Napolitano: Father's warning wouldn't have kept bombing suspect off plane

Homeland Security Security Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the suspect in the Christmas Day attack on a Northwest Airlines plane was on a shared list of people with suspected ties to terrorism, but there was no information credible enough to keep him from flying.

Napolitano, appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," was questioned about the fact that 23-year-old Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's father, a prominent Nigerian banker, went to the U.S. Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, in November to warn authorities about his son's increasingly radical Islamic views. Abdulmutallab, who had studied in London from September 2005 to June 2008, left school to travel, including to al-Qaeda stronghold Yemen, and had been turned away from trying to re-enter Britain earlier this year on a student visa for a school that didn't exist.

Abdulmutallab has been charged with trying to destroy the Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit by igniting a plastic explosive (the same type, PETN, that convicted shoe bomber and al-Qaeda operative Richard Reid used when he tried to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami in 2001).

Napolitano said that the list Abdulmutallab was on, suggesting ties to terrorist figures or organizations, has more than half a million names on it. She said there was "not specific information" to move the Nigerian from that list to a watch list with more rigorous screening measures.

"You need information that is specific and credible if you're actually going to bar someone from travel," Napolitano said.

Still, she said, officials will be looking at the whole watch list process and determine if adjustments will need to be made.

As far as a link to a greater terrorist effort, the Homeland Security secretary said that "right now we have no indication that it is part of anything larger."

As far as Abdulmutallab's claim that he was acting on orders from al-Qaeda, Napolitano said those questions are part of the criminal justice end of the investigation. "I think it would be inappropriate to speculate whether he had such ties," she said.

The investigation continues, she said, and airline passengers should allow more time at the airport for additional security precautions.

Napolitano confirmed that there was not an air marshal on the flight, but said it was a matter of marshals being randomly assigned to flights and not a matter of budget cuts or under-staffing.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) said he doesn't understand how Abdulmutallab was able to get on the plane in the first place.

If he was on a watch list, McConnell said on ABC's "This Week," then the additional pieces of information should have been put together to put him on the no-fly list.

It "makes common sense," he said.

This post was updated at 10:15 a.m.

Kim Hart contributed to this report

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