The Homeland Security Department unit that reviews lists of U.S.-bound airline passengers for possible terror suspects did consult a classified database that contained information on Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—but only after his plane had left the ground in Amsterdam on its Christmas Day transatlantic flight to Detroit, an Obama administration official has confirmed to NEWSWEEK.
The National Targeting Center, a Virginia-based unit of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection Bureau, consulted TIDE, a classified database maintained by intelligence agencies, after Flight 253 left Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, said the official, and did discover that the databank contained information about how Abdulmutallab’s father had warned the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that Abdulmutallab might be involved with extremists in Yemen. After discovering the secret database entry, the National Targeting Center issued some kind of unclassified alert to border posts instructing frontline immigration officials in Detroit to put Abdulmutallab through special screening and questioning once he landed in the U.S.
The news that Homeland Security determined after his flight had left Amsterdam that he should be subjected to additional inspection was first reported Thursday in this story by the Los Angeles Times. However, the Times’s story does not disclose precise details of how and where the National Targeting Center found the information that led them to single out Abdulmutallab for additional scrutiny once his flight landed.
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