(CNN) -- A passenger on an international flight bound for the United States Friday ignited a small explosive device shortly before landing in a move the White House called an attempted terrorist attack, a senior administration official said.

Another passenger on the Northwest flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Detroit, Michigan, quickly helped subdue and isolate the young male suspect with the aid of the cabin crew, passenger Syed Jafry said.

The suspect was placed in custody and is being treated for second- and third-degree burns on his thighs suffered in the explosion, according to federal law enforcement and airline security sources.

The sources said the suspect flew into Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam on a KLM flight from Lagos, Nigeria, and is not believed to be on any watch list.

The suspect, identified as a Nigerian national, claimed to have extremist ties and said the explosive device "was acquired in Yemen along with instructions as to when it should be used," said a federal security bulletin obtained by CNN.

The FBI is investigating, bureau spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said.

The remains of the device used are being sent to an FBI explosives lab in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis, the sources said.

Rep. Pete King, R-New York and ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad. CNN has not been able to confirm the name from law enforcement or government officials, and some media outlets have reported the name as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

President Obama, who is spending the holidays in his home state of Hawaii, was briefed on the incident during a secure phone call with aides, and instructed in a subsequent discussion with security advisers "that all appropriate measures be taken to increase security for air travel," said White House spokesman Bill Burton. The president made no changes to his schedule, Burton said.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement Friday saying that air passengers "may notice additional screening measures put into place to ensure the safety of the traveling public on domestic and international flights."

Passengers described the brief moments of panic on board as screams erupted and flight attendants ran for fire extinguishers.

Jafry, who was sitting in seat 16G, said the plane was just beginning to descend when passengers heard a pop.

"Everybody got a little bit startled," he said. "After a few seconds or so ... there was ... kind of a flamish light and there was fire" and people around the immediate area began to panic.

One woman told CNN affiliate WDIV that a man threw a blanket over the suspect's legs to help put out the small fire.

"It was terrifying," Richelle Keepman said. "I think we all thought we weren't going to land, we weren't going to make it."

Passenger Elias Fawaz told WDIV that the explosion sounded "like a balloon being popped" and said he could smell smoke.

WDIV coverage of plane incident

Jafry said the incident was under control within minutes, crediting the crew and nearby passengers for the rapid response.

One person was taken to the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, hospital spokeswoman Tracy Justice said.

"All passengers have deplaned and out of an abundance of caution, the plane was moved to a remote area," where the plane and baggage were rescreened, the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement. Passengers were interviewed by law enforcement authorities before being allowed to leave the airport. No other suspicious materials were found on the plane or in luggage, the law enforcement and airline security sources said.

No other suspicious materials were found on the plane or in luggage, the law enforcement and airline security sources said. The suspect had only carry-on luggage.

Another passenger on the Northwest flight transferred from the same KLM flight in Amsterdam but officials found no connection between the two, the sources said.

The plane, an Airbus 330, landed shortly before noon. It was carrying 278 passengers.

Delta is the parent company of Northwest.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/12/25/airliner.firecrackers/index.html

Saw this when it broke last night. But don't worry, the TSA info posted on the web was all outdated.

You know that's a great point. I bet the info that was released was used to skirt around the screening process in order to get the explosive on the plane.

Too bad us taxpayers have to pay for that terrorist's medical care! Something is just wrong there!

Official: Dad warned U.S. of son but 'no suggestion' of terrorist act

Washington (CNN) -- When the father of suspected terrorist Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab visited the U.S. embassy in Nigeria in November, he told officials he believed his son was under the influence of religious extremists and had traveled from London, England, to Yemen, a senior administration official said Monday.

Revealing new details, the official also denied the father told officials his son might be on a suicide mission:

"There was no suggestion he was about to carry out a terrorist act," the official said.

A suspect in the foiled Christmas Day terror attack, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, is being held for allegedly trying to blow up a flight carrying 300 passengers that was about to land in the United States.

This official says the father, Umaru AbdulMutallab, came to the embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, on November 19.

"He was concerned about his son's safety and whereabouts and wondered if the U.S. government could help," the official said. "The father said he was in Yemen," this official said. "His son had gone from London to Yemen."

The official noted that this information was based on what the father said but has not been corroborated.

The next day, November 20, the U.S. embassy in Abuja sent what is called a "Visas Viper cable" to the State Department detailing the father's concerns, according to an official account by State Department spokesman Ian Kelley.

That information was passed on to the National Counter-Terrorism Center in Washington, which ruled that the information in the cable was "insufficient for this interagency review process to make a determination that this individual's visa should be revoked."

The secretary of state can unilaterally revoke a visa but usually does that for foreign policy and diplomatic, not national security, reasons, Kelley said.

"This has to be done in consultation with other agencies," Kelley said.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelley provided further details Monday.

AbdulMutallab was studying in London, Kelly said. He applied for a multiple-entry U.S. visa on June 12, 2008, and received it June 16, 2008.

The visa was a standard multiple-entry tourist visa good for two years.

