Schaub helps AFC beat NFC 41-34 in Pro Bowl

MIAMI – In its new role as a warmup to the Super Bowl, the Pro Bowl became a series of wind sprints.
Long gains were the rule and hard hitting was the exception as the AFC beat the NFC 41-34 on Sunday night.
Light showers fell for much of the game, stirring memories of a rainy Super Bowl in Miami three years ago. But uniforms remained mostly spotless, with more pushing and shoving than tackling.
"It's different. It was like 7 on 7," NFC linebacker Brian Orakpo said. "Everybody came out here trying not to get hurt and give the fans a good show"
Matt Schaub of the Houston Texans threw for 189 yards and two AFC scores, and was chosen the most valuable player.
"It's a game you watch growing up as a kid and wonder if you could ever be in," Schaub said. "To actually be a part of it is incredible."
Aaron Rodgers also threw two touchdown passes, and NFC teammate DeSean Jackson had two scoring catches.
From the standpoint of ticket sales, this year's new venue and slot on the league calendar was a success. The crowd of 70,697 was the largest for a Pro Bowl since 1959 in Los Angeles.
Spectators included Peyton Manning, Drew Brees and other Pro Bowl players from the Super Bowl teams. Manning and the Indianapolis Colts will face Brees and the New Orleans Saints on the same field next Sunday in the biggest game of the season.
The NFL sought to transform the Pro Bowl into a bigger game by playing it before the Super Bowl for the first time. In a one-year experiment, the league also moved the game from Honolulu, its home since 1980.
The stadium was half empty by the third quarter, perhaps partly because of the rain and temperatures in the 60s. It was sunny and 82 in Honolulu at game time.
Did the weather dampen the players' enthusiasm for Miami?
"It's beautiful. It's paradise," NFC receiver Steve Smith said. "Too bad it's not Hawaii."
Eager to host more big events, the Dolphins have proposed adding a roof that would cover fans as part of stadium improvements that could cost $250 million or more. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell says the upgrades are needed if South Florida is to remain competitive in bidding for future Super Bowls.
Nearly 40 percent of the players originally selected for the game didn't play. One of the AFC replacements, David Garrard, threw for 183 yards, including a 48-yard touchdown to Vincent Jackson.
"It's so awesome," Garrard said. "One of my goals coming into the game was to just be relevant and show all the people who said, `What is he doing in there? The Pro Bowl has dropped off a few pegs,' that I do belong."
Vincent Jackson made seven catches for 122 yards. Chad Ochocinco had a 40-yard reception but didn't do any kicking after practicing placements and punts for the AFC during the week.
"That's OK. It was fun anyway," Ochocinco said.
DeSean Jackson scored on a 7-yard pass from Rodgers and a 58-yard pass from Donovan McNabb, his regular quarterback with the Eagles.
"I'm just out here having a great time," Jackson said. "And at the same time I'm trying to put out a little effort."
There were plenty of other big plays. Joshua Cribbs caught a punt at the goal line and returned it 65 yards. A penalty negated LaMarr Woodley's 64-interception return for a touchdown.
"I slowed up to get a little camera time," Woodley said.
The AFC totaled 517 yards and the NFC 470. Both teams threw for more than 400 yards.
Redskins linebacker London Fletcher, a 12-year veteran playing in his first Pro Bowl, found the AFC's offensive approach exhausting.
"They came out with a bunch of screens and had us running around," Fletcher said.
But there were no complaints from Fletcher's teammate on defense, first-time Pro Bowler Justin Smith of the 49ers.
"The pace is nice," Smith said. "You don't have to worry about working too hard."
The game will return to Honolulu in 2011 and 2012, but the league hasn't decided whether to hold those games before or after the Super Bowl. The Pro Bowl site for 2013 and beyond hasn't been determined

Obama's $3.8 trillion budget heading to Congress

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's proposed budget predicts the national deficit will crest at a record-breaking almost $1.6 trillion in the current fiscal year, then start to recede in 2011 to just below $1.3 trillion.
Still, the administration's new budget to be released Monday says deficits over the next decade will average 4.5 percent of the size of the economy, a level that economists say is dangerously high if not addressed.
A congressional official provided the information, which comes from a White House summary document circulating freely on Capitol Hill and among Washington's lobbyists. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the spending proposal is not supposed to be made public until tomorrow.
