Lawmakers ponder how to detect potential U.S. terrorists

Lawmakers said Wednesday the U.S. government needs to develop a way to identify U.S. citizens who have become radicalized but haven't raised red flags, as was apparently the case involving a Pakistani immigrant who is accused of trying to set off a car bomb in New York's Times Square on Saturday.

Unlike the failed plot to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas, lawmakers are not pinning blame on the U.S. intelligence community for failing to prevent the suspect, Faisal Shahzad, from carrying out this bombing attempt.

The difference between the incidents is that the suspect in the Christmas incident is a foreign national whose Nigerian father alerted U.S. authorities to his extremist religious views; Shahzad is a naturalized U.S. citizen whose activities did not show up on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies.

But the Times Square bombing plot has sent a shockwave across Capitol Hill that left Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike worried that a U.S. citizen-turned-Islamic extremist could plot and carry out a terrorist attack on U.S. soil without detection.

"What's clear now is that we have to worry more about Americans," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said. "There were no red flags raised, and that's exactly what [groups] like al-Qaida are looking for -- people who are clean."

House Homeland Security Committee ranking member Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., also raised the issue. "Because we've stopped terrorists ... from coming into the country, they are going to be recruiting those who live in the country, who are living here legally and lawfully," he said. "And they are under the radar screen. So it's much harder to detect them."

"American citizens are flying back and forth to Pakistan every day. American citizens of Muslim decent are flying back and forth to Pakistan every day," King added. "That certainly doesn't make them suspicious. I'm not aware of anything yet in his background that should have made us suspicious of him."

Feinstein said travel by U.S. citizens to countries like Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia should raise red flags for intelligence agencies. But she said the government needs to determine what criteria to use in deciding what would raise an alert.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, also cautioned against assuming that Shahzad failed to carry out his mission.

"One of the big concerns [is that] people were criticizing this guy because they thought he was incompetent. We have to understand that might have been a test. They might have been watching how we respond and react. You never know," Reyes said.

Reyes added that there was no conclusive answer Wednesday to what other groups, if any, Shahzad was involved with.

But key lawmakers and aides said they had many unanswered questions about the bombing attempt and the government's response.

For example, Senate aides said they were trying to determine if the Obama administration had put in place a high-value interrogation group, and whether the group was used to question Shahzad.

According to a law enforcement official, "elements of the HIG were deployed and the intelligence community was engaged to support the investigation and interrogation."

The Justice Department and FBI briefed the National Security Council staff, the Homeland Security Department, the National Counterterrorism Center, the CIA and the director of national intelligence on Shahzad's interrogation "and consulted those agencies on the possibility that a Miranda warning would be provided," the official added. "There were no objections," the official said.

Senate aides were also trying to determine when and how Shahzad became radicalized, as he was naturalized in April 2009.