"At the time, there was nothing in his application, nor in any data base at the time, that would warrant that he should not receive a visa. He was a student at a reputable school, he had plenty of financial resources. ... There was no derogatory information about him last year that would have indicated that he should not get a visa," Kelley said.

The suspect traveled previously to the U.S. on another visa, Kelley said.

Kelley said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will ask the department's consular division to review all processes connected with issuing visas.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/28/terror.suspect.father/index.html

Source: CIA failed to circulate report about bombing suspect

(CNN) -- The father of terrorism suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab talked about his son's extremist views with someone from the CIA and a report was prepared, but the report was not circulated outside the agency, a reliable source told CNN's Jeanne Meserve on Tuesday.

Had that information been shared, the 23-year-old Nigerian who is alleged to have bungled an attempt to blow up a jetliner as it was landing in Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day might have been denied passage on the Northwest Airlines flight, the source said.

U.S. officials said the father, a former Nigerian banker, expressed his concerns about his son's radicalization during at least one meeting and several calls with officials at the embassy in Nigeria.

The information on AbdulMutallab had been sent to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but it sat there for five weeks and was not disseminated, the source said.

Federal authorities have charged AbdulMutallab with trying to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear as the flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, made its final approach to Detroit. The device failed to fully detonate, instead setting off a fire at his seat.

An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the federal government had information that should have been assessed and meshed with other information "that would have allowed us to disrupt the attempted terrorist attack" before the suspect boarded the jet.

"What we have here is a situation in which the failings were individual, organizational, systemic and technological," the official said. "We ended up in a situation where a single point of failure in the system put our security at risk, where human error was compounded by systemic deficiencies in a way that we cannot allow to continue."

But an intelligence official said that the son's name, passport number and possible connection to extremists were indeed disseminated. "I'm not aware of a magic piece of intelligence somehow withheld that would have put AbdulMutallab on the no-fly list," the official said.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said department staff did what they were supposed to have done by sending a cable to the National Counterterrorism Center in Washington about the matter. Kelly said any decision to have revoked the suspect's visa would have been an interagency decision.

But a U.S. government official said the information in the cable offered nothing specific and was just one of hundreds of such reports that the center evaluates daily.

The bureaucratic fingerpointing erupted shortly after President Obama on Tuesday blamed "a mix of human and systemic failures" for the incident and directed that preliminary findings into the matter be delivered to the White House by Thursday.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/29/airline.terror.cia/index.html#cnnSTCText

Online poster appears to be Christmas Day bomb suspect

(CNN) -- "Let me tell you a little about me."

"Farouk1986" introduced himself to a Muslim online community with these words in February 2005.

"My name is Umar but you can call me Farouk," the poster continues, detailing biographical information that appears to match the life of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian man accused of attempting to detonate an explosive on an international flight into Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day.

The failed terror plot put airports on high alert and refocused American attention on al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, which claimed responsibility for the attempted attack.

Internet postings for Farouk1986 -- apparently a combination of his name and birth year -- reveal a young man who fought feelings of loneliness and struggled with balancing his life as a Muslim with the temptations of the secular world around him. He wrote about his desire to attend university, possibly in the United States, and his thoughts on love and marriage.

Officials have not confirmed that Internet postings by Farouk1986 were made by AbdulMutallab, but the many detailed biographical points made by the poster match what has been reported about AbdulMutallab's life.

"I will describe myself as very ambitious and determined, especially in the deen," Farouk1986 wrote in February 2005, referring to the Islamic way of life. The poster writes about being in boarding school, with possibilities of attending Stanford University or the University of California-Berkeley.

Eventually, AbdulMutallab studied mechanical engineering at University College London.

Besides being ambitious, Farouk1986 also described himself as lonely.

"First of all, I have no friend[s]," he wrote in another online post with informal, imperfect grammar. "Not because I do not socialise (sic), etc but because either people do not want to get too close to me as they go partying and stuff while I don't. or they are bad people who befriend me and influence me to do bad things.

"i have no one to speak too, no one to consult, no one to support me and i feel depressed and lonely. i do not know what to do."

Somewhere along the way, AbdulMutallab turned toward Islamic extremism.

An FBI official said AbdulMutallab was included in the U.S. government's Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, after his father warned the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria of his son's hard-line beliefs and possible ties to militant Islamists. But his name was not pulled from that database and included on lists barring him from U.S.-bound aircraft.

Part of the explosive device that failed to take down last week's flight from Amsterdam, Netherlands, was sewn into AbdulMutallab's underwear, authorities said. A preliminary FBI analysis found the device contained pentaerythritol tetranitrate, an explosive also known as PETN.

Investigators were having trouble determining what the accelerant AbdulMutallab allegedly tried to use to light the explosives because "the syringe was pretty much destroyed," a law enforcement source told CNN.

All 300 passengers and crew onboard the Christmas Day flight have been interviewed by authorities, the source said, adding that he expected no one else to be held or charged in connection with the incident.

Farouk1986's online posts show that as early as 2005, he had a serious view of his religion. One of his struggles, the poster wrote, was that the "loneliness leads me to other problems."

