Obama calls jet incident a 'serious reminder'

As an Al Qaeda group claims involvement in the attempted airline bombing, the president vows to target plotters 'anywhere.'

by Josh Meyer and Peter Nicholas

December 29, 2009

Reporting from Washington

President Obama said Monday that the U.S. would press ahead with its offensive against terrorist cells worldwide, just minutes after an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Yemen claimed responsibility for the airplane bombing attempt over Detroit on Christmas Day.

"This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland," Obama said in his first comments about the incident aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam. "We do not yet have all the answers about this latest attempt, but those who would slaughter innocent men, women and children must know that the United States will do more than simply strengthen our defenses.

"We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us -- whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks."

Obama's remarks, delivered at a Marine base near his Hawaii vacation home, also marked the first time the administration had indicated it did not think Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab acted alone.

The 23-year-old Nigerian managed to smuggle a packet of highly explosive PETN aboard the flight, along with some liquid in a syringe that he used as a detonator, authorities said. After the explosives caught fire, he was overpowered by passengers and crew.

"We will not rest," Obama said, "until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable."

Also Monday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano acknowledged that the suspect -- who had a valid U.S. visa -- had evaded measures meant to identify potentially dangerous travelers and detect explosives.

After discussions with the White House, Napolitano took to the airwaves to try to minimize criticism over remarks Sunday in which she said the security system had worked after the incident -- without dwelling on the failure to keep Abdulmutallab off the plane.

When asked Monday on NBC's "Today" show whether the system had "failed miserably," she answered: "It did."

"No one is happy. . . . An extensive review is underway," she said.

In his remarks, Obama outlined more aggressive security measures being taken, including enhanced screening and more federal air marshals on international flights. He said an investigation had been ordered to "determine just how the suspect was able to bring dangerous explosives aboard an aircraft and what additional steps we can take to thwart future attacks."

Even before Friday's attack, the United States -- in conjunction with the Yemeni government -- had stepped up its counter-terrorism operations in the country, seeking to combat a rapidly expanding Al Qaeda network there.

Abdulmutallab has told authorities that the terrorist organization trained him and provided the explosives.

The Yemeni foreign ministry confirmed Monday that Abdulmutallab visited several times -- ostensibly to study Arabic at a school in Sana, the capital -- including one trip from early August until early December of this year.

"Authorities are currently investigating who he was in contact with," the ministry said. But one Yemeni official said it might be hard to trace Abdulmutallab's steps, given how many students come from all over the world to study Arabic and Islam in the country.

Monday brought numerous developments, including a statement from the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claiming the would-be airline attack was retaliation for Yemeni airstrikes Thursday against suspected militants.

Anwar al Awlaki, a radical U.S.-born cleric, may have been killed in those strikes, although family members said he was alive. Awlaki had communicated with the accused gunman in last month's attack on Ft. Hood, Texas, that left 13 people dead.

In its communique, the Al Qaeda affiliate said Abdulmutallab had coordinated the plot with members of its group, using explosives they manufactured. The website posting was titled "The Brother Mujahid Omar Farooq al-Nigeri's Operation," and it included a photograph of a smiling Abdulmutallab in front of an Al Qaeda banner.

The statement also boasted that Abdulmutallab had "infiltrated all the advanced, new machines and technologies and the security boundaries in the world's airports . . . and he made all of what they spent on security development techniques a [new] heartbreak for them."

Acknowledging that the attack had not achieved its goal, the statement said, "We will continue on this path until we achieve success," according to a translation posted by the NEFA Foundation, an organization of counter-terrorism specialists.

A U.S. counter-terrorism consultant said the communique appeared to be authentic.

In Amsterdam on Monday, authorities said they were investigating whether an accomplice had helped Abdulmutallab board Flight 253 without a passport -- possibly by claiming he was a Sudanese refugee.

In Nigeria, authorities interviewed Abdulmutallab's family and friends, and searched several locations in the expanding global investigation.

In Britain, Scotland Yard was looking into who might have helped radicalize Abdulmutallab during his years as an engineering student there, ending in 2008.

In Detroit, a scheduled hearing in Abdulmutallab's case was canceled without explanation. But prosecutors continued their efforts to get a DNA sample from him to match against evidence taken from the plane.

And in Washington, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee announced it would investigate lapses in airport security.

"What we know about the Abdulmutallab case raises two big, urgent questions. . . . Why aren't airline passengers flying into the U.S. checked against the broadest terrorist database, and why isn't whole-body scanning technology that can detect explosives in wider use?" said Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), the committee chairman.

Congressional staffers also said the committee would investigate what steps U.S. officials took to investigate Abdulmutallab after his father -- a respected Nigerian banker -- shared concerns six weeks ago that his son's radicalized behavior and ties to extremists could pose a threat.

A State Department official said Monday that the father had been "frantic" that Abdulmutallab had gone to Yemen, and had been hoping U.S. officials could help find his son.

The suspect's name was added to a broad informational database of 550,000 possible threats, but not to other warning lists that would have either barred him from traveling to the United States, subjected him to more intensive searches and questioning, or even led to cancellation of his U.S. visa.

Republicans lashed out at the Obama administration Monday for what they called lapses in security and an inadequate response to the Christmas attack.

Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) said Obama had waited too long to address the nation, missing a crucial opportunity to explain the threat and prepare travelers for the inconvenience of intensified security checks.

He also blasted Napolitano for giving "contradictory messages" on the incident and on the larger threat posed by Al Qaeda and affiliated militants.

Administration officials conceded that Napolitano's Sunday comments had touched off a controversy, prompting a high-level discussion about how the secretary could "clarify" her remarks.

But with Congress preparing to hold hearings on the incident, Obama advisor David Axelrod said he hoped Republican lawmakers would not try to exploit it for partisan advantage. "Several of them were out there bashing before they even got briefed," Axelrod said. "There are people who want to turn every issue into a partisan issue. That's a shame."

Axelrod said the administration had long focused on Yemen as an emerging terrorism trouble spot. "Our people are well aware of the threat there," he said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-plane-terror29-2009dec29,0,3521839,print.story

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North Korea says it has custody of American who entered illegally

Activists believe the man arrested is a missionary who went into the Communist country on Christmas Eve.

The Associated Press

December 29, 2009

SEOUL

North Korea announced today that it has custody of an American who entered the country illegally on Christmas Eve. It was the first possible word from Pyongyang about a 28-year-old Arizona man who activists say sneaked into the reclusive country to raise international attention to its dire human rights situation.

The American was being investigated after "illegally entering" the country through the North Korea-China border last Thursday, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said in a two-line dispatch.

The report did not identify the American, but activists believe he is Christian missionary Robert Park, who they say slipped across the frozen Tumen River into North Korea from China on Christmas Day bearing letters that urged leader Kim Jong Il to resign and free all political prisoners.

"I am an American citizen. I brought God's love. God loves you and God bless you," Park said in fluent Korean as he crossed the border, according to Jo Sung-rae of the Seoul-based activist group Pax Koreana. Two North Korean defectors -- one from South Korea and the other from China -- accompanied Park to the border, Jo said.

South Korea's Unification Ministry said it cannot confirm the person cited in the KCNA dispatch is Park but noted that it had no intelligence indicating that other Americans went into North Korea illegally in recent days.

North Korea is one of the most reclusive nations in the world, allowing few citizens beyond its borders and strictly regulating who is allowed in.

Park's uncle called North Korea's confirmation good news. Manchul Cho said he worried North Korea would execute his nephew without ever acknowledging his presence.

"My fear was that they say they don't know anything about it and may get rid of him secretly," he told The Associated Press in California. "Once they recognize it, that's really good."

The detainment comes just months after North Korea freed two U.S. journalists arrested in March and sentenced four months later to 12 years of hard labor for trespassing and engaging in "hostile acts." The women were released in August to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who journeyed to Pyongyang to negotiate their freedom.

Washington and Pyongyang have been engaged in a standoff over North Korea's nuclear ambitions but resumed dialogue after President Barack Obama's special envoy visited Pyongyang earlier this month.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Monday that the Swedish Embassy in Pyongyang has offered to try to get information about Park for the U.S., which does not have diplomatic ties with North Korea.

"We are concerned by these reports and we are looking into them," Kelly said in Washington.

The Rev. John Benson, pastor at Life in Christ Community Church in Park's hometown of Tucson, Arizona, said he was happy to hear Park was alive.

"To hear it confirmed is great," Benson said. "He did this to bring awareness to the situation in North Korea ... Drastic situations call for drastic measures."

North Korea holds some 154,000 political prisoners in six large camps across the country, according to South Korean government estimates. Pyongyang has long been regarded as having one of the world's worst human rights records, but it denies the existence of prison camps.

North Korea's criminal code punishes illegal entry with up to three years in prison, but it's unclear how the North would handle Park's case.

Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Dongguk University, said the North would likely expel Park soon because detaining him for long may bring international attention to his cause.

Analyst Paik Hak-soon of the private Sejong Institute think tank predicted Pyongyang will sentence Park to a lengthy prison, then free him.

North Korean border guards apparently detained Park soon after he entered the country, Jo said. One of the two guides who helped Park said he heard North Korean guards speaking just after he crossed.

The two Koreas remain locked in a state of war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. North and South Korea are divided by a heavily fortified border manned by hundreds of thousands of troops. The United States, which fought on the South Korean side during the 1950-53 war, still has 28,500 troops stationed in the South.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fgw-korea-missionary29,0,4479970,print.story

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China executes Briton said to be mentally ill

Akmal Shaikh had been caught smuggling heroin. His family says he suffered from bipolar disorder.

by John M. Glionna

December 29, 2009

Reporting from Beijing

The Chinese government today executed a 53-year-old British citizen for drug smuggling, ignoring international pleas for clemency and claims by supporters that he was mentally ill, the British Foreign Office said.

