White House Denies Report That In-Flight Info Emerged on Alleged Bomber

The White House is disputing a report in the Los Angeles Times that U.S. border security officials learned of the alleged Christmas Day bomber's ties to extremists while he was in the air and planned to question him when he landed. According to the Times, border officials found information about Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's radical ties from a database as the Northwest Airlines flight was bound for Detroit from Amsterdam.

"The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection," a senior law enforcement official told the Times. "The decision had been made. The [database] had picked up the State Department concern about this guy -- that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen."

A senior White House official, however, told CBS News that "no new information . . . emerged when the plane was in the air. Customs and Border Protection followed its normal procedures and checks as it prepared for arriving passengers and by doing so they accessed the suspect's . . . record, which is why they were going to ask him a few additional questions after he landed before allowing him admission into the country and why they didn't stop him in Amsterdam first." Abdulmutallab, he added, was not on the "no-fly or even the terror watch list, and that is, of course, one of the failures the president has so strongly criticized."

According to the Times, Customs and Border Protection personnel based at the National Targeting Center in Washington have access to a wide swath of intelligence about passengers that book flights to the United States, but in-depth vetting only begins once an official register, called the flight manifest, has been generated -- only hours before takeoff.

President Obama has ordered a comprehensive review of airline and border security procedures.