Intelligence chief's talk of misstep prompts questions

WASHINGTON - The nation's intelligence chief conceded a new misstep Wednesday in the government's handling of the Christmas Day airline bombing attempt, but his comments about the failure to use a special federal interrogation team may have amounted to a misstep of his own.

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair raised new questions before a Senate panel about how well prepared the administration is to respond on short notice to domestic terrorist acts.

Blair suggested the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, also known as HIG, should have questioned the Nigerian airline bomb incident suspect before any decisions were made on whether to place him in the civilian court system.

"That unit was created exactly for this purpose," Blair told the Senate Homeland Security Committee. "We did not invoke the HIG in this case. We should have."

But the elite interrogation unit cited by Blair was designed by the Obama administration last year to deal with suspects captured abroad. And it is not in operation yet, FBI Director Robert Mueller said.

The HIG unit, created to bring together experienced interrogators from across the intelligence agencies, is also led by the FBI, the same agency that questioned suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in the hours after he was taken into custody on a landed Detroit-bound airliner.

At a separate congressional hearing yesterday, Mueller appeared to take issue with Blair's comments, saying there was not enough time immediately after the Christmas Day incident to use the interrogation teams.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that even if the unit had been fully operating, it would have taken several hours at a minimum to get anyone assigned to the group to Detroit.

Blair's comments came as Republicans in Congress hammered the Obama administration for treating the near-disaster as a crime rather than an act of war. In sometimes contentious testimony, Blair accepted blame for the failings of Dec. 25 that led to Abdulmutallab's attempt to ignite a bomb hidden in his underwear as his Northwest flight approached Detroit.

"The overall counterterrorism system did not do its job," Blair said. "It's in large part my responsibility."