Akmal Shaikh, a father of three with no criminal record, was the first European to be executed in China in half a century, activists say.

He was executed in Urumqi, in China's far northwestern Xinjiang province -- where he was caught in 2007 on a plane with nearly 9 pounds of heroin -- after a flurry of final-hour pleas to save his life. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had also spoken to China's prime minister about the case.

British officials claim that Chinese judges did not take into account family claims that Shaikh suffered from bipolar disorder and failed to order a psychiatric evaluation, as required by law.

Shaikh reportedly learned of his fate during a visit by two cousins Monday. It was the first time that family was allowed to visit the condemned man in two years.

Though many parts of China are switching to lethal injections, Shaikh was probably shot in the head, activists said.

"Drug smuggling is a grave crime. The rights of the defendant have been fully guaranteed," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said at a news conference last week.

Analysts call the case a setback in efforts to stem Beijing's use of capital punishment. Each year, China executes an estimated 5,000 people -- more than the rest of the world combined -- for crimes including pornography, corruption and drug smuggling.

"This case certainly sends a message that China is not really interested in listening to international opinion when it comes to criminal cases," said Joshua Rosenzweig, a senior researcher for the U.S.-based prisoner rights group Dui Hua Foundation. "These are things that China sees as being connected to its internal stability. And so the rest of the world is being told pretty clearly to mind its own business. It's a message not likely to be received well."

Others said the case was about more than just a failure of international relations.

"Westerners have a long and disreputable history of seeking exemption from Chinese law for their nationals engaged in drug dealing, going back to the Opium Wars of the 19th century," said Christopher Stone, chairman of the Program in Criminal Justice Policy and Management at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "The Chinese cannot treat this convicted drug smuggler differently from others because he is a British citizen."

In recent years, China has reduced the number of executions after the Supreme Court resumed its review of death penalty cases, but the progress did not affect Shaikh's case, analysts say.

A London-based prisoner advocacy group that has lobbied on Shaikh's behalf claims that he wanted to write a song about world peace and was duped into trafficking drugs by men promising to help him fund the recording effort.

When he was arrested on a flight to Urumqi from Tajikistan, Shaikh told Chinese officials that he didn't know about the drugs and that the suitcase wasn't his, according to the group, Reprieve.

Legal experts here say most Chinese support the death penalty. "When government propaganda says that the death penalty is good for the country and lowers crime rates, they believe it and don't ask questions," said Teng Biao, a China University of Political Science and Law professor.

Teng quoted a Chinese saying often applied to the death penalty: "Kill a chicken, scare off the monkey."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-china-execute29-2009dec29,0,885431,print.story

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California sees drop in officers killed in line of duty

California recorded a decline in the number of law enforcement officials who died in the line of duty, according to a new report.

According to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund , eight lawmen were killed in California so far this year. In 2008, the number was 13, and in 2007 it was 10.

The decline came despite a bloody gun battle between Oakland police and a rape suspect earlier this year that left four officers dead.

According to the fund, 124 officers were killed so far this year, down from 133 in 2008. The fund found that the 2009 numbers are the lowest in half a century.

Florida and Texas each recorded more officer fatalities -- nine and 11, respectively -- than California, according to the report.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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Hundreds arrested for drunk driving during the holiday weekend

More than 1,400 people were arrested for driving under the influence in Los Angeles County during a weeklong crackdown that ran through the holiday weekend, authorities said.

“With all the Christmas parties and holiday office parties going on, a lot of people are out drinking and driving” said Wendy Soos, the local coordinator for Avoid. “It's amazing how the stats go up around Christmas."

The crackdown will continue through the New Year's holiday weekend, Soos said. In 2008, more than 400 arrests were made on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

The California Highway Patrol, one of the coalition's partners, made more than 200 arrests for driving under the influence on Los Angeles County freeways this holiday weekend. Overall, the CHP made 236 DUI arrests in L.A. County this year.

In Orange County, the CHP made 22 DUI arrests. In San Diego County, the Highway Patrol made 38 DUI arrests.

Statewide, 16 people died in traffic accidents, the same as last year, according to the CHP.

Now, law enforcement is gearing up for another crackdown with New Year's weekend ahead. Said Soos: “We just step up the DUI enforcement in order to save lives.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/12/hundreds-arrested-for-drunk-driving-during-the-holiday-weekend.html#more

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Polanski in 'full comfort' at chalet, thanks supporters

Roman Polanski, in his first public comments since being arrested in Switzerland three months ago, thanked his supporters and said he has "full hope" in the future.

Polanski posted a message on the website of French author Bernard-Henri Levy, who has been a supporter of the director as he fights extradition to Los Angeles in connection with child-sex charges involving a 13-year-old girl more than three decades ago.

"I would like every one of them to know how heartening it is, when one is locked up in a cell, to hear this murmur of human voices and of solidarity in the morning mail. In the darkest moments, each of their notes has been a source of comfort and hope," Polanski wrote. "These messages have come from my neighbors, from people all over Switzerland and from beyond Switzerland -- from across the world."

Polanski is under house arrest at his luxury Alpine chalet after being released from prison earlier this month. He is under electronic monitoring but is allowed guests and can work on his film. In his statement, he said he was in "full comfort" at the chalet.

Swiss justice officials must still decide whether to send Polanski back to L.A. -- a decision that won't be made until sometime next year.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/

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Iranian Americans are urged to stand and be counted

More accurate figures are sought for the 2010 U.S. census, and opposition to last June's disputed in Iran is expected to help.

by Raja Abdulrahim

December 29, 2009

Before comedian Peter the Persian took the stage and joked about his immigrant father's mispronunciation of English obscenities, Nadia Babayi stepped to the front of the room and struck a more serious tone.

She told the group, gathered at the Brick Building in Culver City for a cancer fundraiser, that about 300,000 Iranians were counted in the last U.S. census. She said the numbers were grossly underreported.

"All of us know we are more than that. We are in the millions," Babayi said. "As long as our amount is low, we will not have a voice."

Since February, Babayi, a U.S. Census Bureau partnership specialist, has been making the rounds at Iranians' events, handing out fliers, making pitches and allaying fears in both English and Persian.

Her efforts are part of a first-of-its-kind outreach campaign urging Iranian Americans to specifically identify themselves as Iranian, instead of some other ethnic category, in the 2010 census.

Before the Persian American Cancer Institute event, Babayi attended a business network mixer in Irvine. Her assistant spent hours the next day at a women's empowerment conference. Babayi also has become a regular guest on KIRN-AM (670), known as Radio Iran, speaking about the benefits of an accurate census count, including better access to social services and more political influence.

But in June the campaign received an unexpected boost when millions around the world turned out to protest the disputed reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Outraged expatriates and Iranian Americans suddenly found themselves alongside non-Persians at demonstrations.

The opposition green movement may have failed to achieve its goal of political change, but it prompted much of the world to rally behind Iranian people in their struggle for reform.

"It has created a sea change in the way Americans view Iranians," said Reza Aslan, author of "How to Win a Cosmic War," who moved to the U.S. from Iran in 1979. "No doubt about it, it's now cool to be Iranian."

Some hailed it as a sort of coming out for Iranian Americans. The hope is that the effects of that change will be seen in the census count next year.

"It was a sort of boost or a shot in the arm," Babayi said, because people were encouraged to say that they were Iranian. They weren't hiding anymore."

After the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, many Iranian Americans and expatriates chose to keep a low profile in what some saw as a hostile environment. The 1991 film "Not Without My Daughter" was blamed for helping to cast a negative light on Iranian men. Starring Sally Field, it depicted an American woman and her daughter fleeing Iran and an abusive husband. And in 2002, then-President Bush declared Iran a member of the "Axis of Evil."

"I started thinking . . . we need somebody to step up and change our image," comedian and actor Maz Jobrani said in a short video he filmed this fall for an online Iranian news site. "We need like an Iranian James Bond or like a Persian Jonas Brothers, you know, like the Jabbar Brothers."

Then after the June 12 presidential election, a worldwide movement sprang to life, supporting the people of Iran for standing up to their government. Bloody clashes between government soldiers and demonstrators were seen by millions around the world.

"Iran is suddenly cool; you got people like U2 playing 'Bloody Sunday' and dedicating it to Iran, and Bon Jovi, a guy out of New Jersey, is singing in Farsi . . . and you're proud, you're proud to be Iranian," Jobrani said. "The green movement has changed the way Iranians are viewed in the world."

After the 2000 census, Iranian Americans expressed disappointment with what they saw as a low count of 388,000 throughout the country, Babayi said. Some joked that there were at least that many Iranians in Westwood alone.

Members of the community point to a number of reasons for the low count, including fear that cooperation with the census could lead to immigration or tax problems.

Some may have also been hesitant to identify themselves as Iranian or were unaware that they could.

Iranians are labeled white by the U.S. government and in 2000 Suzi Khatami, a producer and host with Radio Iran, didn't know she could categorize herself as anything else on the race question by making the category "other" or writing in Iranian American or Iranian.

Aslan, who grew up in Northern California, said he spent the 1980s or '90s telling people he was Mexican. Others said they were Italian or Persian.

Jobrani, who is on a comedy tour called "Brown & Friendly," said it wasn't until he reached high school that he realized that some of his countrymen were trying to hide behind the term Persian.