Details of the administration's budget headed for Congress include an additional $100 billion to attack painfully high unemployment. The proposed $3.8 trillion budget would provide billions more to pull the country out of the Great Recession while increasing taxes on the wealthy and imposing a spending freeze on many government programs.
Administration projections show the deficit never dropping below $700 billion, even under assumptions that war costs will drop precipitously to just $50 billion in some years instead of more than three times that this year and next.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the administration believed "somewhere in the $100 billion range" would be the appropriate amount for a new jobs measure made up of a business tax credit to encourage hiring, increased infrastructure spending and money from the government's bailout fund to get banks to increase loans to struggling small businesses.
That price tag would be below a $174 billion bill passed by the House in December but far higher than a measure that could come to the Senate floor this week.
Gibbs said it was important for Democrats and Republicans to put aside their differences to pass a bill that addresses jobs, the country's No. 1 concern. "I think that would be a powerful signal to send to the American people," Gibbs said in an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."
Job creation was a key theme of the budget President Barack Obama was sending Congress on Monday, a document designed, as was the president's State of the Union address, to reframe his young presidency after a protracted battle over health care damaged his standing in public opinion polls and contributed to a series of Democratic election defeats.
Obama's $3.8 trillion spending plan for the 2011 budget year that begins Oct. 1 attempts to navigate between the opposing goals of pulling the country out of a deep recession and dealing with a budget deficit that soared to an all-time high of $1.42 trillion last year.
The startling budget numbers — deficits would total $8.5 trillion over the decade — are raising worries among voters and the foreign investors who buy much of the country's debt.
On the anti-recession front, congressional sources said Obama's new budget will propose extending the popular Making Work Pay middle-class tax breaks of $400 per individual and $800 per couple through 2011. They were due to expire after this year.
The budget will also propose $250 payments to Social Security recipients to bolster their finances in a year when they are not receiving the normal cost-of-living boost to their benefit checks because of low inflation. Obama will also seek a $25 billion increase in payments to help recession-battered states.
Obama's new budget will set off months of debate in the Democratically controlled Congress, especially in an election year in which Republicans are hoping to use attacks against government overspending to gain seats. Obama has argued that he inherited a deficit of more than $1 trillion and was forced to increase spending to stabilize the financial system and combat the worst recession since the 1930s.
Obama's new budget was expected to repeat many of the themes of his first budget. But in a bow to worries over the soaring deficits, the administration is proposing a three-year freeze on spending for a wide swath of domestic government agencies. Military, veterans, homeland security and big benefit programs such as Social Security and Medicare would not feel the pinch.
The freeze would affect $447 billion in spending and is designed to save $250 billion over a decade. However, it would not fall equally on all domestic agencies. Some would see budget cuts to free up spending for programs the administration wants to expand such as education and civilian research efforts.
NASA's mission to return astronauts to the moon would be grounded with the space agency instead getting an additional $5.9 billion over five years to encourage private companies to build, launch and operate their own spacecraft for the benefit of NASA and others. NASA would pay the private companies to carry U.S. astronauts.
Obama's budget repeats his recommendations for an overhaul of the nation's health care system, the fight that dominated his first year in office. It proposes to get billions of dollars in savings from the Medicare program and again seeks increased taxes on the wealthy by limiting the benefits they receive from various tax deductions. Both ideas have met strong resistance in Congress.
Gibbs insisted Sunday that the president's push for health care was "still inside the 5-yard line," but Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, also appearing on CNN, said the public was overwhelmingly against the bill and the administration should "put it on the shelf, go back and start over."
In addition to the freeze on discretionary nonsecurity spending, Obama is proposing to boost revenues by allowing the Bush administration tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 to expire at the end of this year for families making more than $250,000 annually. Tax relief for those less well-off would be extended.
The new Obama budget will also include a proposal to levy a fee on the country's biggest banks to raise an estimated $90 billion to recover losses from the government's $700 billion financial rescue fund. Those losses are expected to come not come from the bank bailouts but from the support extended to General Motors and Chrysler and insurance giant American International Group as well as help provided to homeowners struggling to avoid foreclosures.
Also on the deficit front, the president has endorsed a pay-as-you-go proposal that passed the Senate last week. It would require any new tax cuts or entitlement spending increases to be paid for, and he has promised to create a commission to recommend by year's end ways to trim the deficits. However, a legislatively mandated panel was rejected in a Senate vote last week. Republicans opposed establishing the panel because it might recommend tax increases to close the deficit.
