yet in late 2009 the task force decided to transfer seven yemeni detainees back to yemen. only one of him was ordered released by the court and his case was not appealed. now, my questions are common december 2009 did you personally believe that it was a good idea to transfer detainees to yemen and secondly you told us before that you were trying to test the system by sending a group of detainees back in december of 2009. do you think testing the system when the result of a failed test could be an attack on americans was a good idea? and lastly, in hindsight, in light of the fact that the government is winning all of its habeas appeals would you have changed any of of the task force transfer decisions and do you think dangerous detainees were transferred as a result of the task force process? >> senator, thank you and i do very much understand of force in our conversations both my conversation with you as well as the ongoing discussions i've had with members of the committee staff that the substantial concern about the detainees from yemen and the transfer decisions that w

he'd taken a yemeni police delegation on a tour of elaine's and other hotspots. was working them, trying to get unfettered access to al quso and what he knew. but then he was told he wouldn't be allowed to return to yemen. ambassador bodine denied his visa. >> i mean, john was not rational on the topic of ambassador barbara bodine. i mean, "livid" would be putting it mildly. i mean, one can't forget that... that john was... he was very american, but he was also very irish. >> interviewer: and that means? >> that means when he got hot, he got hot. and he was hot; there's no question about it. i think he felt that... that she was on the wrong side. >> narrator: ambassador bodine would not grant frontline's request for an interview. she was quoted in the "new yorker" magazine: "the idea that john or his people or the fbi were somehow barred from doing their job is insulting to the us government, which was working on al qaeda before john ever showed up. this is all my embassy did for ten months." for weeks, the ambassador had been making the case against o'neill, eve

the yemeni president says that he will soon return home from saudi arabia. he addressed the nation on state television, saying that soon they would be seeing people from the state capital. the attempt on the president's life came in june and followed months of massive protests against his 33 years in power. elections were set for 2013. qantas is having a bit of a bumpy ride as it sets a new corporate order. >> 110800320 aircraft. super-jumbo and other long-haul aircraft, announcing job cuts. they want to focus more on asia. >> qantas is currently making big losses high. the chief executive said that major steps are needed. >> this is a historic opportunity. creating a platform for future business. >> they also said that they are setting up a new premium airline based in asia. the changes will come at a cost. up to 1000 jobs could go in australia. what's making a giant oil discovery in the north sea, it may be one of the 10 largest ever finds on the continental shelf. >> under the floor of the north sea, much larger than previously thought, these are connecte

the ship, which had a crew of several yemeni nationals and at least one somali, was headed to yemen. and officials believe it was bringing goods to the terror group. one official acknowledged there weren't many arms on board when the ship was stopped, but said it's common for crews to throw weapons overboard when military vessels approach. >>> back at home, the nation continues to mourn the five victims of saturday's tragic stage collapse at the indiana state fair. at a memorial service on the state fairgrounds yesterday morning, hundreds gathered to remember friends and family who were lost. afterwards, the state fair did reopen, however, a fireworks display and scheduled concerts by janet jackson and lady antebellum were canceled, officials continue to investigate. >>> now here's a look at some other stories making news "early today" in america. surveillance cameras rolled a as group of teens looted shelves inside a maryland store. the flash mob robbery was carried out without any resistance from store employees, they watched as approximately three dozen teens snatched and stuffed

live from moscow you're watching our two yemenis and now with our top story russia has refused to back the call made by the u.s. and the e.u. urging syria's leader to step down moscow believes the president also should be given time to implement promised reforms and that the country should be left alone to sort out its political future meanwhile twenty people have reportedly been killed by government troops in the latest fighting charges riff an ocean is in damascus with more. russia's position has always been clear steer it definitely needs reforms detainer is definitely needed required in this country but president assad needs time to do that through this trip. promoting democracy the real being agreeable support them rejecting the use of force against real population in the future all they have. to be concerned. but on the other hand we. know where the international community to continue to think pressure on the brink of inferior but not pushing the situation in a corner just so the people of syria who have. all the right to determine the people who are the ruling story of this. sho

