Despite the billions spent since 2001 on intelligence and counterterrorism programs, sophisticated airport scanners and elaborate watch lists, it was something simpler that averted disaster on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit: alert and courageous passengers and crew members.
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Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times
David Schilke, 49, of Livonia, Mich., was traveling with his wife, Iliana, and their son, and sat two rows behind the suspect.
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See Tighter Security? Share Your Travel Experiences
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Fabrizio Costantini for The New York Times
David Schilke, 49, of Livonia, Mich., was traveling with his wife, Iliana, and their son, and sat two rows behind the suspect.
During 19 hours of travel, aboard two flights across three continents, law enforcement officials said, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab bided his time. Then, just as Northwest Flight 253 finally began its final approach to Detroit around noon on Friday, he tried to ignite the incendiary powder mixture he had taped to his leg, they said.
There were popping sounds, smoke and a commotion as passengers cried out in alarm and tried to see what was happening. One woman shouted, "What are you doing?" and another called out, "Fire!"
And then history repeated itself. Just as occurred before Christmas in 2001, when Richard C. Reid tried to ignite plastic explosives hidden in his shoe on a trans-Atlantic flight, fellow passengers jumped on Mr. Abdulmutallab, restraining the 23-year-old Nigerian.
Jasper Schuringa, a Dutch film director seated in the same row as Mr. Abdulmutallab but on the other side of the aircraft, saw what looked like an object on fire in the suspect's lap and "freaked," he told CNN.
"Without any hesitation, I just jumped over all the seats," Mr. Schuringa said, in an account that other passengers confirmed."I was thinking, Oh, he's trying to blow up the plane. I was trying to search his body for any explosive. I took some kind of object that was already melting and smoking, and I tried to put out the fire and when I did that I was also restraining the suspect."
Mr. Schuringa said he had burned his hands slightly as he grappled with Mr. Abdulmutallab, aided by other passengers among the 289 on board, and began to shout for water.
"But then the fire was getting worse, so I grabbed the suspect out of the seat," Mr. Schuringa said. Flight attendants ran up with fire extinguishers, doused the flames and helped Mr. Schuringa walk Mr. Abdulmutallab to first class, where he was stripped, searched and locked in handcuffs.
"The whole plane was screaming — but the suspect, he didn't say a word," Mr. Schuringa said.
He shrugged off praise for his swift action, which he said was reflexive. "When you hear a pop on the plane, you're awake, trust me," he said. "I just jumped. I didn't think. I went over there and tried to save the plane."
In an affidavit filed in court, an F.B.I. agent said that Mr. Abdulmutallab stayed in the bathroom for 20 minutes before the attempt, returned to his seat, told his seatmates that his stomach was upset and covered himself with a blanket. It was then that the smoke and popping sounds began.
After he was subdued and the fire extinguished, a flight attendant asked him what had been in his pocket, and he answered, "explosive device," the affidavit said. The powder was identified by the F.B.I. as PETN, a high explosive.
The close call was followed by several tense hours as counterterrorism officials checked on other United States-bound flights to determine whether more planes were targets, as in the thwarted 2006 plot to smuggle liquid explosives aboard multiple flights leaving from Britain.
They found no immediate signs that other flights were in danger, officials said. They tightened airport security, ordering new restrictions on carry-on luggage and passenger movement inside the cabin, but did not elevate the nation's threat level, which has been at orange since 2006.
Dozens of investigators led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation were working Saturday to understand exactly how a passenger managed to get PETN and a syringe of chemicals aboard the flight. Intelligence agencies were studying intercepted communications to see whether clues were missed and to assess whether the incident could presage more attacks.
David Schilke, 49, of Livonia, Mich., who works in the information technology department at the Ford Motor Company, was traveling home from Moscow with his wife, Iliana, and their 5-year-old son, sitting two rows behind the suspect. He said he heard a pop, and then someone asking for water and screams coming from the rows in front of him. The fire, he said, lasted for a full minute.
"The guy wasn't fighting or doing anything," Mr. Schilke said. "He was just sitting there in the flames. I was shocked that he would do that." He added that he was surprised at how little panic there was. Many passengers who were farther away thought the pops were from fireworks, he said.
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Carlos Osorio/Associated Press
Passengers leaving the customs area of Detroit's Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on Friday after an attempted terrorist attack.