The tactic eventually became fodder for his stand-up routine:

"We've learned how to trick Americans. We say we're Persian. It sounds a lot nicer and exotic and confuses Americans," Jobrani would say. "We're always like 'No, no I'm not Iranian. I'm Persian like the cat, meow. . . . I am not Axis of Evil, no, no. I am Persian like the rug. I am soft."

But in the wake of the green movement, there are indications that is changing

"Few Iranians these days go through the fiction of calling themselves Persian," Aslan said. "Calling yourself Persian is a way of distancing themselves from Iran."

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-iranian-census29-2009dec29,0,3885226,print.story

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Crime reporters face deadly perils

As many as 12 reporters and media workers have been slain this year. The steady intimidation of journalists has caused many of them to pull their punches and refrain from writing the whole truth.

by Tracy Wilkinson

December 29, 2009

Reporting from Durango, Mexico

Journalist Bladimir Antuna put up with the death threats. He wasn't afraid of dying, he told friends, but he really didn't want to be tortured.

The government assigned bodyguards to the crime reporter for El Tiempo newspaper in Durango, but as time wore on and there were so many other crises, the escorts were withdrawn. A couple of days later, he was snatched by gunmen; his strangled, bruised body was discovered at nightfall.

With the corpse was a hand-scrawled message: "This happened to me for giving information to soldiers and writing too much."

Antuna, who died last month, was the third journalist killed in Durango since May and one of as many as 12 reporters and media workers slain in Mexico this year -- a chilling trend that has made this country the deadliest in Latin America, and one of the deadliest in the world, for reporters.

Raging drug violence and rampant corruption have posed innumerable perils for journalists. Most insidiously, steady intimidation has caused many to pull their punches and refrain from writing the whole truth.

"It is a disservice to society," Durango broadcast reporter Ruben Cardenas said of what has become much-practiced self-censorship. "It is disinformation."

Journalists represent just a tiny fraction of the more than 15,000 people killed since President Felipe Calderon launched a military-led offensive against well-armed drug cartels three years ago. But no other killings cut so deeply at the heart of free expression in this fledgling democracy.

Like most crime in Mexico, virtually none of the slayings of reporters have been solved.

Journalists in Durango, as in much of Mexico, say they are threatened both by narco-traffickers and by the heavy-handed pressure of state government, which controls lucrative publicity contracts and instructs the pliant owners of media companies not to highlight negative news.

Sometimes, the journalists say, it is not clear where one threat begins and the other ends.

The grim distinction that journalists in Durango make is that the government threatens, the narcos act. Are they, in the end, in cahoots? One of the Durango reporters killed this year had just published a story saying that if he turned up dead, the mayor of the town of Santa Maria del Oro was responsible. He was slain the next day.

"We are living in such a situation of impunity that journalists get killed, and nothing happens," said Gabriela Gallegos, who runs her own small news agency in Durango.

Gallegos said the local press shied away from coverage of Antuna's kidnap and slaying. Many reporters in Durango are terrified, interpreting the message left with Antuna's body as a warning that they all had to temper their work.

Gallegos spoke out, however, with pointed criticism of the state governor and other local authorities. Four days after Antuna was killed, Gallegos says, her home was broken into in the middle of the night, her computers and files stolen. She and other reporters tell of being followed and of their phones being tapped.

"I am more afraid than ever, but also more angry," she said. "They" -- and here the "they" is indistinguishable between traffickers and corrupt officials -- "want us to behave as they want, without thinking with our own minds."

In Durango, she said somewhat Aesopically, "even the scorpions are afraid."

"I used to laugh at death threats," she added. "But now you feel fear in your body that automatically detonates."

Durango has become especially violent because drug-gang gunmen known as the Zetas have moved into the rugged region to challenge the long-dominant Sinaloa cartel, which controls the so-called Golden Triangle that grafts together parts of Durango, Sinaloa and Chihuahua states. Yet Durango is only the most potent symbol of the dangers confronting journalists in Mexico.

Last month in Michoacan, Calderon's home state, under siege by a particularly ruthless narco gang that has infiltrated most local government and police forces, Maria Esther Aguilar vanished. A veteran crime reporter and mother of two, Aguilar answered a call, left home and hasn't been seen since. Her writing helped get a mobbed-up police chief fired. She had also resisted demands from other reporters that she join them in accepting bribes from the traffickers and tailoring her coverage to their needs.

In Chihuahua, Mexico's deadliest state, where two journalists have been killed in the last year and four forced to flee the country, two federal investigators assigned to one of the cases were killed this summer.

According to the national Human Rights Commission, 57 journalists have been killed in Mexico in the last decade, and eight are missing. Of 320 complaints filed since 2006 with a special prosecutor for crimes against journalists, which include murder, bombings of newspaper offices, threats and other acts of intimidation, only four cases have made it to court.

Often, the traffickers demand coverage glorifying their exploits, or they may want some of their acts concealed, and they make those desires known to journalists as well.

"If you don't print a narco message from one group, they will punish you. Or the other side will punish you if you do publish it," said one Durango editor who, like many people interviewed for this story, did not want to be identified. "Or the government will punish you for printing anything. You don't know where the threat is going to come from."

International journalist organizations, human rights groups and representatives of the U.N. are all demanding that cases be investigated.

Alberto Brunori, the senior U.N. official in Mexico for human rights, paid a visit to the journalists in Durango to show solidarity and underline the urgency of investigating cases. He was struck by how abandoned and impotent the reporters felt. The state governor was reportedly furious at what he saw as outside interference.

"Impunity creates a vicious circle," Brunori said in an interview after the visit. "You have to break the circle or we do not get out of this. You can't just keep having dead journalists turn up."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-mexico-reporters29-2009dec29,0,6044405,print.story

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EDITORIAL

Screening for terrorists

A Christmas Day incident shows that human error remains the key element.

December 29, 2009

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano wisely has backed off her statement that "the system worked" because a Nigerian terrorist failed to blow up an airliner on Christmas Day. The system decidedly didn't work if an explosive could be brought aboard a plane by a man whose radicalization had been brought to the attention of the United States by his father, a prominent banker. But as Congress and the Obama administration undertake inquests into this near disaster, their primary focus should be on lapses in human intelligence, not technology.

It was only thanks to chance or ineptness that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to quickly detonate a plastic explosive and destroy a Detroit-bound Northwest airliner and the 290 people it was carrying. Abdulmutallab, a recent resident of Britain who says he received training in Yemen, wasn't on a no-fly or watch list and was spared a pat-down search that could have revealed that he was carrying a weapon. Had his name been flagged, more attention might have been paid to the fact that he paid cash for his ticket and checked no baggage.

Actually, Abdulmutallab's mission could have been aborted even earlier. When he purchased his ticket from Lagos to Amsterdam on Dec. 16, a Nigerian official said, his passport and U.S. visa were scanned and his name was checked against a watch list. Despite his father's intervention, Abdulmutallab's name hadn't been added to either a 3,400-name no-fly list or a 14,000-name roster of persons who could be subjected to intensive searches. His name was added to a 555,000-name list of persons considered suspicious but less of a threat. Apparently he would have received greater scrutiny if he applied for another visa. The problem was that he already had one.

This sorry sequence of events recalls nothing so much as the failure of intelligence officials to correlate available data about the plotters of the 9/11 attacks. In both cases the problem wasn't a lack of information but an inability to sift through copious data. But some needles in a haystack are more conspicuous than others. On Monday, President Obama announced a review of the way names are added to watch lists. The answer isn't to load the lists with more names. What is required, at every stage of the process, is alertness to particularly suggestive details -- and, lest abuses occur, periodic reevaluation of names added in the past.

Some experts suggest that this incident demonstrates the need for vastly expanded use of high-technology screening devices. Before Congress accepts that counsel, however, it needs to focus on something that seemingly eluded officials in this case: the human factor.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-terror29-2009dec29,0,7157444,print.story

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OPINION

Middle East quagmire had another good year

Don't bet on things getting any better in 2010 -- or worse, for that matter. Israelis and Palestinians will simply keep on doing what they do best: killing each other.

by Etgar Keret

December 29, 2009

Writing From Tel Aviv

In 2002, at the height of the second Palestinian intifada, a new kind of illegal gambling sprang up in Israel: suicide-bombings roulette.

The rules were simple: People placed bets on where the next attack in Israel would take place. If you got it right, you could make a killing. Naturally, Jerusalem gave the shortest odds. Betting on a bomb going off there seemed like a sure thing. Still, people ruined their lives getting this seemingly solid prediction wrong. Not as many as those whose lives were directly ruined by the bombings themselves, but there were still enough examples to teach us, yet again, that irrational rage is a tough thing to predict. And it's hard to think of another region on Earth that's even half as angry and irrational as the Middle East.

But let's try to simplify our Middle East gamble to one basic question: better or worse?

Which way are things headed in this region? Well, you'd have to be very naive to lay money on things getting better, what with the right-wing government in Israel and the Palestinians on the brink of civil war between militant religious fundamentalists and armed secularists. Plus, with apologies to Tolstoy, there's only one way of being happy on such a disputed and flammable piece of land: a fragile and unstable peace.

Whereas if you want to bet on unhappy, you've got more choices than a Cheesecake Factory menu: an Iranian nuclear strike turning all the guys at my local cafe in Tel Aviv into three-eyed mutants; a third intifada that will set the country aflame; a Hezbollah missile strike from Lebanon. And that's just the beginning. How about a civil war in Israel between Israeli Arabs and Jews? Or maybe a Jewish civil war between the Orthodox and secularists? Or, just for variety's sake, between the million Russian immigrants and the traditional Sephardim?

