >> guest: h

the umar farouk abdulmutallab case may have exposed. several took issue of obama's reference to bits of information available within the intelligence community. saying that what might appear clear in retrospect was far from conclusive at the time. abdulmutallab father didn't say he was a terrorist let alone he was planning an attack. i'm not aware of magic piece of intelligence would suddenly have flagged this guy. nobody name even had november as a killer en route to america let alone something somebody withheld. intelligence officials said there were reference to nigerian in some national security intercepts of communications involveds the locke and others but never mentioned the suspect by name. comments on terror attack and president's handling of it. several stories in the paper include some talking about the incident. some reshowing the picture of umar farouk abdulmutallab that was shown over the last few days. you can see it on your screen now. la grange, texas. mike on our independent line. go ahead. >> caller: yeah, good mornin

what we know about this particular case with umar farouk abdulmutallab is he already had a visa to enter the united states. if my memory is correct, he obtained last summer, about six months ago. if you look of the time line, he already had a visa. at this point of his father had gone to the embassy in november. as you point out, he was already clear to come into the united states. the question is, once the father went to the embassy, was that really sufficient for the state department to take another look at that be set and decide whether it is still going to be good or ought to be canceled. host: new iberia, louisiana. daniel on the democrats' line. caller: good morning. this whole conversation -- the fortress america attitude. hello? guest: yes, go ahead. caller: no one has asked the question why people are willing to die and are so dedicated, what have we done to them? now, with this guantanamo situation it is basically to keep it so they could never testify in court as to why they did it. and the republican party mainly represents corporate america. corporate america and our militar