the ship, which had a crew of several yemeni nationals and at least one somali, was headed to yemen. and officials believe it was bringing the goods to the terror group. one official acknowledged there weren't many arms on board when the ship was stopped. but said it's common for crews to throw weapons overboard when military vessels approach. >>> back at home, the nation continues to mourn the five victims of saturday's tragic stage collapse at the indiana state fair. at a memorial service on the state fairgrounds yesterday morning, hundreds gather to remember family and friends that were lost. afterwards, the state fair did reopen. however, a fireworks display was scheduled and that was canceled. and it included concerts by janet jackson and lady ante bell up, all of those were canceled. officials continue to investigate whether the storm-related incident could have been prevented. >>> in kentucky, the fbi has arrested a man wanted in australia for allegedly strapping a fake bomb to the neck of an 18-year-old girl. authorities say the august 3rd attack was part of an alleged extort

i yemeni president ali abdullah saleh was vowed to return to his country that's two months after leaving for saudi arabia to be treated for injuries sustained in a shell attack on his palace compound yemen's that been torn by six months of massive street protests calling for cell a to be ousted and there are fears that his return might spark a civil war the u.s. has frequently urged president saleh to step down over concerns that a renewed conflict could encourage the yemen based wing. the syrian government siege of the port of latakia has continued into its fourth day despite demands from neighboring states that damascus stop shelling civilians and withdraw its forces from the country's towns and cities according to the u.n. representatives of both syrian gun boats and tanks are shooting at anyone seen trying to escape so far thirty four people have been confirmed dead and house to house arrests are made by government troops the un human rights council plans an urgent meeting on the syrian crackdown but the u.s. claimed it is not going to demand president assad's resignation all it want

for attacks add weight to the concerns over the whereabouts of dozens of young men from somali and yemeni neighborhoods in minneapolis and detroit. u.s. officials say many ended up in terror training camps overseas and the u.s. has now lost track of them. a 2008 recruitment tape for a al qaeda-connected group in somalia features an anonymous young man speaking with what seems to be an american accent and phrasing. >> we have a global mission -- >> reporter: and, just today in minneapolis, another suspected terror recruiter, mahamud said omar, made his initial appearance in federal court, charged with steering young men from the twin cities to terror camps in somalia. >> so, brian, chilling to hear these warnings. any concrete signs of attacks? >> no concrete signs. u.s. officials say they're on full alert. so far, none of the so-called chatter from terrorists. which means nothing is going on or, as was the case ten years ago before 9/11, the plotters are operating in silence. >> everybody watchful tonight. thank you, brian ross. >>> an eerie scene in norway. almost a month after the mass

but on the republicans i poured a lot more in the yemeni government over going to they're both well funded you know we had a chance here as well apropos of political spending and the consequences there are political spending and actually of i think probably more austerity this is the fourth night of deadly riots the united kingdom prime minister david cameron finally after three days came home from vacation and said ok and now nothing is off the table nothing off the table for police to confront the rioters presumably you know machine guns are ok eleven hundred people have been arrested some serious damage is done i mean this is this is awful stuff this reminds me and i remember there was the watts riots the detroit riots. but the conservative government's austerity measure some would say share some of the blame for this one of the one of the riders this is the ghetto this is the slums they don't care about us there's no jobs and so want to benefits there's injustice we had enough we had enough we had the victoria jones on this program last night in london forty four million pounds it's li

the girl i have a relationship with is a tall and slender yemeni do.we come from opposite ends of the planet. opposite political ideologies. i remember thinking if there's room enough for all these people there is room for me too. [applause] a couple more? are we good? [inaudible] >> we may run out of books because there are so many of you and it is such a wonderful book. they have a green form you can fill out if you want the book. aaron will come and sign them so you will still get a copy. he will come to your house. >> do i get the last word? i could mention every person by name but that would take too long. my family and coaches and teaching friends and students, you probably won't nowak and i can't put into words how much it means to you are really here. it is a beautiful place. a strong sense of community. i want you to know from the bottom of my heart i appreciate you coming out. thank you very much. [applause] >> this event was hosted by book passage bookstore in california. find out more by visiting bookpassage.com. [bell ringing] >> notice th