So if the question is better or worse, the smart money's on worse, right? Wrong. It's a trick question. The best bet is neither of the above.

One of the terms you hear often in the Israeli media, particularly when the condition of victims of violence is described, is "critical but stable." The stable part of the phrase is supposed to hold comfort for the listener but, at the same time, convey some grim news, that this critical condition isn't just going to improve in the near future. It is here to stay.

It's the perfect description of the region. We've spent the last two decades, more or less, in critical but stable condition. Another day, another body. Another day, another bombing. Another day, another checkpoint. Pick the bumper sticker that best fits your political mood.

So here is one solid prediction for next year: Handsome American officials will pay us a few visits, give great hopeful speeches and shake hands with both Arabs and Jews. All the while, we will keep killing each other in the savage yet contained manner we've been perfecting for so many years. We'll keep bleeding, but still, most of us will be around when it's time to place our 2011 bets. Most likely we'll go for the same bet then too.

Etgar Keret is the author of, most recently, "The Girl on the Fridge and Other Stories."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-keret29-2009dec29,0,3221798,print.story

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OPINION

Politics and the no-fly list

The agencies that maintain watch lists have come under withering criticism that rights are being abused, which may have led to the under-inclusion of potential terrorists.

by Gabriel Schoenfeld

December 29, 2009

The case of the alleged Christmas bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, is being called a massive intelligence failure. And the evidence thus far does suggest a possible lapse in the government's management of terrorist watch lists.

But if so, the blame doesn't lie wholly with government agencies charged with maintaining the lists. Some share of responsibility lies with civil libertarian extremists who have ceaselessly lambasted the entire no-fly system.

Maintaining a terrorist watch list is a highly complex task. The problem includes not only assembling a list of potential suspects but distributing the information on the list to visa offices, border checkpoints, cargo facilities and the like in a timely fashion. The correct spelling of foreign names, with all the variants arising from translation, is in itself a highly complicated endeavor. Criteria for inclusion of a subject on a watch list must be established. And then there is the difficulty of training agents, many of them with little understanding of the nuances of places such as Yemen and Nigeria, to operate the system.

News reports suggest that Abdulmutallab's name was added to a government list of people with suspected ties to terrorism in November, after his father warned the American embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, that he had embraced Islamic extremism.

Abdulmutallab was not, however, on the far shorter no-fly list maintained by the FBI, which is why he was able to board without apparent problem the Northwest Airlines flight bound for Detroit. According to testimony before a Senate committee in early December by Timothy J. Healy, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, the consolidated watch list maintained by the FBI currently consists of about 400,000 names. But of these, only about 3,400 have been placed on the no-fly list. In other words, about 396,600 individuals who have a suspected link to terrorism are permitted to fly.

A Justice Department audit last spring found numerous flaws in the terrorist watch system. As new information flows into the FBI, it is required to update the lists. Yet according to the audit, in 67% of the cases it sampled, "the FBI case agent primarily assigned to the case failed to modify the watch list record when new identifying information was obtained during the course of the investigation, as required by FBI policy."

The inevitable complexity of the watch list process guarantees significant errors. On one side lies the problem of innocent people finding themselves on the list: There have been more than a few notorious cases of error, including instances in which federal air marshals were themselves barred from flying. On the other side lies the problem of alleged terrorists like Abdulmutallab being allowed to fly.

Reducing both types of errors is obviously highly desirable. But given the nature of the dangers that the lists are designed to avert, a reasonable policy would tilt toward over-inclusiveness.

And here is where the political context becomes critical. The Bush administration was subjected to withering criticism for the way it managed the no-fly list. The American Civil Liberties Union put the system on its own list of the "Top Ten Abuses of Power Since 9/11," asserting that "the uncontroversial contention that Osama bin Laden and a handful of other known terrorists should not be allowed on an aircraft" has been exploited "to create a monster." In one of several lawsuits the group has filed involving terrorist lists, the ACLU alleged that they "violate airline passengers' constitutional right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure and to due process of law."

Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been one among a chorus of voices that accused the former administration of being far too sweeping, placing "infants, nuns and even members of Congress" on terrorist watch lists. The writer Naomi Wolf has called travel restrictions such as the no-fly list, "a classic part of the fascist playbook" akin to the depredations of Nazi Germany, where "families fleeing internment were traumatized by the uncertainties that they knew they faced at the borders." This was hysteria directed against Bush counter-terrorism mechanisms that the Obama administration has left almost entirely unchanged.

The Department of Homeland Security has indeed received a high volume of complaints about airport screening by individuals attempting to travel. Yet only a minuscule 0.7% of the complaints stemmed from issues relating to the watch lists. And of that 0.7%, about 51% of the complaints led to the conclusion that the individual in question was appropriately on the watch list. Whatever problems exist, the system is not outrageously over-inclusive. Indeed, if anything, the opposite is the case.

We will never know whether fierce criticism from the left had any direct effect on the processing of Abdulmutallab's file, but the political environment is important to consider going forward. The officials managing the watch lists are not eager to be hauled before a congressional committee if they blunder and bar innocent people from getting on flights. But they are also acutely aware of the potential price tag of being under-inclusive.

The problem with over-inclusiveness is that innocent people will suffer major inconvenience and that counter-terrorism resources are wasted. But if the lists are under-inclusive, innocent people can die, and in large numbers. If asked to choose between over- and under-inclusiveness on the watch lists, the passengers of Northwest Flight 253 no doubt would have their preference.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a resident scholar at the Witherspoon Institute and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, is the author of "Necessary Secrets: National Security, the Media, and the Rule of Law," due out in 2010.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-schoenfeld29-2009dec29,0,3289646,print.story

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OPINION

Afghanistan strategy should also focus on improving quality of life

The Obama administration, which has pledged a new and improved approach to development aid, could learn a lot from the experiences of successful social entrepreneurs.

by Stanley A. Weiss

December 28, 2009

The Obama administration has outlined a three-pronged strategy in Afghanistan, focusing on security, governance and economic development. But the implementation of those elements has been woefully lopsided. Since 2002, 93% of the $170 billion the United States has committed to Afghanistan has gone to military operations.

As the country prepares to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, we also need to focus on providing a surge in the quality of life for the Afghan people.

U.S. Agency for International Development workers are tremendously dedicated, but there are not nearly enough of them, which means the agency is heavily dependent on private contractors. There have been some commendable achievements, such as helping reduce Afghanistan's infant mortality rate and rehabilitating nearly 1,000 miles of roads. Still, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton lamented in March, the lack of results for the Afghan people is "heartbreaking."

The Obama administration has pledged a new, improved approach to development aid. Yet USAID has been without an administrator for 10 months, and the president's nominee, Rajiv Shah, has yet to be confirmed. It's now time, with the president's commitment in his West Point speech to "focus our assistance in areas, such as agriculture, that can make an immediate impact in the lives of the Afghan people," to heed the experience of successful social entrepreneurs who, with far fewer resources at their disposal, have achieved impressive progress on the ground.

Take Greg Mortenson, president of the nonprofit Central Asia Institute, or CAI, who over the last 16 years has built or supported 130 schools in remote Pakistani and Afghan villages. These secular schools provide education to more than 30,000 children, the vast majority of them girls. CAI's revenue in fiscal year 2007 were a fraction of what we will spend every day in Afghanistan over the next 18 months.

Or take Sakena Yacoobi, a U.S.-educated public health professional, who returned to her homeland in the 1990s to found the Afghan Institute of Learning, or AIL, now a network of 45 centers in seven provinces that provide comprehensive health and education services. Seventy percent of AIL's staff of more than 400 is female. With an annual budget of $1 million, AIL reaches more than 350,000 Afghan women and children.

Or Connie Duckworth, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, who was so moved by the hardships of the women she met on a visit to Afghanistan in 2002 that she created Arzu -- which means "hope" in Dari -- a rug-making enterprise focused on female weavers that is one of Afghanistan's largest private-sector employers, with 90% of its jobs in underserved, rural areas.

What are some key lessons from these social entrepreneurs' success? First, ask, don't tell: U.S. assistance programs must be tailored to meet local needs, not our own. Over the last eight years, too many well-intentioned U.S. programs have been driven by what America thinks is best, which is how we wasted millions trying to launch a 25,000-acre plantation on soil that was too salty for crops, and initiating cash-for-work construction of cobblestone roads that Afghans rejected because they hurt their camels' hooves. The Afghan people know what they need. Second, invest capital outside the capital -- and devise and direct those projects from the field. Mortenson is successful in part because he spends months every year living with the villagers in the communities his organization serves. That model has not yet penetrated the thinking of U.S. government programs. As Amy Frumin, who served as a USAID worker in Panjshir province, wrote in a June 2009 report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "The vast majority of USAID funds are invested in programs that are designed from Kabul" -- even though more than three-quarters of Afghans live outside the capital. Third, ensure that U.S. assistance reaches the Afghan people. This sounds obvious. Yet last year, the nongovernmental Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief reported that 40% of official aid to Afghanistan goes back to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries. Fourth, make women the focus, not the footnote, of aid programs. It's no accident Mortenson, Yacoobi and Duckworth all target their limited resources toward women and girls: In Afghanistan, as elsewhere, investing in women pays dividends many times over. Women are more likely to prioritize the education, nutrition and health of their families, creating a multiplier effect that lifts entire communities. Finally, approach development as an evolution, not a revolution. As Afghan expert Rory Stewart recently argued in a PBS interview, "Afghanistan is very poor, very fragile, very traumatized. To rebuild a country like that would take 30 or 40 years of patient, tolerant investment."

