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.

Retailers' stores thinly stocked; profits won't be

ATLANTA – Retailers have thin inventories after coming out of Christmas with slightly better-than-expected sales.
Some retailers kept inventory so low they've had to bring in new merchandise to restock shelves, a rare move this soon after Christmas.
That's good news for their bottom lines. But it means slim pickings for shoppers hoping for after-Christmas clearance sales. Shoppers looking for big sales should act quickly because there are relatively few leftovers to clear out.
"Retailers are much more nimble this year," NPD analyst Marshal Cohen said. "Their 'Plan B' is to have new receipts at the ready."
Cohen said he noticed J. Crew and Coach were two that had restocked shelves with new items last week.
Because their ordering was in line with weak demand, retailers were able to sell more items at higher prices, which is critical to profits. Last year, profits were hammered by fire-sale discounts to get rid of the excess.
"The latest holiday shopping season wasn't a rip-roaring success, but at least it met or slightly exceeded expectations," said John Lonski, chief economist of Moody's Capital Markets Research Group. "Consumer spending is indeed in a recovery mode, which brightens prospects for 2010."
Spending rose 3.6 percent from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24 compared with the same period last year, according to MasterCard Advisors' SpendingPulse, which estimates all forms of payment including cash. Adjusted for an extra shopping day between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the number was closer to a 1 percent rise. That was still better than the flat sales analysts had predicted.
Some retail stocks rose on Monday. American Eagle Outfitters shares rose 48 cents, or 3 percent, to $16.80. Macy's Inc. shares rose 19 cents to $17.76. J.C. Penney shares rose 36 cents to $27.38.
Amazon.com Inc.'s shares rose 84 cents to $139.31, buoyed by SpendingPulse numbers that showed online sales rose 15.5 percent.
The Dow Jones U.S. Retail Index edged up less than 1 percent.
After-Christmas traffic also appeared to be relatively robust, though it wasn't clear how much people were actually spending.
Roth Capital Partners analyst Elizabeth Pierce visited six malls Saturday in southern California and saw many shoppers without bags. It's likely shoppers who went looking for bargains left without buying much, she said.
Shoppers over the weekend certainly focused on deals.
Bessie Lyles of Huntsville, Ala., arrived at Lenox Square Mall in Atlanta at 6 a.m. to hunt for deals. The 57-year-old left Macy's with two tops, sweaters and two pairs of jeans, including one pair for $4, marked down from $34.
In order to entice shoppers like Lyles through the rest of the week and into January, retailers are expected to steeply discount what leftovers they do have.
After last year's dismal season, when unplanned discounts 70 percent off or more began appearing well before Christmas, retailers vowed they wouldn't get caught that way again.
This year the tight control let retailers mostly keep discounts planned, said FBR Capital Markets analyst Adrienne Tennant.
NPD's Cohen said the season was good enough for most retailers to survive, though many could shutter underperforming stores.
"If a store didn't generate a profit, it will really be under the microscope," he said.
A better picture of how retailers fared during the holiday will be known Jan. 7, when many report December sales.

China confirms Briton's execution, despite UK plea

URUMQI, China – China brushed aside international appeals Tuesday and executed a British man convicted of drug smuggling whose relatives say was mentally unstable and unwittingly lured into the crime.
Britain's prime minister condemned the execution — China's first of a European citizen in nearly 60 years.
"I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms, and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted. I am particularly concerned that no mental health assessment was undertaken," Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a statement issued by the Foreign Office.
The press office of the Xinjiang region where Shaikh had been held confirmed the execution in a faxed statement.
Shaikh, 53, first learned he was about to be executed Monday from his visiting cousins, who made a last-minute plea for his life. They say he is mentally unstable and was lured to China from a life on the street in Poland by men playing on his dreams to record a pop song for world peace.
Brown had spoken personally to China's prime minister about his case. Foreign Secretary David Miliband also condemned the execution and said there were unanswered questions about the trial.
"I also deeply regret the fact that our specific concerns about the individual in this case were not taken into consideration ... These included mental health issues, and inadequate professional interpretation during the trial," Miliband said in a statement.
Shaikh was arrested in 2007 for carrying a suitcase with almost 9 pounds (4 kilograms) of heroin into China on a flight from Tajikistan. He told Chinese officials he didn't know about the drugs and that the suitcase wasn't his, according to Reprieve, a London-based prisoner advocacy that is helping with his case.
He was convicted in 2008 after a half-hour trial. In one court appearance during his trial and appeal process, the judges reportedly laughed at his rambling remarks.
It was not known how Shaikh, who is of Pakistani descent, was executed. China, which executes more people than any other country, is increasingly doing so by lethal injection, although some death sentences are still carried out by a shot in the head.
An Associated Press reporter who was briefly detained Tuesday by paramilitary police while trying to take pictures of the Xishan Detention Center, where Shaikh was held during his incarceration, was told by a prison police officer who refused to give his name that prisoners in the Xinjiang region were all now executed by lethal injection.
The officer said Shaikh did not appear to have mental problems, was friendly with other prisoners and had learned to speak a little Chinese while detained.
China has defended the handling of Shaikh's case, saying he received a fair trial.
"Drug smuggling is a grave crime. The rights of the defendant have been fully guaranteed," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a news conference last week.
But the Beijing-based lawyer for Shaikh's death sentence review, Zhang Qingsong, said Tuesday he never got to meet with Shaikh despite asking the judge and the detention center for access. He said China's highest court never evaluated Shaikh's mental status.
According to Reprieve, a London-based prisoner advocacy helping Shaikh's family, the last European executed in China was Antonio Riva, an Italian pilot who was shot by a firing squad in 1951.
"The death of Akmal Shaikh is a sad indictment of today's world, and particularly of China's legal system. ... We at Reprieve are sickened by what we have seen during our work on this case," said Sally Rowen, legal director of Reprieve's death penalty team.
Reprieve issued a statement from Shaikh's family members saying they expressed "their grief at the Chinese decision to refuse mercy."