Farouk1986 said after fasting, "I felt a shield that prevented evil thoughts coming into my head. I felt closer to Allah."

Being lonely awakened sexual desires that he struggled to control, he said, sometimes "leading to minor sinful activities like not lowering the gaze." His religion instructed him to fast to avoid such temptation, but it didn't seem to be working, Farouk1986 said.

In another online post soon afterward, though, he took his comment back.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/29/terror.suspect.online/index.html

There really has been some fallout from this potential attack. Seems as though everyone wants to point the finger at someone else. Instead they should be taking the necessary to prevent these sort of attacks.

Watch lists grow; more screening on flights to US

By EILEEN SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer Eileen Sullivan

WASHINGTON – The names of dozens more people have been added to the government's terrorist watch list and no-fly list after a failed terrorist attack on Christmas prompted U.S. officials to closely scrutinize a large database of suspected terrorists, an intelligence official said Monday.

People on the watch list get additional checking before they are allowed to enter this country; those on the no-fly list are barred from boarding aircraft in or headed for the United States.

The review of the National Counterterrorism Center's massive Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database was prompted by the attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound jetliner. That incident also spurred enhanced security screening that took effect Monday for people traveling to the United States from or through Yemen, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia and 11 other countries.

The official was not authorized to speak publicly about the watch lists and requested anonymity, but said that after the Dec. 25 incident counterterrorism officials reviewed information in TIDE on people from countries where terrorists have operated.

The Transportation Security Administration outlined the new security rules in a directive sent to airlines Sunday, but initial reports from several European countries indicated that they were still scrambling to digest and implement the new rules.

The time it takes to implement new screening procedures depends on where airlines are operating, said Steve Lott of the International Air Transport Association. "It can happen in a matter of hours or it can happen in a day or two."

Many other passengers who are not from those 14 countries or traveling through them will continue to see additional screening measures, according to a senior TSA official. For instance, in another refinement of measures put in place after the Christmas incident, it is now up to the plane's captain whether to require passengers to put away electronic devices during the flight and to remain seated for the final hour before landing. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and requested anonymity.

TSA also said Sunday that all passengers on U.S.-bound international flights will be subject to random screening and airports were directed to increase "threat-based" screening of passengers acting in a suspicious manner.

People who are from or traveling from or through these countries are supposed to have full-body pat-downs and have their carryon luggage checked: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen.

The U.S. has designated Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria to be state sponsors of terrorism. The other 10 countries are considered "of interest," based on the latest terrorism intelligence. People from those countries or traveling through them could also be subject to full-body scanning and explosive detection technology as part of their screening.

The new security measures come in response to the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb a jetliner as it approached Detroit after a flight from Amsterdam. Witnesses said a 23-year-old Nigerian, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, ignited an explosive mixture but it failed to do serious damage to the Northwest jetliner or its passengers. He has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.

Abdulmutallab's name was in the massive TIDE database of about 550,000 suspected terrorists. But his name was not on a watch list or a no-fly list, officials said, because they did not have enough information about his plans and associations. The incident has prompted major reviews of the government's intelligence sharing. White House spokesman Bill Burton disclosed the watch list updates Monday.

President Barack Obama, who returned to Washington from his Hawaiian vacation, was meeting with his homeland security adviser on Monday. The deputy homeland security secretary was traveling to London on Monday to meet with officials on international aviation security.

TSA security directives are issued to the airlines to be carried out.

David Castelveter, spokesman for the Air Transport Association, which represents major U.S. air carriers, said he would not discuss any new TSA measures because doing so might compromise security. "We are not having discussions about the measures or how they work or do not work," Castelveter said in an interview. He said the measures are being implemented with the least amount of customer inconvenience possible.

If the security measures are not followed, the TSA can penalize the airlines, according to another TSA official who was not authorized to speak about the enforcement rules. The penalties could include warnings, fines and recalcitrant airlines could ultimately be barred from flying to the U.S.

A Saudi security official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, says there are more security personnel at the airport in Riyadh. He had no other details.

A spokesman for Pakistan International Airline said the company has instituted new security standards for U.S.-bound passengers.

Passengers are subjected to special screening, including full body searches, in a designated area of the departure lounge, said the spokesman, Sultan Hasan. The airline has run advertisements in newspapers to advise passengers of the stepped-up security.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Sunday that full body scanners would be introduced in British airports and officials in Amsterdam said last week they would begin using the scanners on passengers bound for the U.S.

In the Yemeni capital, security personnel at the San'a airport were ordered to apply strict measures, including careful baggage examinations and patting down travelers, especially those departing for the United States as the final destination, an official said.

The security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to talk about security measures to the media, said the airport was expecting to receive some new equipment to provide better security.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100104/ap_on_bi_ge/us_airline_security/print

Im hearing that this "terrorist" (Yup i'm not afraid to call it what it is.) boarded this plane with the help of another "wealthy" arab and that he had no passport. Wonder why this isnt in the news.

I think we should use Israel's methods of screening they havent had an airline incident in a long time.