Related
Officials Point to Suspect's Claim of Qaeda Ties in Yemen (December 27, 2009)
New Restrictions Quickly Added for Air Passengers (December 27, 2009)
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Times Topics: Airplane Accidents and Incidents
Federal Criminal Complaint (pdf)
See Tighter Security? Share Your Travel Experiences
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William Archie/Detroit Free Press, via Associated Press
Richard and Dawn Griffith were aboard the Northwest flight. Mr. Griffith praised the crew as having helped prevent panic.
Richard Griffith, 41, of Pontiac, Mich., who said he had been sitting in the back of the plane during the episode, praised the crew for its professionalism in preventing panic.
Mr. Griffith said the passenger who had been sitting next to the suspect told him the suspect got up once midflight to use the bathroom and returned to the bathroom about 20 or 30 minutes before the attempt, apparently to brush his teeth. Otherwise, he said, "He just sat there; he didn't talk to nobody."
The episode, which riveted the attention of President Obama on vacation in Hawaii and prompted counterterrorism officials to rush back to work, capped a year in which plots of violence inside the United States have surged. The attempt appeared to underscore the continuing determination of Muslim militants to kill Americans more than eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Passengers transferring from foreign flights at the Amsterdam airport, where Mr. Abdulmutallab changed planes and boarded the flight bound for Detroit, are required to be screened by security there before taking off on another flight, an airport spokeswoman said Saturday. She could not confirm the details in Mr. Abdulmutallab's case but said he was presumably subject to that sort of screening.
Investigators planned to interview all the passengers on the suspect's flights and to look over any security-camera video footage of him, a law enforcement official said.
Mr. Abdulmutallab apparently left Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos aboard KLM Flight 588, a Boeing 777, at 11 on Christmas Eve and arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam a little early, at 5:37 a.m. on Christmas Day.
Three hours later, at 8:54 a.m., Northwest 253, an Airbus A330, took off for Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, with three pilots, eight flight attendants and the 278 passengers.
Amsterdam has long been an airport of concern for American aviation security officials, like other major gateways in Europe, including London, Brussels and Frankfurt, where the Transportation Security Administration sees an unusually large number of hits from people on so-called selectee or no-fly lists associated with security threats, one former senior Homeland Security official said.
In 2007, the Amsterdam airport began testing body-scanning machines that can find threats hidden under passengers' clothing, but there are only 10 such machines out of 200 security checkpoints at the sprawling airport. In the United States, the T.S.A. has begun to substitute similar machines, called millimeter-wave technology, for walk-through metal detectors.
"Those will pick up anything underneath clothing," said Edmund S. Hawley, who served as the agency's administrator until January. "If he had it taped to his leg, it could have easily identified something there."
Mr. Hawley said of Al Qaeda and like-minded militants: "They have been trying since 2001, and they are going to keep trying. You have to keep your vigilance up over the long term. That is the hard thing."
Enlarge This Image
Carlos Osorio/Associated Press
Passengers leaving the customs area of Detroit's Metropolitan Wayne County Airport on Friday after an attempted terrorist attack.
Related
Officials Point to Suspect's Claim of Qaeda Ties in Yemen (December 27, 2009)
New Restrictions Quickly Added for Air Passengers (December 27, 2009)
The Lede: Travel Q. and A. About Terrorism Attempt
Times Topics: Airplane Accidents and Incidents
Federal Criminal Complaint (pdf)
See Tighter Security? Share Your Travel Experiences
Enlarge This Image
William Archie/Detroit Free Press, via Associated Press
Richard and Dawn Griffith were aboard the Northwest flight. Mr. Griffith praised the crew as having helped prevent panic.
Richard Griffith, 41, of Pontiac, Mich., who said he had been sitting in the back of the plane during the episode, praised the crew for its professionalism in preventing panic.
Mr. Griffith said the passenger who had been sitting next to the suspect told him the suspect got up once midflight to use the bathroom and returned to the bathroom about 20 or 30 minutes before the attempt, apparently to brush his teeth. Otherwise, he said, "He just sat there; he didn't talk to nobody."
The episode, which riveted the attention of President Obama on vacation in Hawaii and prompted counterterrorism officials to rush back to work, capped a year in which plots of violence inside the United States have surged. The attempt appeared to underscore the continuing determination of Muslim militants to kill Americans more than eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Passengers transferring from foreign flights at the Amsterdam airport, where Mr. Abdulmutallab changed planes and boarded the flight bound for Detroit, are required to be screened by security there before taking off on another flight, an airport spokeswoman said Saturday. She could not confirm the details in Mr. Abdulmutallab's case but said he was presumably subject to that sort of screening.