yemeni president may soon be allowed to return home. that following a hospital stay in saudi arabia. he is recovering from wounds suffered following a bomb attack on his palace that happened back in june. >> arthel: also a close call for passengers aboard this jetblue flight. the plane made a successful emergency landing at long beach airport friday after pilots reported fuel and brake problems. >> eric: more than 30,000 people turned out for a prayer rally in houston, texas. governor hick perry leading the crowd in a prayer for the nation at the event. he's come under criticism, but the supporters say the event was planned long before his name was popped up as a potential republican presidential candidate. >> arthel: as washington plays the blame game today on who is responsible for the nation's historic credit downgrade, many are wondering if this is a wake-up call for lawmakers to set aside partisanship and to begin to compromise for the good of the country. i know what you're thinking, is that possible at this point? joining me, pre

i saw with my own eyes special operations forces training yemeni. >> how do you know? >> unless they were yemenis dressed up as blond, blue haired guy with kind of scruffy beards. but i could be wrong, totally wrong. why don't we talk about any of that, particularly since yemen has been pretty cooperative? why do we have to be secretive about this constantly? >> i won't go country by country but i'll tell you that, you know, if you've seen how one country treats an american presence, you've seen how one country treats an american presence. they are all difference. the politics are nuanced in every place that we go and mostly we yield to another nation's sensivities. i had a great conversation with the head of a country's military a few years ago when i said look, we can scale it to any level of visibility we want. we can be from invisible to very high profile. and he said no, i think low profile is good. i said ok, no one will know we're here. he said, i didn't say invisible, i just said low profile. he wanted intelligence agents from other countries to know we were in

i think the yemenis are the more predictive. they take the family out to chew.some also to bring your wife and child to chew within. yemen grows it and somali community, up there in the poorest countries on earth, it's been so much of its foreign exchange to import which have climates much more suited to cot. so, this one of the reasons. a former day care try just stamp out cot in the 1970s and '80s but not because he was concerned about health or well being of his people but because so much of the money was flowing out of the country into antagonistic governments through the hands of countries that somalia was at times at war with. so he saw this as funding his enemies, rightfully so. but khat since then has even, tranninety since the outbreak of the civil war has exploded. and this is exclusively i would say, besides cars, khat is what pirate spend money on. >> host: you didn't find i can see the appeal, i see why people spend less hijacking ships and come back to chew khat on the farms? >> guest: it has to be chewed fresh. it comes in every day of flight 6 a.

yemeni president has been in saudi arabia since june 3rd when an attack on his compound reportedly leftis body burned. he's in recovery threatening to return. but in his absence they're moving forward to his transition. president assad in syria is keeping his vicious crackdown on anti-government protesters going clinging to power despite international calls for his resignation. right now the hunt for colonel gadhafi continues. that's going to do it for me today. i'm going to see you back at 11:00 a.m. eastern time tomorrow and every weekday for that matter. you can follow me on twitter. contessa brewer is here to pick things up for the next hour. >>> it's good to have you back in the studio. we continue to take a close watch on the situation in libya where the rebels are taking tripoli. the search continues for any sign of gadhafi at this hour. richard engel is standing by live. stay with us. we'll be right back. for a while now, you've been taking an antidepressant. but your cloud of depression is still with you. maybe it's time to ask your doctor about adding seroquel xr to your antid