We should invest in programs that will be sustainable, long-term -- and be prepared to commit for the long haul.

Mortenson called his book "Three Cups of Tea" in reference to a rural village leader's advice that slowing down and building relationships over tea in the traditional way is as important as building projects. As 30,000 more U.S. troops prepare to depart for Afghanistan, let's hope we also have the stomach for 30,000 cups of tea.

Stanley A. Weiss is founding chairman of Business Executives for National Security, a nonpartisan organization based in Washington.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-weiss28-2009dec28,0,1183363,print.story

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From the Daily News

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Who's a hero? Those halting terrorist on Christmas were brave, but does that make them heroes

WHAT is a "hero" these days? The word is thrown around a lot, especially in the broadcast news and the sports worlds. This or that Hollywood star's "heroic" battle with drug addiction; This or that athlete who is a "hero" and legend to his teammates.

There never was a rigid definition of the word in our modern world, but the standards used to be pretty high. Sgt. Alvin York, who single-handedly captured more than 100 enemy soldiers during WorldWarI, was a hero; Audie Murphy, who by himself held off a German tank and infantry attack in World War II, was another.

Some say Sen. John McCain is a hero for surviving his nearly 10 years in a North Vietnam prisoner of war camp. Others say that was courageous endurance, but not heroic. Most of us believe that the firefighters and police heading into the burning Twin Towers on the morning of Sept.11, 2001 were heroes; others say that while they were brave, they had no idea what they faced.

The latest examples are the passengers aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 who pounced upon the failed terrorist whose botched explosion set his clothing on fire. The headlines and broadcast teasers refer us to the "plane heroes" and the "heroes of Flight 253." The naysayers claim it was indeed courageous, but fell well short of the kind of heroics that the passengers of the doomed United 93 showed when they fought terrorists to their deaths on 9-11.

What do you think?

Are they heroes, or merely courageous human beings? Does using the word too often diminish it? Or is there room enough in the world for all of us to aspire toward heroism?

What should be the standards for a hero?

Send your responses to opinionated@dailynews.com . Please include your name, community or city, and a daytime phone number. We'll print as many responses as we can in Sunday's Opinionated section.

http://www.dailynews.com/opinions/ci_14081808

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From the Washington Times

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Key security agencies lack permanent leaders

by Eileen Sullivan ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two federal agencies charged with keeping potential terrorists off airplanes and out of the country have been without their top leaders for nearly a year.

It took the Obama administration more than eight months to nominate anyone to lead the Transportation Security Administration and the Customs and Border Protection agency.

The attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound airliner has prompted a review of U.S. security policies. The acting heads of those agencies -- both created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- will be at the forefront of these discussions.

Bogged down with health care reform, the Senate has yet to set a date to hold hearings for the Customs position. And Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has placed a hold on the president's choice to head the TSA over the senator's concern that the new leader would let TSA screeners join a labor union. This has some Democrats blaming politics for the vacancy.

Former U.S. attorney Alan Bersin is nominated to run CBP, and former FBI agent and police detective Erroll Southers is the president's pick for TSA.

On Christmas Day, alleged terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian who spent time in Yemen, was able to sneak an explosive device aboard his flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, only to be thwarted by the device's apparent failure to work as designed, and aggressive action by other passengers.

Abdulmutallab was not on the government's terrorist watch list -- though he was on a less sensitive and broader database. He was able to maintain a valid U.S. visa despite warnings about him to U.S. embassy officials in Nigeria from his father. Those facts are prompting a broad review of the government's terrorist detection efforts.

"The president is looking for answers on this," Denis McDonough, chief of staff of the White House National Security Council, told reporters Monday in Hawaii, where President Barack Obama is vacationing. McDonough said officials have begun to assemble information related to watch list procedures. As yet, no one has been named to oversee the watch list review, he said.

McDonough defended the current leadership and downplayed the significance of not having the new TSA administrator confirmed, although he said "the president is eager to have his TSA head on the job."

Acting TSA Administrator Gale Rossides is "very able" and "we have a very able team of career professionals at TSA. We have a very able team in the Department at Homeland Security, generally," McDonough insisted.

Some Republicans were more critical.

"Running a security agency with a revolving door is a recipe for failure," said Rep. John Mica, R-Fla.

Michael Chertoff, who headed the Homeland Security Department in the Bush administration, said if the country is going to work on enhancing security, there needs to be permanent people in place at TSA and Customs and Border Protection. "A year is too long a time," he said.

Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to destroy an aircraft, is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Mich. A court hearing that had been scheduled for Monday to determine whether the government can get DNA from him was postponed until Jan. 8. No reason was given.

U.S. officials had warning signs that Abdulmutallab might be a threat.

The embassy visit in which Abdulmatallab's father said he was concerned about his son's radicalization triggered a Nov. 20 State Department cable from Nigeria to all U.S. diplomatic missions and department headquarters in Washington. It was also shared with the interagency National Counter Terrorism Center, said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly.

These concerns landed Abdulmutallab among the about 550,000 names in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, known as TIDE, which is maintained by the NCTC. Other, smaller lists trigger additional airport screening or other restrictions, but intelligence officials said there wasn't enough information to move Abdulmutallab into those categories.

The NCTC, which has responsibility if any visas are to be pulled over terrorism concerns, then reviewed the information and found it was "insufficient to determine whether his visa should be revoked," Kelly said.

According to Yemen's foreign minister, Abdulmutallab was in Yemen from August until early December. He had received a visa to study Arabic in a school in San'a, the Yemeni capital. Citing immigration authorities, the statement said Abdulmutallab had previously studied at the school, indicating it was not his first trip to Yemen.

Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden's family, has been an al-Qaida haven partly because of a weak central government and rugged terrain, affording al-Qaida fighters numerous places to hide. A Yemen-based group, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has claimed responsibility for Abdulmutallab's actions.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/29/key-security-agencies-lack-permanent-leaders//print/

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Illegals may lose tuition breaks

by Jean Ortiz ASSOCIATED PRESS

OMAHA, Neb. | Nebraska lawmakers are set again to consider repealing a law that offers tuition breaks to some illegal immigrants, and the looming debate already is drawing support.

A majority of lawmakers participating in an Associated Press pre-session survey say they support rescinding the offer made after lawmakers fought to override Gov. Dave Heineman's veto to pass the law in 2006.

Of the 33 senators responding to the survey, 18 said they support repealing the measure, while six said they don't. Eight said they're unsure. One senator, Amanda McGill of Lincoln, didn't check an answer but offered a comment asking for more sanctions on businesses.

"Immigrants come here for jobs," she said. "Not for tuition."

The 2006 law benefits students whose parents brought them to the United States illegally. It allows Nebraska high school graduates who aren't U.S. citizens or legal residents to attend a Nebraska public college or university at the in-state tuition rate. The students must have lived in the state for at least three years and must be pursuing or promise to pursue legal status.

Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont introduced an amendment earlier this year to repeal the law but was blasted for tacking it onto another immigration bill after it made its way through committee debate. Mr. Janssen backed off but promised to bring back the tuition issue.

He now plans to introduce the legislation next month and says he has an obligation to do so.

"The federal government has failed to act on this, and now we're being forced to act on this," he said.

Students currently participating in the program and those who have applied would be exempt if the law were repealed, Mr. Janssen said.

As of mid-December, 35 such students were enrolled in the state university system, according to figures compiled by Mr. Janssen's office. That includes 17 at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and 15 at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. State colleges reported none, and community college officials didn't immediately respond to a request for the information.

Mr. Janssen's office didn't have data on past enrollments.

Supporters of Nebraska's law say it gives an incentive to students to remain in high school, get an education and eventually contribute to society and the economy of the state.

Lawmakers shouldn't punish those students, said Sen. Bill Avery of Lincoln.

"They are the future of our nation, and having an educated work force will be necessary in the coming decades," he said.

Opponents say it's unfair to offer a discount to those breaking the law. They also say it sends the wrong message about Nebraska's stance on illegal immigration.

"It is unfair to the citizens who must support the benefit, and it is unfair to those across the world who abide and respect our rule of law," Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln said.

Nine other states — California, Illinois, Kansas, New Mexico, New York, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin — have such in-state tuition laws for students who are in the country illegally. Oklahoma repealed its law in 2008.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/29/illegals-may-lose-tuition-breaks//print/

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Saved by a bad detonator

by Cal Thomas

Had it not been for a malfunctioning detonator, a plane carrying nearly 300 people on Christmas Day might have exploded. Only the faulty device, along with some fast-acting passengers, prevented a disaster.

But the detonator was not the only malfunction in this near catastrophe. Government also broke down. The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, has been on a watch list for the past two years. That list contains names of people known to have extremist links.

British press reports say Mr. Abdulmutallab has been on its security MI5's radar but was deemed insufficiently threatening to warrant surveillance. Still, he was barred from returning to Britain earlier this year, according to the London Times.

I was once on a watch list because my name is similar to that of someone wanted by the law. It is inconceivable that someone with a real terrorism profile could get on a plane bound for the United States with explosives strapped to his body and not be detected. When I was on a list, my identification was taken into a back room, where calls were made to determine that I was not the one they were seeking. Sometimes a series of S's would be stamped on my boarding pass. This did not qualify me for a free drink or an upgrade, but an intimate pat-down, along with a complete search of my carry-on bag. I had to turn on my laptop computer to prove it was not an explosive device.

How did Mr. Abdulmutallab, whose father recently warned State Department officials about his son's radical beliefs and extremist connections, get on a plane bound for Detroit? What good is it to report suspicious behavior, as the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly urges us to do, if those reports are not taken more seriously?