Investigators planned to interview all the passengers on the suspect's flights and to look over any security-camera video footage of him, a law enforcement official said.
Mr. Abdulmutallab apparently left Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos aboard KLM Flight 588, a Boeing 777, at 11 on Christmas Eve and arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam a little early, at 5:37 a.m. on Christmas Day.
Three hours later, at 8:54 a.m., Northwest 253, an Airbus A330, took off for Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, with three pilots, eight flight attendants and the 278 passengers.
Amsterdam has long been an airport of concern for American aviation security officials, like other major gateways in Europe, including London, Brussels and Frankfurt, where the Transportation Security Administration sees an unusually large number of hits from people on so-called selectee or no-fly lists associated with security threats, one former senior Homeland Security official said.
In 2007, the Amsterdam airport began testing body-scanning machines that can find threats hidden under passengers' clothing, but there are only 10 such machines out of 200 security checkpoints at the sprawling airport. In the United States, the T.S.A. has begun to substitute similar machines, called millimeter-wave technology, for walk-through metal detectors.
"Those will pick up anything underneath clothing," said Edmund S. Hawley, who served as the agency's administrator until January. "If he had it taped to his leg, it could have easily identified something there."
Mr. Hawley said of Al Qaeda and like-minded militants: "They have been trying since 2001, and they are going to keep trying. You have to keep your vigilance up over the long term. That is the hard thing."
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WASHINGTON — Federal authorities on Saturday charged a 23-year-old Nigerian man with trying to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, and officials said the suspect told them he had obtained explosive chemicals and a syringe that were sewn into his underwear from a bomb expert in Yemen associated with Al Qaeda.
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Akira Suemori/Associated Press
The police searched the basement of a building in London, where it is believed that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been a student.
Related
Passengers' Quick Action Halted Attack (December 27, 2009)
New Restrictions Quickly Added for Air Passengers (December 27, 2009)
The Lede: Travel Q. and A. About Terrorism Attempt
Times Topics: Airplane Accidents and Incidents | Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
Federal Criminal Complaint (pdf)
The authorities have not independently corroborated the Yemen connection claimed by the man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was burned in his failed attempt to bring down the airliner and is in a hospital in Michigan. But a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said on Saturday that the suspect's account was "plausible," and that he saw "no reason to discount it."
Mr. Abdulmutallab's name was not unknown to American authorities. His father, a prominent Nigerian banker, recently told officials at the United States Embassy in Nigeria that he was concerned about his son's increasingly extremist religious views.
As a result of his father's warning, federal authorities in Washington opened an investigative file and Mr. Abdulmutallab's name ended up in the American intelligence community's central repository of information on known or suspected international terrorists.
Members of Congress who were briefed Saturday by governmental officials also pointed to a Yemeni connection.
"The facts are still emerging, but there are strong suggestions of a Yemen-Al Qaeda connection and an intent to blow up the plane over U.S. airspace," Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat who leads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, said in a statement.
The attempt prompted significant changes to airline security around the world during the busy holiday season.
In an affidavit filed in support of the criminal charges, the authorities said that Mr. Abdulmutallab had tried to ignite a device, which was attached to his body, resulting "in a fire and what appears to have been an explosion."
The affidavit said the device contained PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, a highly explosive substance that was used in 2001 by Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber whose attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight was also thwarted. Officials said analysis of the remnants of Mr. Abdulmutallab's device was being carried out by the F.B.I. laboratory, but it was possible that had the chemical mixture detonated, it might have brought down the aircraft.
The suspect's name was inserted last month into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or Tide. About 550,000 individuals are registered in the database. A subset of that is the Terrorist Screening Data Base, or T.S.D.B., which has about 400,000.
By contrast, fewer than 4,000 names from the T.S.D.B. are on the "no-fly" list, and an additional 14,000 on a "selectee" list that calls for mandatory secondary screening, an Obama administration official said. At the time Mr. Abdulmutallab's name was recorded in the Tide database in November, the official said, "there was insufficient derogatory information available" to warrant putting him in the T.S.D.B., no-fly or selectee lists, and so he was not on any watch list when he boarded the plane bound for Detroit.
President Obama ordered a full review of the law enforcement and intelligence databases related to the no-fly list to make sure the procedures and practices still make sense, a senior administration official said Saturday.
