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Summary
The United States Tuesday said it would halt transfers of Guantanamo Bay inmates to Yemen, as President Barack Obama met spy chiefs to probe an airliner bomb plot blamed on Al-Qaeda cells in the Arab country. The White House, under increasing political pressure over the thwarted Christmas Day attack, meanwhile said the FBI had extracted actionable intelligence from 23-year-old Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The decision on Guantanamo Bay, where nearly half of the remaining inmates are from Yemen, cast more doubt on Obama's vow to shutter the camp, seen by the White House as a prime recruiting tool for radical groups. While we remain committed to closing the facility, the determination has been made that right now any additional transfers to Yemen is not a good idea, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. It was not clear how long the suspension of transfers mentioned by Gibbs would last. But he said the decision will increase the number of prisoners from the camp that could be sent to Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois, selected by the administration to hold Guantanamo Bay inmates. As Republicans rail against the decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal suspect, rather than an enemy combatant liable to military questioning, Gibbs insisted FBI interrogations had yielded useful leads. Abdulmutallab spent a number of hours with FBI investigators in which we gleaned usable, actionable intelligence, Gibbs said. Obama meanwhile mustered a high-powered line-up of spy agency chiefs and heads of government agencies and departments with anti-terror responsibilities to investigate intelligence failures before the thwarted attack. The president wants to know where the systemic failure happened and what we're going to do to ensure that we can do everything in our power to make sure it doesn't happen again, Gibbs said. Obama was expected to outline for Americans how he planned to thwart future airborne terror attacks and the progress of reviews into the attempt to bring down the Northwest jet, which was thwarted by passengers and crew. He was also set to lay out a timeline of future reforms of the aviation security system and passenger watch lists after already ordering more stringent checks and searches of certain travelers heading for the United States. Obama's high-powered meeting included the heads of the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and the National Counterterrorism Center, as well as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Republicans meanwhile again hit out at the administration's decision to treat the alleged attacker of the Northwest jet within the civil justice system rather than as a prisoner of war. I think the American people know full well what this is, they view it as a war against terrorism. They view a terrorist as a terrorist, not as a criminal, said Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. He added people who try to hijack or bomb a plane could not be dealt with in the same way as the guy who robbed a 7-Eleven.