Did America's reluctance to profile contribute to this latest near disaster? That question should be among many asked at a congressional hearing.

Mr. Abdulmutallab is said to have traveled to the failed state of Yemen, where he acquired his explosive device and received training for the attack he nearly pulled off. The Obama administration is sending several Guantanamo detainees to Yemen. This is the equivalent of the Coolidge administration sending New York Mafia members to Chicago for re-education during the Roaring '20s.

Richard A. Clarke, former terrorism czar and now an ABC News consultant, told the network that the screening devices in Nigeria and at other airports need to be upgraded to more modern systems that penetrate clothing and reveal internal organs. They are expensive and intrusive, and certain "civil liberties" groups might go to court to block them. Mr. Abdulmutallab's profile should have extended beyond his religion. Press reports say he paid $3,000 cash for his ticket and checked no bags. Some of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers paid cash for their tickets and checked no luggage.

This latest incident and the killings at Fort Hood, Texas, by a Muslim Army officer ought to be a verdict on the Obama administration's strategy of apologizing for America and reaching out to Muslim nations. None of it has mollified terrorist states or terrorists operating within those states or, for that matter, potential terrorists operating within the United States.

Administration officials have acknowledged the strong likelihood of terrorist cells in the United States. The question should not be how to make terrorists like us, but how to find them, eliminate them and, most important of all, keep them from entering the country in the first place.

The Obama administration, like the Clinton administration, continues to view terrorists as criminals who ought to be subject to the American judicial system. In fact, they are soldiers in a war unlike any this country has ever faced. Until we start treating these people as soldiers and not criminals, there will be more incidents like this, as there have been previous ones. Without a serious approach to domestic terrorism, the next attempted attack on an airliner might succeed, as did the ones during another less serious time that gave us Sept. 11, 2001.

Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/dec/29/saved-by-a-bad-detonator/

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From the Wall Street Journal

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Despite Subsidy, Cobra's Bite Still Stings for Many

Government Benefit for Uninsured Fails to Cover Rising Cost of Premiums; Unemployed Often Remain Ineligible for Program

The government is expanding a massive safety net to help the unemployed buy health insurance, but millions of people can't access the aid because of the way the program was designed.

As a cornerstone of the economic stimulus plan, the administration of President Barack Obama allocated $25 billion to pay 65% of health-insurance premiums for workers laid off this year. Earlier this month, Congress extended the program for people laid off through February 2010 and expanded the aid to 15 months from nine.

But the program is eluding many people in need. That is because it is tied to the narrow parameters of Cobra, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985, which President Ronald Reagan signed into law to help people cope during layoffs.

Cobra requires companies with more than 20 employees that already offer group health insurance to continue the insurance for former employees for up to 18 months. But insurance costs under Cobra have gotten so expensive that many people can't afford even their unsubsidized 35% portion. Meanwhile, millions of workers don't qualify for Cobra in the first place, because the law doesn't cover the self-employed or those working for companies that abruptly shut down or are too small, or those who didn't offer health insurance to begin with. The subsidy also is off-limits to individuals who have been unemployed the longest; only those laid off since October 2008 are eligible.

Despite the gaps, the administration says the program is helping. "This is a vast improvement over what was in place before when there were no subsidies at all," says Jason Furman, deputy assistant to President Obama for economic policy. "But this is not the president's long-term health reform -- this is a short-term response to a major economic crisis."

The Cobra subsidy is part of the nation's uneven unemployment safety net. Like unemployment checks, retraining and other benefits, which vary wildly depending on factors such as geography, the Cobra subsidy has created a lopsided system of haves and have-nots.

When Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp. in Ocala, Fla., filed for bankruptcy protection in August, about 2,000 former workers couldn't get U.S. help buying health insurance because the company shut down the health plan.

"Why should I be left out of this government safety net just because I worked for a company that closed?" asks Susan Pascuma, a former insurance coordinator at Taylor Bean who now is without insurance.

Her unemployment check was about $1,200 per month. After paying $800 in rent, she says, she couldn't the afford private insurance of $1,000 per month, the lowest rate she says she found.

A week after her company shut down the health plan, the 39-year-old single mother of three went to the emergency room with pain from multiple gallstones. She was given medication and sent home; doctors wouldn't operate, she says, because she lacked health insurance. She later found a doctor who has agreed to operate for free.

She recently started working for a maker of air compressor parts on New York's Long Island, but won't qualify for the company's insurance plan for six months. She intends to buy coverage privately.

David Dantzler, a Taylor Bean lawyer, says the lender didn't have access to funds to keep its insurance plan going. He agrees that it "is terribly unfair" that employees don't qualify for U.S. help.

Similar situations abound. Through September, 45,510 businesses filed for bankruptcy -- more than in all of 2008 -- according to the nonpartisan American Bankruptcy Institute.

The Cobra-linked subsidy also is proving elusive for people who are eligible but don't have the means to pay for it.

Cynthia Parras decided not to enroll in Cobra after she was laid off from her job as a financial-services product manager in San Francisco in February, because she felt she couldn't afford it. Over the summer, she was diagnosed with shingles. The infection moved to her eyes, and doctors told her she could lose her sight without treatment. She paid about $2,500 out of pocket. To help compensate, she skipped her mortgage payment last month, and signed up for a state insurance plan for welfare recipients.

"This is scary and degrading," she says. "I never have been without insurance, and never in a million years thought this would happen to me."

Ms. Parras is starting a new job next month as an account manager at an Internet company, but the position doesn't offer health insurance, and she plans to buy it on her own.

Government officials initially estimated that some seven million people would be helped by the subsidy. But only half have tapped the subsidy program, estimates Ceridian Benefits Services, the nation's largest Cobra administrator. In a survey of 50,000 businesses released in October, Ceridian said 17.7% of former employees enrolled in Cobra, up from 12.4% last year before the subsidy was introduced.

Mr. Furman says the government isn't sure yet how many people signed up, because the data are incomplete and lagging. "Our belief is that very substantial numbers of people have enrolled," he says.

When the Cobra law was passed in the 1980s, it seemed like a win for both corporations and their employees. Workers would benefit from access to health plans even in the event of a layoff, while companies would be able to pass along 100% of the insurance cost to former employees, plus a 2% fee.

But as the costs rose, more healthy people shunned Cobra, leaving a disproportionately large number of sick former employees enrolled in company plans. As a result, insurers raised rates, driving up companies' employer insurance costs overall, including the bills of remaining employees.

Meanwhile, individual health premiums have skyrocketed. The average monthly Cobra bill for family health coverage has surged to 83% of the average monthly unemployment-insurance check, up from about 61% in 2001, according to Families USA, a nonprofit group focusing on health-care issues.

"The situation has gotten enormously worse because health-care costs have risen considerably faster than wages," says Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, which has been a proponent of the health-care overhaul.

Opponents of the Obama administration's drive to overhaul health care also have criticized Cobra. Michael Cannon, the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank, says the Cobra requirement encourages some companies to stop offering health insurance or slow their hiring. The subsidy, he says, is "another band-aid on a band-aid that didn't solve the problem."

Cobra eventually could become obsolete under the health-care overhaul. Under the bills passed by the House and the Senate, most Americans would be required to purchase health insurance, with the government providing tax credits to subsidize the cost to low- and middle-income Americans. But since that provision wouldn't kick in until 2014, Cobra likely would remain a critical part of the system until then.

The government subsidy amounts to $325 a month on average for an individual and $715 for a family, according to government estimates. Jobless individuals pay their former employers 35% of the premium, and the employer recoups the rest through a refund in payroll taxes.

Erin Nelson, 47, faced $700 monthly Cobra payments after being laid off from a nonprofit in March. Her employer was small, so she wasn't eligible for the subsidy until July, after California passed a mini-Cobra law aimed at businesses with fewer than 20 employees. In the meantime, she says she paid $1,200 out of pocket for an ultrasound to investigate a pain behind her rib. She put off a routine mammogram and pap smear.

There also has been some confusion at some companies over who is covered under Cobra. People eligible for Medicare or a spouse's insurance can't get the subsidy, nor can workers who have left voluntarily.

The Labor Department says it has received more than 11,000 complaints this year from former workers denied the subsidy by employers. The government overturned 70% of the denials, a spokesman says.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126204429939308069.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories

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Al Qaeda Takes Credit for Plot

WASHINGTON -- Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen claimed responsibility for the attack on Northwest Flight 253, and U.S. officials said the claim appears valid -- the clearest indication yet that the attempted takedown wasn't just the work of a lone radical inspired by Islamist rhetoric, as some investigators initially believed.

Al Qaeda claims credit for an attempted plane bombing, more aggressive help for housing again and more in the News Hub.

The development came as evidence mounted that the U.S. didn't pursue potential leads that might have brought alleged Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to the attention of authorities, according to Congressional investigators and U.S. officials.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano backtracked Monday from comments she made in televised interviews over the weekend, in which she said the U.S.'s security systems had worked. President Barack Obama, in his first public comments about the incident, promised the government would do everything it can to keep travelers secure. "We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable," Mr. Obama said in remarks broadcast on television from Hawaii, where he is on vacation.

A statement attributed to the group "al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula" claimed it was retaliating for what it says was the U.S.'s role in a recent Yemeni military offensive on al Qaeda, according to a translation by the Middle East Media Research Institute. The statement, accompanied by a photo of the suspect, said the "high-tech device" Mr. Abdulmutallab carried had had a "technical" problem.

