NEW YORK – A New York Senate committee met Tuesday to decide whether a state senator convicted of assaulting his girlfriend should remain in office, but reached no immediate conclusion.
The special committee adjourned into an executive session without announcing any decision on the fate of Sen. Hiram Monserrate. The Queens Democrat was sentenced earlier this month to probation for injuring his girlfriend by dragging her through his apartment lobby on Dec. 19, 2008. Earlier that evening, Monserrate smashed a glass into Karla Giraldo’s face, causing bloody injuries that required 40 stitches. Sen. Andrew Lanza, a Republican member of the committee, said the process has been bipartisan and fair.
Sen. Eric Schneiderman, a Democrat who chairs the committee, said there is no firm date on when a draft report will be finalized.
Monserrate did not attend. Monserrate, 42, was sworn in as a state senator weeks after the incident. A former Marine and New York City police officer, he was elected in 2001 to the New York City Council.
Including Monserrate, the Democrats hold a 32-30 Senate majority. The committee is made up of five Democrats, including Schneiderman, who represents part of Manhattan and the Bronx. Others are Sens. Ruth Hassell-Thompson of the Bronx, Diane Savino of Staten Island, Toby Ann Stavisky of Queens and Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Yonkers.
Besides Lanza of Staten Island, Republican members of the committee include John Flanagan of Long Island, James Alesi of Monroe County and Catharine Young of Jamestown.
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Associated Press writer Michael Virtanen in Albany contributed to this report.

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HONOLULU – President Barack Obama said Tuesday that the intelligence community had bits of information that should have been pieced together that would have triggered “red flags” and possibly prevented the Christmas Day attempted terror attack on a Detroit-bound airliner.
“There was a mix of human and systemic failures that contributed to this potential catastrophic breach of security,” Obama said.
Senior U.S. officials told The Associated Press that intelligence authorities are now looking at conversations between the suspect in the failed attack and at least one al-Qaida member. They did not say how these communications with the suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, took place — by Internet, cell phone or another method.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters, said the conversations were vague or coded, but the intelligence community believes that, in hindsight, the communications may have been referring to the Detroit attack.
Intelligence officials would not confirm whether those conversations involved Yemen-based radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, but other U.S. government officials said there were initial indications that he was involved. “The warning signs would have triggered red flags, and the suspect would have never been allowed to board that plane for America.”
Obama’s statement showed more fire than he had shown previously about the lapses that allowed the bombing attack to take place and came after his homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, had to backtrack on an assertion that “the system worked” in the Detroit airliner scare.
Abdulmutallab, charged with trying to destroy an aircraft, is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Mich.
Those warnings also did not result in Abdulmutallab’s U.S. visa being revoked.
Officials in Yemen were investigating whether Abdulmutallab spent time with al-Qaida militants there during the months leading up to the botched bombing attack.
Officials also noted Tuesday that Amsterdam, where Abdulmutallab boarded his flight to Detroit, is one of nine locations where U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials are stationed to do additional screening on U.S.-bound passengers who have been flagged as a potential risk.
The government put in place enhanced screening procedures for passengers after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington to catch potential terrorists. On U.S.-bound flights from overseas, CBP checks passenger names against some lists of potential terrorists, but not against all information the government keeps.

On top of that, airport security equipment did not detect the bomb-making devices and materials Abdulmutallab is accused of carrying on board the Northwest Airlines flight.

Obama said many things went right after the incident, with passengers and the flight crew subduing the man and government officials working quickly to increase security. He singled out Napolitano, backing her much-criticized comments that the attempted terror attack showed the aviation security system worked.

“As Secretary Napolitano has said, once the suspect attempted to take down Flight 253, after his attempt, it’s clear that passengers and crew, our homeland security systems, and our aviation security took all appropriate actions,” Obama said.

The two reviews, which Obama said got under way on Sunday, are looking at airport security procedures and the U.S. system of terror watch lists..

“It now appears that weeks ago this information was passed to a component of our intelligence community but was not effectively distributed so as to get the suspect’s name on a no-fly list,” Obama said.

___

Associated Press writers Audrey McAvoy in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, and Eileen Sullivan in Washington contributed to this report.

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KANEOHE, Hawaii (AFP) –
President Barack Obama has vowed to hunt down extremists wherever they plot attacks against the United States, as Al-Qaeda said it hatched the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a US-bound airliner.

Obama pledged Monday 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 US homeland."

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"This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland," Obama said, three days after catastrophe was narrowly averted on Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

An Al-Qaeda affiliate in the Arabian peninsula claimed Monday it was behind the failed bombing and threatened new attacks on the West. Related article: Al-Qaeda claims failed attack

In an Internet posting the group said a "technical fault" caused the plot's failure, SITE Intelligence said.

The statement was accompanied by a picture of Abdulmutallab, who was described as the "Nigerian brother," and boasted he "was able to breach all the modern and sophisticated technologies and checkpoints at the airports around the world," according to IntelCenter, another US monitoring group.

"His act has dealt a huge blow to the myth of American and global intelligence services and showed how fragile its structure is."

