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Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a
young man on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a
powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a fight
from Amsterdam to Detroit.


      The Obama administration has ordered investigations into the two
areas of aviation security - how travelers are placed on watch
lists and how passengers are screened - as critics questioned how
the 23-year-old Nigerian man charged in the airliner attack was
allowed to board the Dec. 25 flight.


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


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

      The White House press office, traveling with President Barack
Obama in Hawaii, said early Monday that the president would make a
statement from the Kaneoho Marine Base in the morning. White House
spokesman Bill Burton did not elaborate.


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


      Abdulmutallab has been charged in federal court with trying to
detonate the device as the plane approached Detroit. The device
burst into flames instead, according to authorities, and he was
subdued by passengers. The plane landed safely.


      A federal judge in Detroit was expected to decide Monday whether
to grant a request by the government to obtain a DNA sample from
Abdulmutallab. His court-appointed attorney, Detroit's chief
federal defender, Miriam Siefer, said Abdulmutallab would not be
present at the hearing.

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

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


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


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


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


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


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


      However, British officials placed Abdulmutallab's name on a U.K.
watch list after he was refused a student visa in May.


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


      Abdulmutallab's success in smuggling and partially igniting the
material on Friday's flight prompted the Obama administration to
promise a sweeping review of aviation security, even as the
Homeland Security secretary defended the current system.


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


      Both lines of defense were breached in an improbable series of
events Christmas Day that spanned three continents and culminated
in a struggle and fire aboard a Northwest jet shortly before its
safe landing in Detroit. Law enforcement officials believed the
suspect tried to ignite a two-part concoction of the high explosive
PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off
popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation.


      An apparent malfunction in a device designed to detonate the
PETN may have been all that saved the 278 passengers and the crew
aboard Northwest Flight 253. No undercover air marshal was on board
and passengers and crew subdued the suspect when he tried to set
off the explosion. He succeeded only in starting a fire on himself.


      Security experts said airport "puffer" machines that blow air
on a passenger to collect and analyze residues would probably have
detected the powder, as would bomb-sniffing dogs or a hands-on
search using a swab. Most passengers in airports only go through
magnetometers, which detect metal rather than explosives.


      Abdulmutallab was treated for burns and was released Sunday to a
prison 50 miles outside of Detroit.


      Stiffer boarding measures have met passengers at gates since
Friday and authorities warned travelers to expect extra delays
returning home from holidays.


      Adding to the airborne jitters, authorities detained a man, also
from Nigeria, who locked himself in the bathroom on Sunday's
Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam as it was about to land in
Detroit. Investigators concluded he posed no threat. Despite the
government's decision after the attempted Friday attack to mobilize
more air marshals, none was on the Sunday flight from Amsterdam,
according to a government report obtained by The Associated Press.

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Disasters

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed when a
young man on a watchlist with a U.S. visa in his pocket and a
powerful explosive hidden on his body was allowed to board a fight
from Amsterdam to Detroit.


Napolitano concedes airline security system failed

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