The explosive used by Mr. Abdulmutallab, a substance known as PETN, is believed to have been used in the attempted assassination in late August of Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the Saudi deputy interior minister and point man on the war on terror. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for that attack.

Mr. Abdulmutallab's method of concealing the device -- sewn into his underwear, where security personnel are unlikely to conduct a pat down -- is similar to the Saudi attack.

The administration's initial public response has come under criticism from Republican lawmakers. Ms. Napolitano, who has come under fire for saying the system to detect terror threats worked, on Monday said that her initial comments were taken out of context. On NBC's "Today" show, she said that "our system did not work in this instance. No one is happy or satisfied with that."

The Yemeni government said Mr. Abdulmutallab had spent the four months preceding the botched plot inside Yemen. He entered the country to study Arabic at a language institute where he had studied before, according to Yemen's foreign ministry, and his passport had a valid U.S. and other foreign visas.

Mr. Abdulmutallab lived in Yemen for two different periods of time, a year from 2004-2005 and from August-December this year, a Yemeni government official said Tuesday.

A senior U.S. military official said of Mr. Abdulmutallab's ties to Yemen's al Qaeda affiliate: "I don't think he was one of their great arrows, but he's a guy who radicalized pretty quickly, and they accepted him and allowed him to do some things."

Al Qaeda's growing presence in Yemen could prove problematic for President Obama, in particular as he hastens to complete the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Roughly half the 215 detainees in Cuba are Yemeni nationals, and the Pentagon has concluded 60 remain national security threats.

U.S. investigators are looking into whether any former Saudi or Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo played a role in the Christmas plot. Six Yemeni nationals were repatriated from Guantanamo last week. A U.S. official working on Middle East policy said Monday that the revelations about al Qaeda's operations in Yemen "will make it very difficult to return more."

U.S. officials have acknowledged providing intelligence assistance for two recent operations, which included air strikes, conducted by the Yemeni government against al Qaeda encampments. Yemeni officials say at least 30 militants were killed and at least two dozen more were arrested during the attacks Dec. 17 and 24.

The al Qaeda statement claimed that the U.S. military directly fired some of the missiles involved in the attacks. Three U.S. officials with knowledge of American operations in the country didn't deny American military involvement, but wouldn't comment on the al Qaeda claims.

U.S. officials believe that some of the al Qaeda militants killed by air strikes in Yemen in recent weeks were former Guantanamo Bay inmates.

Although U.S. officials haven't been vocal about American involvement in the region, the Yemeni government has. In a recent interview, Ali Al-Anisi, a senior security aide to Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and the director of the president's office, said the government was determined to rid Yemen of al Qaeda and was cooperating with U.S. officials in that fight. "There is coordination and collaboration in the fight against terror," he said.

The Obama administration has seen marked improvement in U.S.-Yemen counterterrorism cooperation over the past two months as signs of al Qaeda's presence in Yemen have grown. Mr. Saleh's shift, said a U.S. official working on Middle East policy, was driven in part by pressure from Saudi Arabia following the attempted assassination of Prince Nayef.

U.S. military involvement in Yemen dates back several years to when the Pentagon sent two Special Operations advisers to assess Yemeni needs. Since then, U.S. Special Operations forces have trained both Yemeni special operations teams, run by Mr. Saleh's son, and its counterterrorism forces.

More recently, the Pentagon has pushed for a more permanent presence in Yemen, but civilian agencies have balked, in part because of worries about whether Mr. Saleh will use his increased capabilities against Islamists or against domestic political enemies.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are concerned that Yemen is emerging as a new safe haven for Arab, African and South Asian militants. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is headed by a Yemeni, Abu Basir al-Wahishi, but many of his top lieutenants are believed to be Saudi. In all, the organization is believed to have between 50 and 100 fighters in Yemen.

The U.S. officials are concerned about the threat posed to Saudi Arabia. The organization has shown a willingness to conduct cross-border raids, and its Saudi members are thought to have access to Saudi funding.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126209221278008901.html#printMode

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NYPD: Crime Fell 11% in 2009

NEW YORK -- Strict gun laws and specialized programs targeting dangerous areas combined with and good old-fashioned policing have kept crime on the decline in New York City for much of the decade, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.

So far this year, there have been 461 murders, which means the city is on track to have the lowest number since record keeping began in the 1960s. Last year, there were 522 murders and 496 the year before. Cases continue to be solved at a steady 70% rate.

Overall crime is down in the city 11% from last year and 35% from 2001 when Mr. Bloomberg took office. The only major crime on the rise is felony assault, which was up 2% this year, according to the city's CompStat program, which tracks crime statistics daily.

The city "is safer today than in any point in modern history," Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference following the graduation of a new police academy class.

The figures reflect a nationwide trend. Preliminary FBI crime figures for the first half of 2009 show crime falling across the country. Murder and manslaughter fell 10% for the first half of the year.

Mr. Bloomberg said New York's rates are particularly impressive. Twenty years ago, the city was considered dangerous and rife with crime.

The city's homicide rate reached an all-time high of 2,245 in 1990, making it the murder capital of the nation. Since then, the rate has plummeted, the decline in part has been attributed to the placement of most graduating police officers in higher-crime areas known as "impact zones," identified through CompStat.

Most of the officers who graduated Monday will go into the impact program, which has about 1,700 officers.

Mr. Bloomberg handed the credit for the decline to Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, whom he said has used the data to make effective changes that keep crime down. He also praised New Yorkers, whose tax dollars allow the city to have the nation's largest police force.

Mr. Kelly also was praised for his counterterrorism efforts, as the trials for Sept. 11 terrorist suspects loom. There have been several attempted attacks in the years since the Sept. 11 attack, but none successful.

"We always assume the worst," Mr. Kelly said. "We are always trying to look over the horizon."

Mr. Kelly said the decline in crime is primarily due to solid police work. He cited as an example an incident early Monday, in which two officers were patrolling the stairwells of a Coney Island housing project. They came upon men drinking, and one of the men drew a 9mm pistol. The officer, Oswaldo Estillo, grabbed the gun and dislodged the magazine, diffusing the situation without firing a weapon. The armed suspect was arrested.

The academy class of 250 speaks 28 different languages and is 40% white, 33% Hispanic, 15% black and 12% Asian. Mr. Bloomberg canceled the January 2010 class as a cost-cutting measures and has reduced the number of overall officers.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126201599038807625.html#printMode

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Air Crews Get More Authority Over Onboard Security Rules

CHICAGO -- The Transportation Security Administration on Monday tweaked some new restrictions imposed on flights to the U.S. from international destinations, giving additional discretion to cockpit crews.

Following an attempted bombing on a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day, the agency banned onboard communications on all flights entering the U.S. from foreign countries. Also, during the final hour of a flight, passengers on those flights were required to remain in their seats, and stow all gear.

A new directive from the TSA, posted on its Web site Monday, says that "during the flight, passengers will be asked to follow flight-crew instructions, such as stowing personal items, turning off electronic equipment, and remaining seated during certain portions of the flight."

Airlines asked for the new rules, which allow each cockpit crew to assess the need for added security, industry sources said.

"TSA will continuously review and update these measures to ensure the highest levels of security," said Kristen Lee, a TSA spokeswoman.

Domestic flights won't see any onboard changes related to security, but there will be additional screening and inspection of travelers at airports, the TSA said.

David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association, the main U.S. airline trade group, said it is too soon to tell how the heightened security will affect business travel.

After the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. air travel was halted for four days. Subsequent security regulations resulted in delays at airports that caused companies to sharply cut business travel. Premium travel took several years to recover from the "hassle factor," Mr. Castelveter said.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126202807674707779.html#printMode

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Gangster Trials Highlight China's Crime Battle

BEIJING -- A series of criminal trials in Chongqing, one of China's biggest cities, is spotlighting a byproduct of the country's rapid social and economic change: the spread of organized crime.

The court in Chongqing, a city of more than 30 million people, is expected to reach verdicts in coming weeks on the charges against two prominent defendants.

Wen Qiang, the former head of Chongqing's municipal justice department, is charged with using his official position to provide protection to organized-crime gangs. Li Qiang, a billionaire businessman who was until recently a member of the local legislature, faces nine charges, including organizing and leading criminal gangs, bribery and tax evasion.

Officials say the two men ran an underworld empire that included prostitution rings, illegal casinos, bribery and murder.

The trials have focused national attention on a scourge that has mushroomed since China began economic reforms in the late 1970s. The situation has worsened over the past decade, as rapid development -- combined with loosening controls on individuals, limited law-enforcement resources and widespread corruption -- has created an environment in which gangsters thrive, often in collusion with local authorities, say experts.

While experts say gang activity doesn't appear to have infiltrated the highest levels of China's government, it is an increasing challenge for China's Communist Party, which rates public anger about corruption as a major potential threat to its rule.

In Chongqing, Bo Xilai, a former commerce minister installed as the city's chief in 2007, has turned up the heat on the issue. "The mafia crackdown is emphatically demanded by the people, as revealed to us by the numerous blood-shedding crimes," he is quoted as saying by the central Communist Party Web site.

The government says police have broken up nearly 13,000 gangs and detained 870,000 suspects since the latest nationwide crackdown began in early 2006. Some 89,000 of those had been formally arrested as of September, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

"Organized crime in China is coming back with a vengeance," says Ko-lin Chin, a criminologist at Rutgers University who studies Chinese gangs.

In addition to infiltrating Chongqing's government, organized crime has moved into sectors from property development to privately run bus routes to pork products, officials say.

