House Homeland Security Committee to hold hearing on airline bombing attempt

The House Homeland Security Committee next month will hold a hearing on an attempted airline bombing that occurred Christmas Day, its chairman said Saturday. 

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said his panel is now "closely following yesterday’s incident" on a Northwest Airlines flight that was en route to Detroit from Amsterdam. Thompson thanked the passengers and crew members that helped subdue a man who tried to light some type of explosive on the flight.

"The Committee will get to the bottom of what did and did not happen with [Mr. Abdul Mutallab] and what security precautions need to take place in the future," Thompson said in a statement.

The Mississippi Democrat's committee is the second to announce it will hold a hearing on the incident.

 Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said Saturday that his panel will hold an official inquiry on the subject in January as well.

The House Homeland Security Commitee's ranking Republican Peter King (N.Y.) said Friday that the subject of the investigation, 23-year-old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, has "significant terrorist connections."

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has not yet announced if it will hold a hearing. But the panel's ranking member, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), told the Associated Press Saturday that the incident "raises some serious questions, such as how was this person able to bring an explosive substance aboard a commercial airliner?"

Thompson said his committee will focus on how technology could have been used to prevent yesterday's terrorist incident on a plane landing in Detroit.

Thompson said he will hold an oversight hearing on the matter and told Fox News he wants to make sure "human error" did not play a role in failing to detect the incendiary device or stop the suspect from boarding the plane. He also wants to investigate the "sharing of information," including no-fly lists and other databases intended to screen potentially dangerous individuals in airports.

"From an oversight standpoint, we want to see if more technology could be helpful or to see if it was missed by human error," he told Fox News over the phone. "Information sharing has always been an issue--the way these lists are shared, how people get on these lists and how they get off. We have to further investigate."

He added, "I want to thank the flight attendants and passengers for doing a heck of a job. They are the heroes."

News broke Friday afternoon that a Nigerian man had attempted to light some sort of explosive device on the flight as it was approaching Detroit in an event described later by U.S. officials as an attempted terrorist attack.

The man failed in his attempt, and was reportedly subdued by the passengers and crew of the flight.

A senior Obama administration official told ABC News Christmas evening that the Northwest airlines incident "was an attempted act of terrorism. We're taking increased steps to mitigate any threats."

Kim Hart contributed to this report

This post was updated at 12:20 p.m.

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