Broadcasters' woes could spell trouble for free TV

NEW YORK – For more than 60 years, TV stations have broadcast news, sports and entertainment for free and made their money by showing commercials. That might not work much longer.
The business model is unraveling at ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox and the local stations that carry the networks' programming. Cable TV and the Web have fractured the audience for free TV and siphoned its ad dollars. The recession has squeezed advertising further, forcing broadcasters to accelerate their push for new revenue to pay for programming.
That will play out in living rooms across the country. The changes could mean higher cable or satellite TV bills, as the networks and local stations squeeze more fees from pay-TV providers such as Comcast and DirecTV for the right to show broadcast TV channels in their lineups. The networks might even ditch free broadcast signals in the next few years. Instead, they could operate as cable channels — a move that could spell the end of free TV as Americans have known it since the 1940s.
"Good programing is expensive," Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns Fox, told a shareholder meeting this fall. "It can no longer be supported solely by advertising revenues."
Fox is pursuing its strategy in public, warning that its broadcasts — including college football bowl games — could go dark Friday for subscribers of Time Warner Cable, unless the pay-TV operator gives Fox higher fees. For its part, Time Warner Cable is asking customers whether it should "roll over" or "get tough" in negotiations.
The future of free TV also could be altered as the biggest pay-TV provider, Comcast Corp., prepares to take control of NBC. Comcast has not signaled plans to end NBC's free broadcasts. But Jeff Zucker, who runs NBC and its sister cable channels such as CNBC and Bravo, told investors this month that "the cable model is just superior to the broadcast model."
The traditional broadcast model works like this: CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox distribute shows through a network of local stations. The networks own a few stations in big markets, but most are "affiliates," owned by separate companies.
Traditionally the networks paid affiliates to broadcast their shows, though those fees have dwindled to near nothing as local stations have seen their audience shrink. What hasn't changed is where the money mainly comes from: advertising.
Cable channels make most of their money by charging pay-TV providers a monthly fee per subscriber for their programing. On average, the pay-TV providers pay about 26 cents for each channel they carry, according to research firm SNL Kagan. A channel as highly rated as ESPN can get close to $4, while some, such as MTV2, go for just a few pennies.
With both advertising and fees, ESPN has seen its revenue grow to $6.3 billion this year from $1.8 billion a decade ago, according to SNL Kagan estimates. It has been able to bid for premium events that networks had traditionally aired, such as football games. Cable channels also have been able to fund high-quality shows, such as AMC's "Mad Men," rather than recycling movies and TV series.
That, plus a growing number of channels, has given cable a bigger share of the ad pie. In 1998, cable channels drew roughly $9.1 billion, or 24 percent of total TV ad spending, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising. By 2008, they were getting $21.6 billion, or 39 percent.
Having two revenue streams — advertising and fees from pay-TV providers — has insulated cable channels from the recession. In contrast, over-the-air stations have been forced to cut staff, and at least two broadcast groups sought bankruptcy protection this year.
Fox illustrates the trend: Its broadcast operations reported a 54 percent drop in operating income for the quarter that ended in September. Its cable channels, which include Fox News and FX, grew their operating income 41 percent.
Analyst Tom Love of ZenithOptimedia said he expects the big networks will end the year with a 9 percent drop in ad revenue, followed by an 8 percent drop in 2010 and zero growth in 2011.