Mr. Wen's sister-in-law, known as "the Godmother of Chongqing," has already been sentenced to 18 years in prison and fined around one million yuan ($146,000) after her conviction on charges including organizing and leading a criminal group, operating illegal casinos, illegal imprisonment and bribing officials. A pair of 23-year-old twins received sentences of 17 years apiece on convictions of organizing and leading a criminal group and intentional injury of others, among other charges.

Judicial and law-enforcement officials in Chongqing have declined to comment on the cases.

Since the Chongqing trials began in October, dozens of gang members elsewhere in China have also been sentenced, with at least 18 receiving death penalties.

In early December, a court in the southwestern city of Kunming sentenced five people to death for involvement in a gang that dealt in drugs, counterfeit money, fraud and racketeering. In southern China, a court in Yangjiang sentenced five men, including mob bosses nicknamed "Hammerhead" and "Spicy Qin," to death for murder and for running a massive illegal gambling empire. In Sichuan, police arrested 85 people in what officials called the largest drug bust in China's history.

Organized crime was rampant in China before the communists took over in 1949, but was largely extinguished in the decades afterward by the totalitarian Maoist state. It has flourished since reforms began in the late 1970s.

Chinese police receive small salaries but enjoy almost unchecked power over the increasingly wealthy communities they oversee. As a result, bribery is common, experts say. Without protection from law enforcement, "criminal organizations would not be able to develop on such a large scale and to such a high level," says Pu Yongjian, a professor at the business school of Chongqing University.

In some cases, police are discouraged by local governments from cracking down on prostitution, gambling and loan-sharking, as long as violence isn't involved, says Mr. Chin of Rutgers.

"These are very profitable businesses," he says. "They support the local economies and are seen as part of a transition period towards development. There is a boundary -- kind of an implicit understanding -- between local officials and mafia-like gangs."

At times, ties between gangsters and governments have eroded public trust, sometimes pushing individuals to take matters into their own hands.

In September 2008, 18-year-old Zhang Xuping, of Xiashuixi village in Shanxi province, stabbed the local party chief to death. Villagers allege the official ran a gang that used harassment and violence to take over their farmland. Mr. Zhang's mother, Wang Hou'e, had previously spent a year in detention after she complained to authorities about property damage she attributed to the party boss.

Officials in the district government that administers Xiashuixi declined to comment.

"I wish that we would have as aggressive a crackdown in our area as there is in Chongqing," says Ms. Wang. "My true feeling is that the mafia forces will not only continue to exist, but become even more rampant."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126204784391808331.html#printMode

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Al Qaeda's Clear Message

The U.S. has to rethink jihad's global recruitment of terrorists.

Apparently the fellows in al Qaeda took as a personal insult Secretary of Homeland Anxiety Janet Napolitano's comment Sunday that their role in the foiled Detroit airliner bombing wasn't clear but would be investigated. Yesterday, al Qaeda's ascendant franchise in the Arabian peninsula saved Secretary Napolitano the trouble of plowing through all the layers of the national-security bureaucracy for an answer.

The terrorist organization put out a pointed statement not only claiming responsibility but also mocking the U.S.'s ability to stop them. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, they said, "dealt a huge blow to the myth of American and global intelligence services and showed how fragile its structure is."

What this means is that we have to think more broadly about jihad and the potential recruitment of terrorists anywhere in the world, including inside the United States. We and our European allies have to revisit the problem of fiery imams using mosques as recruitment depots for airline suicide bombers. The close call in the airspace over Detroit gives "probable cause" new meaning.

Al Qaeda has sent a message to the Obama Administration: You are in a war . Someone in our government needs to say clearly that they now understand the message.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703278604574624612753961186.html

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From the White House

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The President Addresses the Public on the Attempted Terrorist Attack

Earlier today, the President addressed the public on the recent attempted terrorist attack:

Good morning, everybody. I wanted to take just a few minutes to update the American people on the attempted terrorist attack that occurred on Christmas Day and the steps we're taking to ensure the safety and security of the country.

The investigation's ongoing. And I spoke again this morning with Attorney General Eric Holder, the secretary of homeland security, Janet Napolitano, and my counterterrorism and homeland security adviser, John Brennan. I asked them to keep -- continue monitoring the situation to keep the American people and members of Congress informed.

Here's what we know so far: On Christmas Day, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was en route from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit. As the plane made its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport, a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, setting off a fire.

Thanks to the quick and heroic actions of passengers and crew, the suspect was immediately subdued, the fire was put out, and the plane landed safely. The suspect is now in custody and has been charged with attempting to destroy an aircraft.

A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism, and we will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable.

Now, this was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland. Had the suspect succeeded in bringing down that plane, it could have killed nearly 300 passengers and crew, innocent civilians preparing to celebrate the holidays with their families and friends.

The American people should be assured that we are doing everything in our power to keep you and your family safe and secure during this busy holiday season.

Since I was first notified of this incident, I've ordered the following actions to be taken to protect the American people and to secure air travel.

First, I directed that we take immediate steps to ensure the safety of the traveling public. We made sure that all flights still in the air were secure and could land safely. We immediately enhanced screening and security procedures for all flights, domestic and international. We added federal air marshals to flights entering and leaving the United States. And we're working closely in this country, federal, state and local law enforcement, with our international partners.

Second, I've ordered two important reviews, because it's absolutely critical that we learn from this incident and take the necessary measures to prevent future acts of terrorism.

The first review involves our watch list system, which our government has had in place for many years to identify known and suspected terrorists so that we can prevent their entry into the United States. Apparently the suspect in the Christmas incident was in this system, but not on a watch list, such as the so-called no-fly list. So I have ordered a thorough review, not only of how information related to the subject was handled, but of the overall watch list system and how it can be strengthened.

The second review will examine all screening policies, technologies and procedures related to air travel. We need to determine just how the suspect was able to bring dangerous explosives aboard an aircraft and what additional steps we can take to thwart future attacks.

Third, I've directed my national security team to keep up the pressure on those who would attack our country. We do not yet have all the answers about this latest attempt, but those who would slaughter innocent men, women and children must know that the United States will more -- do more than simply strengthen our defenses. We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland.

Finally, the American people should remain vigilant, but also be confident. Those plotting against us seek not only to undermine our security, but also the open society and the values that we cherish as Americans. This incident, like several that have preceded it, demonstrates that an alert and courageous citizenry are far more resilient than an isolated extremist.

As a nation, we will do everything in our power to protect our country. As Americans, we will never give in to fear or division. We will be guided by our hopes, our unity, and our deeply held values. That's who we are as Americans; that's what our brave men and women in uniform are standing up for as they spend the holidays in harm's way. And we will continue to do everything that we can to keep America safe in the new year and beyond

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/12/28/president-addresses-public-attempted-terrorist-attack

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From the FBI

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THE YEAR IN REVIEW
Our Biggest Cases, Part 1

12/28/09

Terrorists bent on murder and destruction. Elected officials on the take. Cyber crooks hacking networks and emptying bank accounts. Fraudsters using scams old and new to pilfer billions of dollars from unsuspecting Americans.

On every investigative front, it was a busy year.

We worked thousands of investigations during 2009—from art crime to weapons of mass destruction violations. As the year comes to a close, we thought you'd be interested in a rundown of some of our most significant cases—in terms of their impact on your communities and the overall security of our nation.

Today, we'll focus on our top investigative priority: protecting the nation from terrorist attack. The threat posed by extremists is real—and it continues to morph and evolve in new and dangerous ways. We had our hands full during the year, from heading off potential plots on U.S. soil to identifying Americans being recruited to wage jihad overseas.

Here are some of the top terror cases of 2009:

Jihadists of Georgia: With little more than an Internet connection and the radicalizing influences of overseas terrorists, two middle-class young men in Atlanta went from rhetoric to plotting jihad. Details

David Coleman Headley: The U.S. citizen was arrested in October for planning terrorist attacks against a Danish newspaper and two of its employees. New charges this month allege he took part in the conspiracy surrounding the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Details

Somalia: In February, we reported that young men from Minneapolis were traveling to Somalia to join extremists fighting for control of the country. One of those men became who we believe was the first U.S. citizen to carry out a terrorist suicide bombing after launching an attack in Somalia. By November, 14 defendants were charged with recruiting people from the U.S. to train or fight on behalf of extremist groups in Somalia. Details

Najibullah Zazi: The 24-year-old Colorado resident was arrested in September, along with his father and another man, for conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. citizens. Zazi traveled to New York City on September 10, 2009 “in furtherance of his criminal plans,” according to the Department of Justice. Details

Attempted bombing of federal building: In September, a U.S. citizen was arrested in connection with a plot to detonate a vehicle bomb at the federal building in Springfield, Illinois. Details

Attempted skyscraper bombing: Also in September, a 19-year-old Jordanian citizen who espoused violent jihad was arrested for attempting to blow up a 60-story glass office tower in Dallas, Texas. Details

North Carolina takedown: Seven men, including a father and two sons, were charged with conspiring to provide material support to terrorists and to wage jihad overseas. The heavily armed group trained in the U.S., raised money to support their training, and recruited and radicalized others. Details

Synagogue plot: In May, four people were arrested outside a New York synagogue and charged with planning to blow up Jewish targets and shoot down military planes.  Details

Liberty City Six: In May, a Miami jury convicted five men of providing material support to al Qaeda and planning attacks on U.S. targets, including the Sears Tower in Chicago. Details

Ali al-Marri: In May, the al Qaeda “sleeper” operative working in the U.S. pled guilty to charges relating to his role in the 9/11 attacks. Details

Next: Fraud, espionage, corruption, and more

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/dec09/review_122809.html

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