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Haiti Earthquake

MIAMI – The U.S. military will resume bringing Haitian earthquake victims to the United States aboard its planes for medical treatment, ending a suspension that lasted several days, the White House said Sunday.
The military had brought hundreds of critically injured Haitians to the United States aboard its planes before halting the flights on Wednesday. Since then, at least a handful of patients were flown on civilian aircraft, and other flights continued to carry U.S. citizens and other mostly non-injured passengers.
Late Sunday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said the medical airlift was on track to resume by early Monday. The White House received assurances that additional medical capacity exists in the U.S. and among its international partners for the patients.
"We determined that we can resume these critical flights," Vietor said. "Patients are being identified for transfer, doctors are making sure that it is safe for them to fly, and we are preparing specific in-flight pediatric care aboard the aircraft where needed."
Exactly what led to the suspension of medical evacuation flights was unclear, though military officials had said some states refused to take patients. Officials in Florida, one of the main destinations for military flights leaving Haiti, say no patients were ever turned away. However, the suspension took effect after Florida Gov. Charlie Crist sent a letter Tuesday to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying the state's hospitals were reaching a saturation point.
The letter also asked for federal help paying for patient expenses — a request Crist on Sunday said could have been misinterpreted. He also said federal officials have indicated he would receive help covering the costs, totaling more than $7 million.
Crist told ABC News' "Good Morning America" on Sunday he was puzzled by the suspension. Military planes carrying 700 U.S. citizens, legal residents and other foreign nationals landed in central Florida over the past 24 hours, and three of those people required medical care at hospitals, state officials said. However, Florida had not received any critical patients needing urgent care since the halt, said Sterling Ivey, the governor's spokesman.
"We're welcoming Haitians with open arms and probably done more than any other state and are happy to continue to do so," Crist said in the interview.
Col. Rick Kaiser said Sunday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been asked to build a 250-bed tent hospital in Haiti to relieve pressure on locations where earthquake victims are being treated under tarpaulins.
Several hospitals in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed in the Jan. 12 earthquake.
U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Kenneth Merten said about 435 earthquake victims had been evacuated before the suspension.
Individual hospitals were still able to arrange private medical flights — such as one Sunday that brought three critically ill children to hospitals in Philadelphia.
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia said the trio arrived Sunday afternoon. One is a 5-year-old girl with tetanus, the second, a 14-month-old boy with pneumonia. The third, a baby suffering from severe burns from sun exposure after the quake, was transferred to another area hospital.
Doctors have said the makeshift facilities in Haiti aren't equipped to treat such critical conditions and warn that patients in similar condition could die if they aren't treated in U.S. hospitals.
Crist also has asked Sebelius for better coordination of the evacuations.
The state had been relying on air traffic controllers at Miami International Airport to relay information about the evacuations because the U.S. military flights headed to the state without notice, David Halstead, the Florida Division of Emergency Management's interim director, said Sunday.

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea fired artillery rounds toward its disputed sea border with South Korea on Wednesday, prompting a barrage of warning shots from the South's military and raising tensions on the divided peninsula.
No casualties or damage were reported, and analysts said the volley — which the North announced was part of a military drill — was likely a move by Pyongyang to highlight the need for a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War.
North Korea fired about 30 artillery rounds into the sea from its western coast and the South immediately responded with 100 shots from a marine base on an island near the sea border, an officer at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said. The North said it would continue to fire rounds.
He said the North's artillery fire landed in its own waters while the South fired into the air. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because of department policy.
The western sea border — drawn by the American-led U.N. Command at the close of the 1950-53 Korean War — is a constant source of tension between the two Koreas, with the North insisting the line be moved farther south.
Navy ships of the two Koreas fought a brief gunbattle in November that left one North Korean sailor dead and three others wounded. They engaged in similar bloody skirmishes in 1999 and 2002.
North Korea issued a statement later Wednesday saying it had fired artillery off its coast as part of an annual military drill and would continue doing so.
Such drills "will go on in the same waters in the future," the General Staff of the (North) Korean People's Army said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The North fired more shots later Wednesday, but South Korea didn't respond, a Defense Ministry official said, also requesting anonymity due to department policy.
The exchange of fire came two days after the North designated two no-sail zones in the area, including some South Korean-held waters, through March 29.
The North has sent a series of mixed signals to the South recently, combining offers of dialogue on economic cooperation with military threats, including one this month to destroy South Korea's presidential palace. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young, meanwhile, angered Pyongyang by saying Seoul's military should launch a pre-emptive strike if there was a clear indication the North was preparing a nuclear attack.
