Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempted Christmas Day bombing of a commercial jet over Detroit in 2009 launched an exhaustive critique of the U.S. aviation security and intelligence-sharing systems.
It accelerated the installation of controversial body scanners in U.S. airports, while federal authorities pressed other nations to do the same.
Yet nearly two years later, Tuesday's start of the criminal trial of the Nigerian national, accused of detonating an explosive in his underwear, approaches more as an anticlimactic end to the near-catastrophic breach of national security.
Legal and terrorism analysts say the evidence against the slightly built 24-year-old -- a confession, his expressed allegiance to al-Qaeda and the expected testimony of passengers who subdued Abdulmutallab as the bomb flamed and then fizzled in his lap -- represents nearly a fait accompli for prosecutors.
"Clarence Darrow could come back from the dead and he couldn't do anything to help this guy," said Edward MacMahon, who represented convicted 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.
So far, Abdulmutallab, acting as his own legal counsel, has shown little resemblance to the famed Darrow.
During pretrial hearings, he has offered praise to slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and demanded to be "judged and ruled by the law of the Quran."
Terrorism analyst Evan Kohlmann said the defendant's decision to represent himself is an effort to find a public platform to espouse terrorist propaganda. But Kohlmann said that Abdulmutallab's standing as a lowly foot soldier in the al-Qaeda ranks is not generating a groundswell of support, even in the terror world.
Although there may be little suspense centered on the upcoming trial, the Nigerian's alleged offense could not have been more dramatic.
Seven minutes before Northwest-Delta Flight 253, carrying 281 passengers and 11 crewmembers, was to land, prosecutors allege, Abdulmutallab detonated the device. Flight attendants extinguished the flames while passengers jumped the suspect, holding the severely burned Nigerian until the airliner safely landed in Detroit.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers said Abdulmutallab admitted that "he had detonated an explosive and that he had been acting on behalf of al-Qaeda," court documents state.
The suspect later provided "details of his mission, training and radicalization," the documents state.
Abdulmutallab sought unsuccessfully to block the statements from being admitted at trial, claiming in part that he was under the influence of painkillers at the time of the interrogation. That request was denied by U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds.
Larry Johnson, a former deputy director of the State Department's Office of Counterterrorism, said Abdulmutallab's erratic behavior in pretrial hearings and the failed bombing attempt support an emerging image of al-Qaeda's "diminished competency and capacity" to carry out attacks.
Philip Mudd, former senior FBI official, said the U.S. is indeed making significant gains in the battle against terrorism, but he cautioned that it would be a "mistake" to dismiss Abdulmutallab's failed bombing as the act of an incompetent terrorist operative.
"Today's failed terrorist attack is tomorrow's Timothy McVeigh," Mudd said, referring to the terrorist whose truck bomb in 1995 killed 168 people in Oklahoma City.
"I do not understand the constant derision of the (terrorist) adversary. That is so shortsighted," Mudd said. "We tend to think of the terrorist threat in terms of what the annual threat assessment says. The terrorists think in terms of decades and centuries."