in whatever country you're in, and someone from -- going from khartoum to yemen pretending to be a yemeni, it would be like someone from alabama going to scotland and thinking that they were going to fit in. it's not going to happen. also, i'm sorry, but they look different. not to the uninitiated, but it is another indication of our, of our racism that we now think, oh, gee, africa, is it a country or is it a continent? oh, yeah, you can send someone from khartoum to somalia, and they'll fit in just right. but here we have this absurd situation, and it undermines everything. those of you in this room who are old enough to remember the cold war will know that we cozied up to and supported, propped up less than pleasant dick dictatorships in our war against communism. and i'm afraid we're back to the same thing now. um, your question, where does it leave the icc? >> well, the icc, i mean, do you see it actually moving forward in terms of prosecution? and also just in terms of accountability for human right violations, what can we expect in that region? >> well, the problem is that, you kno

al qaeda is gaining strength down there in yemeni. for those of you who are history buffs, if you look at the queen of sheba's area down along the coast, on what they are clearly doing is trying to set up routes in the old smuggler routes into the heart of saudi arabia. you can understand the freedom of maneuvering that would give them. i think they are gaining strength, but they will start running into trouble with the tribes that do not like the sort of islam that they promote. how shall bob -- they have made a connection with al qaeda which is not looking good for somalia. there is a lot of competing interests and whether or not they will be able to maintain. moving further over, there is al qaeda due west out of sudan and south of the sahara. they are strong, but there are a number of forces, local and european allies, working together against them. they also have their sleeper sells in europe and they are trying to do that -- sleeper cells and trying to do that here. they are losing in some, gaining in some, and the epicenter has

carlos joined with the yemenis extremist facilitated by their american counterparts in nashville.we have since discovered that the mosque wrote the recommendation letter carlos need for the school in yemen. we also discovered that school function as the intake fraud of radicalization trade of western jihad. from what i understand the fbi had been following carlos before he left national, continued to follow him after he came back in yemen. when carlos was arrested in yemen, in october 2008 he was interviewed by the fbi agent based in nashville even before the u.s. embassy was alerted about his arrest. according to amnesty, the fbi was alarmed about what they learned from carlos. we wish to have -- we wished they could have told us his family about what they learned. if we knew have series this had become we could have put in every effort to prevent the tragedy in arkansas before it even happened. my son was arrested in yemen. my family cried out for help to bring my son back to america, for the american government. we got in touch with the united states embassy, the state departme

radicalized inside the united states like hasan who was in contact with another american that the american yemenit radicalized by they and it is internet. these are the people that are very difficult to detect because they act on their own they are not going to be able to pick up the 9-11 attack, they can doe a lot of harm on americans on a day that is bound to be a serious sort of and somber remembrance of those we lost. >> it's not just the assumption or maybe there is chatter or who knows what's going on behind the scenes, but they found evidence in bin laden's house, he wanted something spectacular to take place on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. isn't that right? the officials were quick to follow-up and he was thinking about it and he espoused it, but there was no indication that no indication they should operationalize it. i remember when i was at the white house. you worry about big public gatherings and days of national significance that provide targets. they seem to have had a hard time pulling off a small scale individual attack. the guy in time square who couldn't set the bomb off and

attacks add weight to the concerns about the unknown whereabouts of dozens of young men from somali and yemenineapolis and detroit. u.s. officials say many ended up in terror training camps overseas and the u.s. has lost track of them. a 2008 recruitment tape for an al qaeda-connected group in somalia features an anonymous young man speaking with what seems to be an american accent and phrasing. >> we have a global mission -- >> reporter: in minneapolis another suspected terror recruiter, mahmoud saed omar, made his initial appearance in federal court, charged with steering young men from the twin cities to terror camps in somalia. u.s. officials are now being described as on full alert given the approaching 9/11 anniversary. so far there's been very little of the so-called terrorist chatter, which means either there's nothing going on, or perhaps as was the case ten years ago before 9/11, the plotters are operating in silence. brian ross, abc news, new york. >>> the cdc has confirmed that a killer amoeba is to blame for the death of a 16-year-old girl in florida. courtney nash died saturday t