South Korea's Defense Ministry sent the North's military a message Wednesday expressing serious concern about the firing and saying it fostered "unnecessary tension" between the two sides.
It also urged the North to retract the no-sail zones, calling them a "grave provocation" and a violation of the Korean War armistice. The war ended with a truce, but not a formal peace treaty.
Separately, South Korea's point man on North Korea criticized Pyongyang for raising tension near the sea border.
"This kind of North Korean attitude is quite disappointing," Unification Minister Hyun In-taek told a security forum in Seoul.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency said it was the first time that North Korea has fired artillery toward the sea border. The Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said the North Korean artillery shells were believed to have fallen into the no-sail zones about 1.75 miles (3 kilometers) north of the maritime border.
Top South Korean presidential secretary Chung Chung-kil convened an emergency meeting of security-related officials on behalf of President Lee Myung-bak, who was making a state visit to India, according to the presidential Blue House. It said Lee was informed of the incident.
Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor of North Korean studies at Korea University in South Korea, said the North's action was aimed at highlighting the need for a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War by showing that the peninsula is still a war zone.
"It's applying pressure on the U.S. and South Korea," Yoo said. He said North Korea also was expressing anger over South Korea's lukewarm response to a series of recent gestures seeking dialogue.
Earlier this month, North Korea called for the signing of a peace treaty and the lifting of sanctions as conditions for its return to stalled nuclear disarmament talks it quit last year.
The U.S. and South Korea, however, brushed aside the North's demands, saying they can happen only after it returns to the disarmament negotiations and reports progress in denuclearization.
Despite the exchange of fire, the capitals of the two Koreas were calm.
North Koreans in Pyongyang wearing thick winter coats walked briskly through the streets while a female police officer directed traffic and a crowded tram passed by, according to footage shot by broadcaster APTN.
The military tensions had little effect on South Korean financial markets. Seoul's benchmark stock index fell less than 1 percent, while South Korea's currency, the won, rose against the U.S. dollar.
___

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea fired artillery rounds toward its disputed sea border with South Korea on Wednesday, prompting a barrage of warning shots from the South's military and raising tensions on the divided peninsula.
No casualties or damage were reported, and analysts said the volley — which the North announced was part of a military drill — was likely a move by Pyongyang to highlight the need for a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War.
North Korea fired about 30 artillery rounds into the sea from its western coast and the South immediately responded with 100 shots from a marine base on an island near the sea border, an officer at the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Seoul said. The North said it would continue to fire rounds.
He said the North's artillery fire landed in its own waters while the South fired into the air. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because of department policy.
The western sea border — drawn by the American-led U.N. Command at the close of the 1950-53 Korean War — is a constant source of tension between the two Koreas, with the North insisting the line be moved farther south.
Navy ships of the two Koreas fought a brief gunbattle in November that left one North Korean sailor dead and three others wounded. They engaged in similar bloody skirmishes in 1999 and 2002.
North Korea issued a statement later Wednesday saying it had fired artillery off its coast as part of an annual military drill and would continue doing so.
Such drills "will go on in the same waters in the future," the General Staff of the (North) Korean People's Army said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
The North fired more shots later Wednesday, but South Korea didn't respond, a Defense Ministry official said, also requesting anonymity due to department policy.
The exchange of fire came two days after the North designated two no-sail zones in the area, including some South Korean-held waters, through March 29.
The North has sent a series of mixed signals to the South recently, combining offers of dialogue on economic cooperation with military threats, including one this month to destroy South Korea's presidential palace. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young, meanwhile, angered Pyongyang by saying Seoul's military should launch a pre-emptive strike if there was a clear indication the North was preparing a nuclear attack.
South Korea's Defense Ministry sent the North's military a message Wednesday expressing serious concern about the firing and saying it fostered "unnecessary tension" between the two sides.
It also urged the North to retract the no-sail zones, calling them a "grave provocation" and a violation of the Korean War armistice. The war ended with a truce, but not a formal peace treaty.
Separately, South Korea's point man on North Korea criticized Pyongyang for raising tension near the sea border.
"This kind of North Korean attitude is quite disappointing," Unification Minister Hyun In-taek told a security forum in Seoul.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency said it was the first time that North Korea has fired artillery toward the sea border. The Joint Chiefs of Staff officer said the North Korean artillery shells were believed to have fallen into the no-sail zones about 1.75 miles (3 kilometers) north of the maritime border.
