U.S. had planned to interview would-be bomber on landing

WASHINGTON — U.S. border-security officials learned of intelligence about the reported extremist links of the suspected Christmas Day airline bomber as he was in the air en route to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials said in new disclosures Wednesday.

The new information shows that border-enforcement officials came across important clues about the Nigerian suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, despite intelligence failures that were criticized by President Obama this week.

If the intelligence had been discovered sooner, it could have resulted in the interrogation and search of Abdulmutallab before he boarded the Detroit-bound flight, senior law-enforcement officials said.

"The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection," said a senior law-enforcement official who requested anonymity. "The decision had been made. The ... database had picked up the State Department concern about this guy, that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen ... "

Abdulmutallab was traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit when he tried to destroy the plane by injecting chemicals to ignite explosives concealed in his underwear, authorities say.

The procedure caused popping sounds and flames that passengers and crew rushed to extinguish.

The new revelations illustrated the complexity of the intelligence and passenger-screening systems that are now the subject of reviews.

Even if U.S. border-enforcement officials had learned of the Nigerian's reported extremist links in time, it is not clear the intelligence was strong enough to cause Dutch officials to search him or block him from flying, officials said. The threshold for requiring a foreign visitor to undergo special scrutiny upon arrival in the United States is considerably lower than criteria for preventing him from getting on the plane overseas, according to current and former law-enforcement officials. That is why border-enforcement officials rely heavily on terrorism watch lists, officials said.

"The public isn't aware how many people are allowed to travel through the U.S. who are linked, who intersect with bad guys or alleged bad guys," a national-security official said. "It makes sense from an intelligence perspective. If they are not considered dangerous, it provides intelligence on where they go, who they meet with."

The intelligence about Abdulmutallab was discovered in a database by Customs and Border Protection inspectors based at the National Targeting Center in Washington once the plane was airborne, law-enforcement officials said. The administration's review of screening includes an effort to make more information accessible to U.S. inspectors further in advance of flights.

In Detroit on Wednesday, federal prosecutors filed a six-count indictment charging Abdulmutallab in connection with the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253. He already was charged in a criminal complaint. The federal indictment accuses him of attempted murder, trying to use a weapon of mass destruction to kill nearly 300 people, willful attempt to destroy or wreck an aircraft, use of a firearm in a crime of violence and other charges that carry a penalty of up to life in prison.

Abdulmutallab, who is being held at a federal prison in Milan, Mich., told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.

He told U.S. interrogators he met in Yemen with Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni-American cleric suspected of belonging to al-Qaida, and communications intercepts detected chatter about al-Awlaki's role in a plot involving a Nigerian, U.S. officials have said. The investigation has also uncovered communications between Abdulmuttalab and al-Awlaki, a senior U.S. anti-terrorism official said Wednesday.

British anti-terrorism officials said initially that Abdulmutallab was not identified as an extremist while a student at University College London. But there are increasing signs he was active in a "radicalized group" in London, the U.S. anti-terrorism official said.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.