Obama has ordered a review of US no-fly lists after it emerged that Abdulmutallab was on a broad terrorist watch-list of 500,000 names but still had a valid US visa.

Obama's security chief demanded to know how Abdulmutallab retained his visa, while Britain confirmed the 23-year-old had been placed on its security blacklist in May this year.

"Clearly this individual should not have been able to board this plane carrying that material," said US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

In Nigeria, Abdulmutallab's family promised their full cooperation with security agencies and said his recent behavior had been "completely out of character."

Yemen confirmed that Abdulmutallab was still in the country earlier this month, after the local Al-Qaeda branch claimed the attempted bombing. Related article: The Yemen link.

The spokesman did not provide details on Abdulmutallab's previous stay in Yemen, saying only that Yemen gave him a visa after security officials were "reassured that he had been granted visas by friendly countries, and still held a valid visa to the US, where he had visited before."

"After the incident of the failed bomb attack, the Chinese civil aviation authority has coordinated with the US side to strengthen security checks on our flights," foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters in Beijing.

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HONOLULU – President Barack Obama on Monday vowed to use “every element of our national power” to keep Americans safe and said the failed Christmas Day plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner was “a serious reminder” of the need to continually adapt security measures against changing terrorist threats.
But even as Obama spoke, word came that a State Department warning had failed to trigger an effort to revoke the alleged attacker’s visa. The incident prompted stiffer airport boarding measures and authorities warned holiday travelers to expect extra delays as they return home this week and beyond.
Members of Congress, meanwhile, questioned how a man flagged as a possible terrorist managed to board a commercial flight into the United States carrying powerful explosives and nearly bring down the jetliner. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Monday that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he chairs would hold hearings in January.
Yemen has long been an al-Qaida stomping ground. A statement posted on the Internet by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said Abdulmutallab coordinated with members of the group and used explosives manufactured by al-Qaida members.
Solving one mystery of Abdulmutallab’s pre-Detroit path, the Yemeni Foreign Ministry said Monday that he was in Yemen from August until early December. Citing immigration authorities, the statement said Abdulmutallab had previously studied at the school, indicating it was not his first trip to Yemen.
Obama, on vacation in his birthplace of Hawaii, acknowledged the attack showed the need to increase the United States’ defenses. Officials said that was deliberate — an effort by the White House to balance the need for the president to show concern but also to not unduly elevate a botched incident and thereby encourage other would-be attackers.
Back in Washington, federal officials met to review their layered system of watchlists and other procedures to examine how to avoid the type of lapses that led to the attack.
Abdulmutallab’s family in Nigeria released a statement that that his father had reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago. U.S. officials say that is how Abdulmutallab came to the attention of American intelligence, just last month, when the father, prominent Nigerian banker Alhaji Umar Mutallab, reported his concerns to the American Embassy in Abuja. The embassy visit by Abdulmatallab’s father triggered a Nov. 20 State Department cable from Lagos 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.

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.

Michael Chertoff, who was homeland security secretary in the Bush administration, questioned why Abdulmutallab’s visa wasn’t revoked. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed, backtracking from a statement Sunday in which she said it worked.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., joined the GOP critics of that statement. The White House said Obama’s low-key response was carefully calibrated.

The plane had been on the ground in Detroit for two hours on Friday before officials first informed Obama. Obama’s motorcade was rolling toward the gym minutes afterward.

Throughout the weekend, Obama has mixed vacation activities with crisis monitoring. He played golf on Saturday with friends and was playing basketball with aides when that second flight landed in Detroit on Sunday. Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Matt Lee, Eileen Sullivan, Lolita Baldor and Devlin Barrett in Washington; Pamela Hess in New York; Ed White in Detroit; Jon Gambrell in Lagos, Nigeria; Donna Abu-Nasr in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Mark Niesse in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, contributed to this report.

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HONOLULU – President Barack Obama’s security teams briefed the vacationing president on threats facing the United States and he directed that heightened airport security measures remain in place as officials investigate a failed terror attack aboard a Detroit-bound plane.
Officials, meanwhile, pondered a formal inquiry into what changes might be needed for U.S. intelligence operations that allowed the suspect to be purged from a massive and broad government database of potential threats.
White House officials began their Saturday at 4 a.m. in Hawaii — 9 a.m. on the clock in Washington — to prepare with counterparts across the government a briefing for Obama. National Security Council chief of staff Denis McDonough in Hawaii, homeland security and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and others in Washington spoke with Obama at 6:20 a.m. by secure telephone conference call at the first family’s rented vacation home.
Regular updates were sent to the president, who — despite being on holiday — made decisions to continue increased security precautions he put in place after Friday’s incident.
As Obama spent more than six hours on a Marine Corps golf course, his national security and policy advisers asked each other and peers questions such as: How is the intelligence community integrating itself? The Justice Department on Saturday charged that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab willfully attempted to destroy or wreck an aircraft; and that he placed a destructive device in the plane.
Abdulmutallab claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over U.S. soil, said a U.S. law enforcement official. The plane landed in Detroit at 11:53 a.m. EST. Officials said Obama was briefed on the incident — initially thought to be firecrackers — more than two hours later.

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