Mr. Abdulmutallab was issued a regular visitor's visa by the United States Embassy in London in June 2008, the administration official said. There was no "derogatory information available" on him at the time he applied, and he was granted a two-year visa, which is still valid, the official said. He had traveled to the United States once before, to Houston in August 2008.
Representative Bennie G. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who leads the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a telephone interview that he would hold hearings next month when Congress returns from its recess to determine whether airport screening processes were at fault, scanning equipment was inadequate, information was not shared among federal agencies, or human error was to blame.
Mr. Abdulmutallab told F.B.I. agents he was connected to the Qaeda affiliate, which operates largely in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, by a radical Yemeni cleric whom he contacted online. The cleric is not believed to be Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born imam who has spoken in favor of anti-American violence and who corresponded with Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the killings of 13 people in a shooting spree last month at Fort Hood, Tex.
In a statement, the Yemeni Embassy in Washington said: "We have yet to receive official information on the incident. If and when the would-be bomber's alleged link to Yemen is officially identified, authorities will take immediate action."
If corroborated, Mr. Abdulmutallab's travel to Yemen for terrorist instruction and explosives underscores the emergence of that country as a major hub for Al Qaeda, perhaps beginning to rival the terror network's base in Pakistan.
For years, American counterterrorism officials have watched Yemen with trepidation as an unstable state with multiple security challenges and an uncertain commitment to battling extremists who see their main enemies in the West.
But this month has seen an unprecedented assault by the Yemeni government on Qaeda strongholds, with major airstrikes on Dec. 17 and Dec. 24, which may have killed as many as 60 militants.
The Yemeni government initially said it believed the second strike had killed the top two officials of Al Qaeda in Yemen as well as Mr. Awlaki, the American-born cleric, whose popular Web site and radical sermons have turned up as an influence in a dozen recent terror cases in the West.
But American officials said they had no confirmation of the cleric's death, and Mr. Awlaki's relatives told The Associated Press on Saturday that he was still alive.
Mr. Abdulmutallab grew up in a rarefied slice of Nigeria, the son of an affluent banker. He attended one of the West Africa's best schools, the British School of Lomé in Togo. After high school, he went to Britain and enrolled at University College London to study mechanical engineering.
While still in high school, Mr. Abdulmutallab began preaching to fellow students about Islam, according to a report in ThisDay, a Nigerian newspaper. The newspaper reported that more recently, Mr. Abdulmutallab had moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and told his family that he no longer wanted to associate with them.
His father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, until recently served as chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria, and his mother's family is originally from Yemen, according to news accounts in Nigerian newspapers.
Charles Anaman, 26, who now lives in Ghana, said that he was close friends with Mr. Abdulmutallab in high school — they would listen to music, watch videos, play basketball.
Mr. Abdulmutallab was like most other students at the school, Mr. Anaman said, with a particular interest in studying history, and a preference for hip-hop music.
Mr. Anaman said that his involvement in the Detroit incident was hard to imagine: "He was a very calm person."
Enlarge This Image
Akira Suemori/Associated Press
The police searched the basement of a building in London, where it is believed that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been a student.
Related
Passengers' Quick Action Halted Attack (December 27, 2009)
New Restrictions Quickly Added for Air Passengers (December 27, 2009)
The Lede: Travel Q. and A. About Terrorism Attempt
Times Topics: Airplane Accidents and Incidents | Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
Federal Criminal Complaint (pdf)
The authorities have not independently corroborated the Yemen connection claimed by the man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was burned in his failed attempt to bring down the airliner and is in a hospital in Michigan. But a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said on Saturday that the suspect's account was "plausible," and that he saw "no reason to discount it."
Mr. Abdulmutallab's name was not unknown to American authorities. His father, a prominent Nigerian banker, recently told officials at the United States Embassy in Nigeria that he was concerned about his son's increasingly extremist religious views.
As a result of his father's warning, federal authorities in Washington opened an investigative file and Mr. Abdulmutallab's name ended up in the American intelligence community's central repository of information on known or suspected international terrorists.
Members of Congress who were briefed Saturday by governmental officials also pointed to a Yemeni connection.
"The facts are still emerging, but there are strong suggestions of a Yemen-Al Qaeda connection and an intent to blow up the plane over U.S. airspace," Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat who leads the House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence, said in a statement.
The attempt prompted significant changes to airline security around the world during the busy holiday season.
