Obama assures nation in wake of bombing attempt

Honolulu: US President Barack Obama emerged from Hawaiian seclusion on Monday to reassure the American public and quell gathering criticism as a branch of al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the thwarted attack on Christmas Day on an American passenger jet.

Obama vowed to track down "all who were involved" in helping a Nigerian man try to set off explosives aboard a Northwest Airlines flight as the plane approached Detroit, acknowledging the growing conclusion that the act was not that of a lone wolf but of a trained Qaida operative. With more signs pointing to Yemen as the origin of the attack, the White House was weighing how to respond.

The president broke his silence as debate about the episode turned increasingly political. An assertion over the weekend by Janet Napolitano, the homeland security secretary, that "the system worked" drew strong criticism and forced her to recalibrate it on Monday.

On the international front, a group called al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, which operates in Yemen and was the target of a recent airstrike facilitated by the United States, asserted that it had sponsored the attempted attack in retaliation.

U.S. government officials said they considered the statement, which was posted on a jihadist Web site, credible. The Yemeni government said Monday that the suspect in the failed bombing had spent four months in the country before leaving earlier in December.

The claim of responsibility by the Yemeni branch of al-Qaida could force a shift in the administration's approach to counterterrorism in that nation. Until now, U.S. authorities considered it important to give Yemen credit for recent strikes against Qaida training camps and leaders, playing down the U.S. role in providing intelligence and equipment.

But a direct attempt by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula to launch an attack on U.S. soil raises the question of whether the United States would have to take broader and more clearly visible retaliatory military action. One government official said the topic was likely to come up soon in meetings of the National Security Council.

Obama, making his first public comments since the episode, said he had ordered his national security team "to keep up the pressure" on terrorists and vowed to "use every element of our national power to disrupt, 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 on the U.S. homeland."

Although he had been out of sight for three days, he assured Americans he was on top of the situation. "We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable," Obama said. "This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland."

Meanwhile, Napolitano, who had made the rounds of television talk shows on Sunday, appeared on NBC's "Today" show to try to clarify her statement that the nation's aviation security system had worked properly.

Napolitano said that her remark had been taken out of context and that the attempted attack in fact represented a failure of the security system. "Our system did not work in this instance," she said. "No one is happy or satisfied with that."

In one of her Sunday appearances, Napolitano had said the system worked once the attempted bombing occurred, meaning that the government responded by increasing security and alerting other planes. But she did not qualify her point in another of her appearances, and it seemed incongruous given that the suspect was able to fly to the United States on a valid visa without extra screening despite having been listed in a terrorism database and buying a one-way ticket with cash and without checking any luggage.


Administration officials said that during a weekend conference call they had resolved to use the Sunday shows to reassure the public, but that the "system worked" formulation was not in written talking points. "Clearly she could have been more clear, and I think she was today," said one administration official, who declined to be identified discussing internal strategy.

The visual contrast of a president on vacation while there was anxiety about air travel also drew criticism. Although aides issued statements describing conference calls with counterterrorism advisers, pictures of passengers enduring tougher airport screening were juxtaposed with the image of a president picnicking at the beach and playing basketball, tennis and golf.

Rep. Peter King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, criticized Obama's silence Monday before the president's statement. "We're now, what, 72 hours into this and the president's not spoken, the vice president's not spoken, the attorney general's not spoken and Janet Napolitano has now told two different stories in two days," he said on Fox News. "First, she said everything worked; now she said it didn't."

The White House complained about the increasing political attacks, noting that the system that failed to detect the suspect was put in place by President George W. Bush. "Some people can't resist the temptation to turn every development into a partisan issue," said David Axelrod, the president's senior adviser.

Axelrod said the president waited to publicly address the matter partly to gather information and partly to avoid increasing public anxiety or elevating the stature of those who plot attacks.

"There is a need to modulate this properly so as not to increase anxieties or encourage more activity," he said, adding that "we felt it was being addressed at the appropriate level over the weekend" by Napolitano and Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. But by Monday, he said, the president concluded "the time was right" to address it himself.

Obama's appearance coincided with fresh evidence linking Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged in the attempted attack, to al-Qaida. The statement by al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula, accompanied by a photograph of Abdulmutallab, called him a hero who had "penetrated all modern and sophisticated technology and devices and security barriers in airports of the world" and "reached his target."

The statement said "mujahedeen brothers in the manufacturing department" had supplied the explosives and while a "technical error" led to an "incomplete detonation," the group vowed to "continue on the same path."

Yemeni officials said immigration records showed Abdulmutallab was in their country from early August until early December. The Yemeni embassy said in a statement that Abdulmutallab had previously studied Arabic in Yemen and applied to return this year to study.

Because he had a valid U.S. visa and "there was nothing suspicious about his intention to visit Yemen," he was admitted, the statement said, adding that Yemeni authorities were working to "identify any other individuals who may be linked to him."

More details emerged about contacts between Abdulmutallab's father and the U.S. embassy in Nigeria. In October, presumably while in Yemen, Abdulmutallab spoke by telephone with his father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a prominent retired banker. His father was so alarmed by his son's radical talk that he contacted Nigerian officials, who advised him to contact the U.S. embassy.

Mutallab visited the embassy on Nov. 19 and told officials his son had been radicalized, was missing and might be in Yemen, said a State Department spokesman, P.J. Crowley. Crowley said Mutallab did not say he believed his son planned to attack Americans, but expressed general concern about his radical views.

The information was taken seriously, Crowley said, but was judged insufficient to warrant revoking Abdulmutallab's visa, although his file was flagged for investigation if he reapplied. Embassy officials representing several security agencies discussed the information Nov. 20 and sent a cable to Washington. His name was added to a database of 550,000 names with suspicion of terrorist ties, but did not go onto the 4,000-person no-fly list.