A small chunk of the ad revenue is being recouped online, where the networks sell episodes for a few dollars each or run ads alongside shows on sites such as Hulu. Media economist Jack Myers projects online video advertising will grow into a $2 billion business by 2012, from just $350 million to $400 million this year.
But that is not significant enough to make up for the lost ad revenue on the airwaves. Advertisers spent $34 billion on broadcast commercials in 2008, down by $2.4 billion from two years earlier, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising.
So rather than wait for the Internet to become a bigger source of income, the networks and local stations are mimicking what cable channels do: They're charging pay-TV companies a monthly fee per subscriber to carry their programming.
Since 1994, the Federal Communications Commission has let networks and their affiliates seek payments for including their programming in the pay-TV lineup. Not everyone demanded payments at first. Instead they relied on the broader audience that cable and satellite gave them to increase what they could charge advertisers.
The big networks also were content to let their broadcast stations essentially be subsidized by higher fees for the cable channels that fell under the same corporate umbrella. A pay-TV company negotiating with the Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC, is likely paying more for the ABC Family channel than it otherwise would, with the extra assumed to help Disney cover its costs for the ABC network broadcasts.
But over time — such contracts generally run about three years — more networks began demanding payments for the stations they own. And affiliates already receiving the fees have bargained for more money.
Some talks have been tense. In 2007, Sinclair Broadcast Group, which operates 32 network-affiliated stations around the country, pulled its signals for nearly a month from Mediacom Communications Corp., which provides cable TV to about 1.3 million subscribers, mainly in small cities.
The American Cable Association says its members — mainly small cable TV providers — have seen their costs for carrying local TV stations more than triple over the past three years. The group's head, Matt Polka, says those fees have gone "straight to consumers' pocketbooks" in the form of higher cable bills.
Gannett Co., for instance, which operates 23 stations, has taken in $56 million in fees from pay-TV operators this year after negotiating a new batch of agreements, up from $18 million in 2008. Dave Lougee, president of Gannett's broadcast arm, defends the fees, saying "broadcasters were late to the game in really starting to go after the fair market value of their signals."
Analysts estimate CBS managed to get as much as 50 cents per subscriber in its most recent talks with pay-TV providers that carry CBS-owned stations. CBS Corp. chief Leslie Moonves said such fees should add "hundreds of millions of dollars to revenues annually."
That could be just the beginning. CBS and Fox are also asking for a portion of the fees that their affiliates get, arguing that the networks' shows are what give local stations the leverage to ask for fees.
Over time, the networks might be able to get even more money by abandoning the affiliate structure and undoing a key element of free TV.
Here's why: Pay-TV providers are paying the networks only for the stations the networks own. That amounts to a little less than a third of the TV audience, which means local affiliates recoup two-thirds of the fees. If a network operated purely as a cable channel and cut the affiliates out, the network could get the fees for the entire pay-TV audience.
If forced to go independent, affiliates would have to air their own programming, including local news and syndicated shows.
Fitch Ratings analyst Jamie Rizzo predicts that at least one of the four broadcast networks "could explore" becoming a cable channel as early as 2011.
Any shift would take years, as the networks untangle complicated affiliate contracts. At an analyst conference last year, CBS's Moonves called the idea an "a very interesting proposition." But he added that it "would really change the universe that we're in."