Top South Korean presidential secretary Chung Chung-kil convened an emergency meeting of security-related officials on behalf of President Lee Myung-bak, who was making a state visit to India, according to the presidential Blue House. It said Lee was informed of the incident.
Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor of North Korean studies at Korea University in South Korea, said the North's action was aimed at highlighting the need for a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War by showing that the peninsula is still a war zone.
"It's applying pressure on the U.S. and South Korea," Yoo said. He said North Korea also was expressing anger over South Korea's lukewarm response to a series of recent gestures seeking dialogue.
Earlier this month, North Korea called for the signing of a peace treaty and the lifting of sanctions as conditions for its return to stalled nuclear disarmament talks it quit last year.
The U.S. and South Korea, however, brushed aside the North's demands, saying they can happen only after it returns to the disarmament negotiations and reports progress in denuclearization.
Despite the exchange of fire, the capitals of the two Koreas were calm.
North Koreans in Pyongyang wearing thick winter coats walked briskly through the streets while a female police officer directed traffic and a crowded tram passed by, according to footage shot by broadcaster APTN.
The military tensions had little effect on South Korean financial markets. Seoul's benchmark stock index fell less than 1 percent, while South Korea's currency, the won, rose against the U.S. dollar.
___

No "smoking gun" in airplane plot, says White House

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A top White House official said on Sunday the plot to bomb a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day exposed errors but he played down the need for a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. security system.
John Brennan, a senior White House adviser on counterterrorism, said there was no "smoking gun" that would have alerted authorities to the attempted bombing.
Facing criticism over the foiled attack on a Northwest Airlines flight, the Obama administration announced plans for closer screening of airline passengers from 14 countries.
They are Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. The last four are on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Passengers flying from or through those countries will be patted down and have their carry-on luggage searched, according to a U.S. official.
President Barack Obama, who returns on Monday from a vacation in Hawaii, has found himself on the defensive after a 23-year-old Nigerian man -- who U.S. authorities say was linked to al Qaeda -- was allegedly able to board the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam with explosives in his underwear.
Security experts said there seemed to be a failure to connect the dots in the case of accused bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, whose father told the U.S. embassy in Nigeria of his concerns about his son's increased radicalization.
Brennan said on ABC's "This Week" that the incident pointed to the need to make the security and intelligence systems more "robust" and that Obama would do that.
But he added: "There was no single piece of intelligence -- a smoking gun, if you will -- that said that Mr. Abdulmutallab was going to carry out this attack against that aircraft."
"What we had, looking back at it now, were a number of streams of information," said Brennan, the deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security.
Republicans have seized on the plane incident to accuse Obama, a Democrat, of not focusing enough on counterterrorism issues and said it exposed intelligence gaps that have lingered on since the September 11, 2001, hijacked-plane attacks.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has led that charge, accusing Obama of pretending the United States was not at war.
Obama called for a review of what he termed "human and systemic failures." He is to meet on Tuesday with intelligence advisers to discuss their review.
The attempted bombing has put a spotlight on Yemen, a poor Arab country where U.S. officials believe Abdulmutallab received training from a militant group.
The United States and Britain closed their embassies in Yemen on Sunday over concerns about possible militant attacks.
Brennan told "Fox News Sunday" that U.S. authorities believe Abdulmutallab was trained by al Qaeda in Yemen and was directed to carry out the plane attack by senior leadership of the militant group.
INFORMATION SHARED
Brennan also disagreed with those who said the attempted bombing indicated a broader failure of the intelligence system such as occurred before the 2001 attacks blamed on al Qaeda. Turf wars between agencies and failure to share information were seen as a major problem then.
"In the review so far, there's no indication whatsoever that any agency or department was not trying to share information," Brennan told Fox.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano came under particularly intense criticism for initially saying the air security system worked. She later backpedaled and said the system had not worked in this case.
In comments that indicated that Napolitano's job was probably safe, Brennan praised her on ABC as a hard-working official of high caliber and experience.
The senior Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, Christopher Bond, said when the panel looks at the Christmas Day incident at a January hearing, it will be with an eye toward strengthening communication between the intelligence agencies.
"The problem with the director of national intelligence, Denny (Dennis) Blair -- he has all of the responsibility and not enough authority," Bond said on CNN's "State of the Union."