In an affidavit filed in support of the criminal charges, the authorities said that Mr. Abdulmutallab had tried to ignite a device, which was attached to his body, resulting "in a fire and what appears to have been an explosion."
The affidavit said the device contained PETN, also known as pentaerythritol, a highly explosive substance that was used in 2001 by Richard C. Reid, the so-called shoe bomber whose attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight was also thwarted. Officials said analysis of the remnants of Mr. Abdulmutallab's device was being carried out by the F.B.I. laboratory, but it was possible that had the chemical mixture detonated, it might have brought down the aircraft.
The suspect's name was inserted last month into the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or Tide. About 550,000 individuals are registered in the database. A subset of that is the Terrorist Screening Data Base, or T.S.D.B., which has about 400,000.
By contrast, fewer than 4,000 names from the T.S.D.B. are on the "no-fly" list, and an additional 14,000 on a "selectee" list that calls for mandatory secondary screening, an Obama administration official said. At the time Mr. Abdulmutallab's name was recorded in the Tide database in November, the official said, "there was insufficient derogatory information available" to warrant putting him in the T.S.D.B., no-fly or selectee lists, and so he was not on any watch list when he boarded the plane bound for Detroit.
President Obama ordered a full review of the law enforcement and intelligence databases related to the no-fly list to make sure the procedures and practices still make sense, a senior administration official said Saturday.
Mr. Abdulmutallab was issued a regular visitor's visa by the United States Embassy in London in June 2008, the administration official said. There was no "derogatory information available" on him at the time he applied, and he was granted a two-year visa, which is still valid, the official said. He had traveled to the United States once before, to Houston in August 2008.
Representative Bennie G. Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who leads the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a telephone interview that he would hold hearings next month when Congress returns from its recess to determine whether airport screening processes were at fault, scanning equipment was inadequate, information was not shared among federal agencies, or human error was to blame.
Mr. Abdulmutallab told F.B.I. agents he was connected to the Qaeda affiliate, which operates largely in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, by a radical Yemeni cleric whom he contacted online. The cleric is not believed to be Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born imam who has spoken in favor of anti-American violence and who corresponded with Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Army psychiatrist charged in the killings of 13 people in a shooting spree last month at Fort Hood, Tex.
In a statement, the Yemeni Embassy in Washington said: "We have yet to receive official information on the incident. If and when the would-be bomber's alleged link to Yemen is officially identified, authorities will take immediate action."
If corroborated, Mr. Abdulmutallab's travel to Yemen for terrorist instruction and explosives underscores the emergence of that country as a major hub for Al Qaeda, perhaps beginning to rival the terror network's base in Pakistan.
For years, American counterterrorism officials have watched Yemen with trepidation as an unstable state with multiple security challenges and an uncertain commitment to battling extremists who see their main enemies in the West.
But this month has seen an unprecedented assault by the Yemeni government on Qaeda strongholds, with major airstrikes on Dec. 17 and Dec. 24, which may have killed as many as 60 militants.
The Yemeni government initially said it believed the second strike had killed the top two officials of Al Qaeda in Yemen as well as Mr. Awlaki, the American-born cleric, whose popular Web site and radical sermons have turned up as an influence in a dozen recent terror cases in the West.
But American officials said they had no confirmation of the cleric's death, and Mr. Awlaki's relatives told The Associated Press on Saturday that he was still alive.
Mr. Abdulmutallab grew up in a rarefied slice of Nigeria, the son of an affluent banker. He attended one of the West Africa's best schools, the British School of Lomé in Togo. After high school, he went to Britain and enrolled at University College London to study mechanical engineering.
While still in high school, Mr. Abdulmutallab began preaching to fellow students about Islam, according to a report in ThisDay, a Nigerian newspaper. The newspaper reported that more recently, Mr. Abdulmutallab had moved to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and told his family that he no longer wanted to associate with them.
His father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, until recently served as chairman of the First Bank of Nigeria, and his mother's family is originally from Yemen, according to news accounts in Nigerian newspapers.
Charles Anaman, 26, who now lives in Ghana, said that he was close friends with Mr. Abdulmutallab in high school — they would listen to music, watch videos, play basketball.
Mr. Abdulmutallab was like most other students at the school, Mr. Anaman said, with a particular interest in studying history, and a preference for hip-hop music.
Mr. Anaman said that his involvement in the Detroit incident was hard to imagine: "He was a very calm person."
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