attacks add weight to the concerns about the unknown whereabouts of dozens of young men from somali and yemeni neighborhoods s om minneapolis to detroit. many ended up in terror training campmpoverseas and that the u.s. has now lost track of them. just monday in minneapolis, a suspected terror recruiter mahmoud said omar made his initial appearance in court charged with steering young men from the twin cities to terror camps in somalisomalia. u.s. officials tell abc news as of now there is very little evidence from electronic surveillance about an attack in the planning stages which means nothing was coming or as was the case ten years ago the plotters are now observing operational silence. >> because there's not that much chatter. >> maximum security communication is one way to go or it could be there's nothing going on. >> that's it. brian, thank you, as always. >>> let's turn now to josh elliott for the other top stories developing right now. good morning, josh. >> good morning to you, robin. we're going begin with the developing story from libya where rebel forces seem to be closing in on

al-shabaab aspirated in small you and support to aqap and sent fighters to battle the yemeni governmentas well as client to battle flag of al qaeda in iraq. finally a al-shabaab and neighboring uganda one year ago targeted westerners, killed 74 people including one american. james, president of him as director of national intelligence said quote some official and that al-shabaab remains -- may expand its focus from fighting to control somalia to plotting to attack the u.s. homeland. that convinced me of the necessity to launch a careful examination of that thread. dozens of expert committees have interviewed what is real and that al-shabaab leaders hoped tax against america including retaliation for killing osama bin laden must be taken seriously. yesterday can the president's nominee to take over the national counterterrorism focused on al-shabaab and with a major threat they are to the world into our country. with a large group of muslim americans come a strong operational partnership with al qaeda leaders in pakistan and yemen, al-shabaab now has more capability than other to strike

country, a very diverse arabic population with lebanese, syrians, iraqi, palestinian, jordanians, yemenis and many, many others and these proud americans make up a very important and vibrant part of our community and, you know, before i came to the congress, i actually had the great honor and privilege to serve as secretary of state which was two of my primary responsibilities was running the state elections but secondly serving as the motor vehicle administrator. i worked very, very closely with the arabic community to make sure they were registered to vote. if they were eligible and then issuing their driver's licenses and i remember running into a bit of a buzz saw when we had some female members of the arabic community who didn't want to have their driver's licenses photos taken unless they were completely taken. no, if you're going to have a michigan driver's license which is used as a fundamental part of your identity, you have to have a picture taken. and we tried to be very sensitive having a female clerk take the picture after-hours in a book room, et cetera, but we want to be ve

of particular concern to me were the transfers of a number of yemeni detainees during 2009 when the intelligence community was already warning about the dangerous security situation in yemen. of course, we all know that al qaeda and the arabian peninsula makes its home in yemen and that several former g. gmp itmo detainees hold positions in aqabp. they were directly responsible for the christmas day bombing attempt and their efforts will continue to inflict harm on -- excuse me, their efforts to harm our nation will continue. matt acknowledges the difficulties and acknowledges the task force did not get every recommendation right. just as the previous administration did not get every recommendation right. he also shares my personal view that the guantanamo bay should remain open so that we are not transferring any more detainees as the recidivism rate continues to grow. i appreciate the many conversations and briefings he has had with my staff on those transfer issues. i appreciate his willingness to continue to discuss these issues, and the need for a long-term detention policy, even after taki

back more to the local islamist agenda where they are focused more on regimes they hate, pakistan, yemeniand others. the global agenda has lost a lot of its credibility and force in part because a large majority of the people they have killed since 9/11 has been muslims. >> that is positive and up lifting. it begs the question is it time to stop worrying quite so much? >> well, first of all, i want to clarify. i am not jeff's favorite person. sidney harmon was jeff's favorite person. let's be honest about that. >> that is very true, and i wisher here. >> and i wisher here, too. no, it is not time to stop worrying. i don't think he said that. >> i am missborpting -- i am misinterpreting him to provoke you. >> that is not going to work. turning airplanes into weapons of mass destruction is not going to do well here. we have hardened cockpits, u.s. flight, air cargo screening and so forth. i think everyone here gets that. they almost made one. abdul mataleb almost got through christmas day, 2009. i believe that specific kind of attack is less likely to happen. however, i think that al qaeda,