together a couple of crude ieds out of pressure cookers. now, if those two guys could do that, you know, tell me why not a single one of these explosive devices, if they were explosive devices, actually functioned? you know, we ve seen before components put together that were not going to function. in fact, if you look at the affidavit that was filed in the times square bomber case, atf had to recombine the ingredients in order to make it a functioning explosive. and yet the guy behind that was an engineer. so that s a big question. why didn t they go off, and who benefits from this? and that will be part of this core investigation, as well as the forensic evidence that might be contained in each of the packages and things like that. and look, you know, you do have the remote possibility at this point, according to investigators, these were hoax devices. these were things that s right. made to closely approximate the real thing, because that was the level of sophistication the
all right. first, though, big news today. the trial of the accused underwear bomber begins this morning with earnest with opens statements at the federal courthouse in droit. umar farouk abdulmutallab is charged with trying to blow up a flight on christmas day 2009 with a bomb hidden in his underwear. the defendant is acting as his own attorney. cnn s deb feyerick in live in detroit, where you were the night this all developed and christmas day 2009. deb, what is the situation? reporter: well, ali, christine and carol, we can tell you that he is facing eight charges today. it carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. the charges against him, attempted murder, attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and also conspiracy toy commit terrorism. the nigerian grat witt student turned accused suits bomber is acteding as his own attorney and umar farouk abdulmutallab shown he is defind. during jury selection he invoked his meant, jihad mentor, recently killed in an air
terrorism? is there a way to break that down? they ll look at both. a lot of these are based on international is easier to trace in a lot of ways for tracing money because you can see wires and money going internationally. it s easier to track than it is domestically. but whenever they re going to look at these folks in today s day and age as far as terrorism, they re going to look at the money flow. and if you remember, with the times square bomber case, one of the things that they did was they picked up the guys who were as they called them halawadars, they transfer money without actually having money move from the united states to pakistan. and he got some of his money i believe at a dunkin donuts that was handed to him that actually came from the pakistani taliban, which is who these guys were working for as well who were just arrested. so they will trace all of that money in all of these investigations because tracing the money will often lead to other suspects and potentially
prosecute for what they ve been involved with. in terms of prosecuting, how successful is the u.s. at putting these guys behind bars, getting convictions? it depends. there are a lot of cases that unfortunately don t necessarily lead to a prosecution where they re looking and they re trying to find and they just don t get enough evidence together. but there are other cases where they ve been quite successful. and i mean, you look at the times square bomber case. he s in jail. the halawadars were prosecuted. so they were able in that case to look at people. but even in this case now where we have this indictment pending there are three people over in pakistan. they ll have to see if they can find them, if they can be arrested in pakistan, if they can then be extradited to the united states. so even though they ve brought charges against them, there s a chance that those people will never actually be brought to justice before our system. okay. well, annemarie mcavoy, thanks for lay
reporter: james clapper, the director of national intelligence, admitted that he knew nothing about it. i was a little surprised you didn t know about london, director clapper. i m sorry, i didn t. reporter: after all the close calls, the christmas day bomber case, the times square bomber case, another instance of the u.s. intelligence community not being fully informed? how is it possible that the man who talks to the president almost every day did not know? obviously, it s surprising that the u.s. director of national intelligence would not know about a major operation. reporter: in an initial statement, clapper s office sidestepped why he couldn t answer, saying sawyer s question was ambiguous. then his office admitted he was never told about the arrests, saying, he should have been briefed on the arrests, and the steps have been taken to ensure that he is in the future. he was working on developments in the korean peninsula, in terms of political military developmen