Thomas Kean, chairman of the 9/11 commission that studied the 2001 attacks, said the visit to the U.S. embassy by Abdulmutallab's father "should have been enough" to get the intelligence community to focus on him.
But Kean said he believed Obama would "follow through and do the right things."
Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina criticized the administration on CNN, saying the decision to prosecute Abdulmutallab in the U.S. justice system rather than through military proceedings signaled it did not view the incident as an "act of terror."
"If we had treated this Christmas Day bomber as a terrorist, he would have been immediately interrogated military style rather than given rights of an American and lawyers," DeMint said. "We probably lost valuable information."

Obama adviser: No smoking gun in airline bomb plot

WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a "smoking gun" that could have prevented an alleged attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day, President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser said Sunday.
White House aide John Brennan cited "lapses" and errors in the sharing of intelligence and clues about the Nigerian man accused in the foiled attempt.
"There is no smoking gun," Brennan said. "There was no single piece of intelligence that said, 'this guy is going to get on a plane.'"
The Transportation Security Administration announced Sunday that, starting Monday, passengers flying into the United States from Nigeria, Yemen and other "countries of interest" will be subject to enhanced screening techniques, such as body scans and pat-downs. All passengers on U.S.-bound international flights will be subject to random screening, the agency said.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian student who allegedly tried to set off an explosive device aboard the Northwest airliner, has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.
Brennan is leading a White House review of the incident. Obama has said there was a systemic failure to prevent the attack, which he said was instigated by an affiliate in Yemen of the al-Qaida terrorist network.
Obama ordered a thorough look at the shortcomings that permitted the plot, which failed not because of U.S. actions but because the would-be attacker failed to set off a deadly detonation. The president has summoned homeland security officials to meet with him in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday.
Brennan cited "a number of streams of information" — the 23-year-old suspect's name was known to intelligence officials, his father had passed along his concern about the son's increasing radicalization — and "little snippets" from intelligence channels. "But there was nothing that brought it all together."
"In this one instance, the system didn't work. There were some human errors. There were some lapses. We need to strengthen it. But day in and day out, the successes are there."
Abdulmutallab apparently assembled an explosive device, including 80 grams of Pentrite, or PETN, in the aircraft toilet of a Detroit-bound Northwest flight, then planned to detonate it with a syringe of chemicals. Passengers and crew subdued the suspect when he tried to set off the explosion. He succeeded only in starting a fire on himself.
"What we need to do as an intelligence community, as a government, is be able to bring those disparate bits and pieces of information together so we prevent Mr. Abdulmutallab from getting on the plane."
Brennan didn't say whether anyone is in line to be fired because of the oversights. He stood by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, although he acknowledged she has "taken some hits" for saying that the airline security system had worked. It didn't, and she clarified her remarks to show she meant that the system worked only after the attack was foiled, Brennan said.
He said the situation was not like before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when intelligence agencies failed to share tips and information that might have uncovered the plot.
He said there "were no turf battles" between agencies. "There's no evidence whatsoever that any agency or department was reluctant to share" information.

US, UK close Yemen embassies over al-Qaida threats

SAN'A, Yemen – Western embassies in Yemen locked up Sunday after fresh threats from al-Qaida, and the White House expressed alarm at the terror group's expanded reach in the poor Arab nation where an offshoot apparently ordered the Christmas Day plot against a U.S. airliner.
President Barack Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, cited "indications al-Qaida is planning to carry out an attack against a target" in the capital, possibly the embassy, and estimated the group had several hundred members in Yemen. Security reasons led Britain to act, too; it was not known when the embassies would reopen.
The U.S. is worried about the spread of terrorism in Yemen, a U.S. ally and aid recipient, Brennan said, but doesn't consider the country a second front with Afghanistan and Pakistan in the fight against terrorism.
As to whether U.S. troops might be sent to Yemen, Brennan replied: "We're not talking about that at this point at all." He pledged to provide the Yemeni government with "the wherewithal" to take down al-Qaida.
Britain and the United States are assisting a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen as fears grow about the increasing threat of international terrorism originating from the country.
The Obama administration claims that the suspect in the plot against the Detroit-bound plane was trained and armed by the al-Qaida affiliate in Yemen. Brennan blamed a series of what he called lapses and human errors in U.S. intelligence and security defenses for allowing a Nigerian man to board the plane with explosives. He tried to detonate them as the aircraft approached Detroit on Dec. 25.
