WASHINGTON – Investigators piecing together a brazen attempt to bring down a trans-Atlantic airliner said Sunday the suspect tucked a small bag holding his deadly concoction on his body, using an explosive that would have been easily detected with the right airport equipment.
His success in smuggling and partially igniting the material on Friday’s flight to Detroit prompted the Obama administration to promise a sweeping review of aviation security.
Adding to the airborne jitters, a second Nigerian man was detained Sunday from the same Northwest flight to Detroit after he locked himself in the plane’s bathroom. 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.
Stiffer boarding measures met passengers at gates as authorities warned travelers to expect extra delays returning home from holidays. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs announced a review of air safety on two broad fronts, saying the government will investigate its systems for placing suspicious travelers on watch lists and for detecting explosives before passengers board flights.
Law enforcement officials believed the suspect tried to ignite a two-part concoction of PETN and possibly a glycol-based liquid explosive, setting off popping, smoke and some fire but no deadly detonation.
Abdulmutallab’s lawyer said Sunday that he is now in a federal prison in Milan, Mich.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano hastened to assure people that flying is “very, very safe.”
That brought a sharp rebuke from Rep. Peter King of New York, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee. An apparent malfunction in a device designed to detonate the high explosive PETN may have been all that saved the 278 passengers and the crew aboard Northwest Flight 253. Law enforcement officials say Abdulmutallab hid a condom or condom-like pouch below his torso containing PETN, the primary ingredient in detonating cords used for industrial explosions.
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, they said, but most passengers in airports only go through magnetometers, which detect metal rather than explosives. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.
A video posted online four days before the bombing attempt featured an al-Qaida operative in Yemen threatening the U.S. and saying “we are carrying a bomb.” In November, Abdulmutallab had been placed in a database of more than 500,000 names of people suspected of terrorist ties. Despite that red flag, Abdulmutallab was not elevated to more exclusive — and perhaps manageable — lists of some 18,000 people who are designated for additional security searches or barred from flying altogether. Nigerian Information Minister Dora Akunyili said Abdulmutallab, who was living in London, sneaked back into Nigeria to catch the flight that would take him to Amsterdam and Detroit. Abdulmutallab had a U.S. visa issued in June 2008 and valid through June 2010.

Gibbs was noncommittal on that question. On Saturday, two Middle Eastern men thought to have been acting suspicious aboard a flight bound for Phoenix were detained and questioned by federal anti-terrorism authorities before being released. That incident — and Sunday’s incident in Detroit — led the Council on American-Islamic Relations to urge airline security personnel to avoid ethnic and religious profiling.

Napolitano spoke on CNN’s “State of the Union” as well as on NBC and ABC. King appeared on CBS; McConnell appeared on ABC.

___

Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Matt Lee and Devlin Barrett in Washington; Ed White in Detroit; Jon Gambrell in Lagos, Nigeria; and Donna Abu-Nasr in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, contributed to this report.

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