Sen. Lieberman, McCain Seek “Accountability’ in Christmas Day Bomber Case

“I think some people have to be held accountable for the mistakes -- the human errors the president acknowledged that enabled that terrorist to get on that plane,” Senator Joseph Lieberman, head of the Homeland Security Committee and Governmental Affairs Committee, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.

Those involved “have to be disciplined so that they never happen again,” Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, said.

(...) Senator John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, agreed with Lieberman that “people should be held responsible for what happened.”

“We can’t go back to the old Washington routine ‘we’re all responsible therefore no one is responsible.’ Someone needs to be held responsible,” McCain, of Arizona, said.

Lieberman said an investigation by his panel and the Senate Intelligence Committee will determine the sequence of events that led to Abdulmutallab boarding the aircraft and which U.S. officials should be held accountable.

Lieberman said mistakes were made at the State Department and National Counterterrorism Center that led to a failure to revoke Abdulmutallab’s U.S. visa or put his name on the government’s no-fly list. Abdulmutallab’s name had been in a federal database of individuals with possible extremist ties.

Lieberman said “something went wrong” at the counterterrorism center set up after the Sept. 11 attacks to analyze and coordinate information. “It’s served us very well but it did not in this case,” Lieberman said.