"Since his arrest," the letter says, "the defendant has been questioned — and continues to be questioned — by federal agents on a number of sensitive national security and law enforcement matters for the purpose of preventing potential future attacks, identifying associates of the defendant and possible facilitators of the attempted attack, as well as gathering other actionable intelligence".
"The facts alleged in this indictment shed further light on the scope of this attempted attack and underscore the importance of using every tool we have available to both disrupt plots against our nation and hold suspected terrorists accountable for their actions," Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement.
Soon after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was arrested, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released a video claiming him as one of their own, and soon after news of the attempted attack in Copenhagen, an al-Shabab spokesman praised the attempt.
But the bigger question, according to both Democrats and Republicans on the committee, may be the use of Miranda warnings overall, in the wake of the attempted attack on an airliner as it landed in Detroit on Dec. 25.
Kurt Westergaard, one of the cartoonists, who earlier this year was the subject of an attempted attack at his home, said the newspaper had betrayed its duty to freedom of speech.
At Tuesday's hearing, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked Mr. Blair to assess the possibility of an attempted attack in the United States in the next three to six months.
The White House itself unintentionally underscored the importance of cyber security, confirming this week that it was the target of an attempted attack on an unclassified network, described as a "spear-phishing" incident by spokesman Jay Carney.
Mr. Faisal's name surfaced much more recently in investigations into Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of the attempted attack on a Northwest Airlines flight.
A spokesman for the National Coalition, Sayid Aqa Faisal Sancharaki, said Mr. Abdullah was not in the country at the time of the attempted attack.
Most social-media users have seized on the revelation for the first time in China of an attempted attack on Deng by an American Ku Klux Klan member.