The Transportation Security Administration announced Sunday that, starting Monday, passengers flying into the United States from Nigeria, Yemen and other "countries of interest" will be subject to enhanced screening techniques, such as body scans and pat-downs.
Yemen is a poor, decentralized and predominantly Muslim country on the Arabian Peninsula. It is the ancestral homeland of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, and the site of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. sailors. A 2008 attack on the U.S. Embassy killed one American.
Given the active threat from al-Qaida, "we're not going to take any chances," Brennan said from Washington during appearances on four Sunday talk shows.
Sen. Joe Lieberman identified three instances in which terrorists or sympathizers penetrated or evaded U.S defenses last year — shootings at a military recruiting station and an Army base and the airline attack — and said all three were linked to Yemen.
"We've got to focus there pre-emptively, and I'm confident we will," said Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut.
The Yemeni government, which issued no official comment on the embassy closures, is friendly to the West but the population is often mistrustful of Western motives and influence. Yemen has pledged to clamp down on militancy, but government control is weak outside the capital and the country has a history of freeing some alleged militants and tolerating others.
The Obama administration is growing more vocal about both the threat and the San'a government's limitations. Brennan said Westerners are at risk in Yemen until the government gets a better handle on extremism.
The U.S. will look case by case at whether to repatriate the remaining approximately 90 Yemeni detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, Brennan said.
Seven of 42 Guantanamo detainees freed by the Obama administration were returned to Yemen, Brennan said, but doubts about the country's ability to police further freed detainees is a major obstacle to Obama's plan to shut down the facility. Brennan reaffirmed the U.S. administration's support for the closure, but said that with regard to the Yemeni detainees, nothing would be done to put U.S. citizens at risk.
U.S. officials say terrorists are seeking new places to operate, including Yemen, Somalia and Southeast Asia, in part because of pressure on their previous sanctuaries in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Some U.S. officials have said privately that Yemen's location at the heart of the Arab world, its history of tribal control, poverty, corruption and an ongoing civil war could make it the crucible of a future war. Brennan said the Obama administration is trying to head off the threat now.
Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. general who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, made a surprise visit to Yemen over the weekend. Following meetings with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Petraeus announced that Washington this year will more than double the $67 million in counterterrorism aid that it provided Yemen in 2009.
The U.S. and Britain are funding a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen, and Britain plans to host an international conference Jan. 28 to come up with a strategy to counter radicalization in Yemen.
The United States has increased military cooperation with Yemen, with intelligence and other help to back two Yemeni air and ground assaults on al-Qaida hide-outs last month that were reported to have killed more than 60 people. Yemeni authorities said more than 30 suspected militants were among the dead.
The U.S. has stepped up intelligence, surveillance and training aid to Yemeni forces during the past year, and provided some firepower, a senior U.S. defense official has said. Some of that assistance may be through the expanded use of unmanned drones, and the U.S. is providing funding to Yemen for helicopters and other equipment. Officials, however, say there are no U.S. ground forces or fighter aircraft in Yemen.
On Thursday, the U.S. Embassy sent a notice to Americans in Yemen urging them to be vigilant about security.
Yemeni security officials said over the weekend that the country had deployed several hundred extra troops to Marib and Jouf, two mountainous eastern provinces that are al-Qaida's main strongholds in the country and where airliner suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab may have visited last year.
U.S. intelligence agencies did not miss a telltale sign that that could have prevented the 23-year-old Nigerian man's alleged attempt to blow up the airliner, Brennan said.
"There is no smoking gun," Brennan said. "There was no single piece of intelligence that said, 'this guy is going to get on a plane.'"
Brennan is leading a White House review of the incident. Obama ordered a thorough look at the shortcomings that permitted the plot, which failed not because of U.S. actions but because the would-be attacker was unable to ignite an explosive device. The president has summoned homeland security officials to meet with him in the White House Situation Room on Tuesday.
Brennan cited "a number of streams of information" — the suspect's name was known to intelligence officials, his father had passed along his concern about the son's increasing radicalization — and "little snippets" from intelligence channels. "But there was nothing that brought it all together."
"In this one instance, the system didn't work. There were some human errors. There were some lapses. We need to strengthen it."
Brennan didn't say whether anyone is in line to be fired because of the oversights. He stood by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, although he acknowledged she has "taken some hits" for saying that the airline security system had worked. It didn't, and she clarified her remarks to show she meant that the system worked only after the attack was foiled, Brennan said.