Obama vows to use power to thwart terrorists

HONOLULU – President Barack Obama on Monday vowed to use "every element of our national power" to keep Americans safe and said the failed Christmas Day plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner was "a serious reminder" of the need to continually adapt security measures against changing terrorist threats.
But even as Obama spoke, word came that a State Department warning had failed to trigger an effort to revoke the alleged attacker's visa. And officials in Yemen confirmed that the would-be bomber had been living in that country, where terrorist elements quickly sought to take credit for his actions.
The incident prompted stiffer airport boarding measures and authorities warned holiday travelers to expect extra delays as they return home this week and beyond.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, charged with trying to destroy an aircraft, is being held at the federal prison in Milan, Mich. A court hearing that had been scheduled for Monday to determine whether the government can get DNA from him was postponed until Jan. 8. No reason was given.
Calling Abdulmutallab's action an "attempted act of terrorism" Obama vowed to "do everything that we can to keep America safe" and declared: "The United States will more than simply strengthen our defenses. We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us."
Members of Congress, meanwhile, questioned how a man flagged as a possible terrorist managed to board a commercial flight into the United States carrying powerful explosives and nearly bring down the jetliner. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., said Monday that the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he chairs would hold hearings in January.
Meanwhile, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the thwarted attack as retaliation for a U.S. operation against the group in Yemen. Yemeni forces, helped by U.S. intelligence, carried out two airstrikes against al-Qaida operatives this month in the lawless country that is fast becoming a key front in the war on terror. The second one was a day before Abdulmutallab attempted to bring down a Northwest Airlines flight as it prepared to land in Detroit.
Yemen has long been an al-Qaida stomping ground. But officials fear that deepening instability in the Middle Eastern nation may be giving new opportunity for the terror group to establish a base to train and plan for attacks on the West.
A statement posted on the Internet by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula said Abdulmutallab coordinated with members of the group and used explosives manufactured by al-Qaida members.
Solving one mystery of Abdulmutallab's pre-Detroit path, the Yemeni Foreign Ministry said Monday that he was in Yemen from August until early December. He had received a visa to study Arabic in a school in San'a. Citing immigration authorities, the statement said Abdulmutallab had previously studied at the school, indicating it was not his first trip to Yemen.
Obama, on vacation in his birthplace of Hawaii, acknowledged the attack showed the need to increase the United States' defenses. He detailed the pair of reviews that he has ordered to determine whether changes are needed in either the watchlist system or airport screening procedures.
"This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face," he said. "It's absolutely critical that we learn from this incident."
Obama's remarks Monday were the first heard from him on the Christmas Day scare three days earlier.
Officials said that was deliberate — an effort by the White House to balance the need for the president to show concern but also to not unduly elevate a botched incident and thereby encourage other would-be attackers.
Back in Washington, federal officials met to review their layered system of watchlists and other procedures to examine how to avoid the type of lapses that led to the attack.
Abdulmutallab's family in Nigeria released a statement that that his father had reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago. The statement says the father then approached foreign security agencies for "their assistance to find and return him home."
U.S. officials say that is how Abdulmutallab came to the attention of American intelligence, just last month, when the father, prominent Nigerian banker Alhaji Umar Mutallab, reported his concerns to the American Embassy in Abuja. A senior U.S. official said the father was worried that his son was in Yemen and "had fallen under the influence of religious extremists." The father did not mention any specific threat.
These concerns landed him among the about 550,000 names in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, known as TIDE, which is maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. Other, smaller lists trigger additional airport screening or other restrictions, but intelligence officials said there wasn't enough information to move him into those categories.
Another apparent lapse concerns Abdulmutallab's visa.
Britain had refused to grant him a student visa in May, but there was no apparent effort to revoke his U.S. tourist visa, issued in June 2008 and good for multiple entries over two years.
The embassy visit by Abdulmatallab's father triggered a Nov. 20 State Department cable from Lagos to all U.S. diplomatic missions and department headquarters in Washington. It was also shared with the interagency National Counter Terrorism Center, said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly.
The NCTC, which has responsibility if any visas are to be pulled over terrorism concerns, then reviewed the information and found it was "insufficient to determine whether his visa should be revoked," Kelly said.
Michael Chertoff, who was homeland security secretary in the Bush administration, questioned why Abdulmutallab's visa wasn't revoked. It's a "serious indicator" when a parent goes to authorities to discuss concerns about his child and it "certainly would cause me to ask questions," said Chertoff in an interview.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that the aviation security system failed, backtracking from a statement Sunday in which she said it worked.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., joined the GOP critics of that statement. "They just don't get it," said Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "The system didn't 'work' here." Hoekstra, who is running to become his state's governor, included his criticism in a campaign e-mail that asked supporters for donations.
The White House said Obama's low-key response was carefully calibrated.
The plane had been on the ground in Detroit for two hours on Friday before officials first informed Obama. Advisers said they wanted to make sure they had complete and accurate information before going to the president but, even so, Obama's first briefing with national security and homeland security advisers lasted less than 15 minutes. Obama's motorcade was rolling toward the gym minutes afterward.
Two days later, when another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit came under suspicion, it was about 90 minutes after it landed before Obama was informed of what had been a false alarm.
Throughout the weekend, Obama has mixed vacation activities with crisis monitoring. He played golf on Saturday with friends and was playing basketball with aides when that second flight landed in Detroit on Sunday. He went from there to a beach and a gourmet restaurant dinner in the evening.
On Monday, he did not address the public until after a workout and a tennis game with his wife — and went golfing immediately afterward.