In bomber case, senators want accountability

Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON — Intelligence and State Department officials should be disciplined for their roles in a chain of failures that allowed a would-be terrorist bomber aboard an airliner on Christmas Day, two U.S. senators said Sunday.

“I think some people have to be held accountable for the mistakes — the human errors the president acknowledged that enabled that terrorist to get on that plane,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and Governmental Affairs Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Those involved “have to be disciplined so that they never happen again,” said Lieberman, a Connecticut independent.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian man, was indicted on charges of trying to destroy a Northwest Airlines plane carrying 290 people as it approached Detroit on Dec. 25. The plot was foiled when the explosives he was carrying failed to detonate and passengers and crew subdued the suspect. Abdulmutallab has pleaded not guilty to U.S. criminal charges.

A White House report released Thursday said “there was not a comprehensive or functioning process for tracking terrorist threat reporting and actions taken” that would hold agencies “accountable for running down all leads associated with high-visibility and high-priority plotting efforts.”

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed with Lieberman that “people should be held responsible for what happened.”

Lieberman said an investigation by his panel and the Senate Intelligence Committee will determine the sequence of events that led to Abdulmutallab’s boarding the aircraft and which U.S. officials should be held accountable.

Lieberman said mistakes were made at the State Department and National Counterterrorism Center that led to a failure to revoke Abdulmutallab’s U.S. visa or put his name on the government’s no-fly list. Abdulmutallab’s name had been in a federal database of individuals with possible extremist ties.

Lieberman said “something went wrong” at the counterterrorism center set up after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to analyze and coordinate information. “It’s served us very well, but it did not in this case,” Lieberman said.