The Truthseeker » The Crotch Bomber

‘Underwear bomber’ was working for the CIA

wmw_admin — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 11:07:14 +0000

Paul Harris and Ed Pilkington – Guardian.co.uk May 9, 2012

A would-be “underwear bomber” involved in a plot to attack a US-based jet was in fact working as an undercover informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged.

The revelation is the latest twist in an increasingly bizarre story about the disruption of an apparent attempt by al-Qaida to strike at a high-profile American target using a sophisticated device hidden in the clothing of an attacker.

The plot, which the White House said on Monday had involved the seizing of an underwear bomb by authorities in the Middle East sometime in the last 10 days, had caused alarm throughout the US.

It has also been linked to a suspected US drone strike in Yemen where two Yemeni members of al-Qaida were killed by a missile attack on their car on Sunday, one of them a senior militant, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso.

But the news that the individual at the heart of the bomb plot was in fact an informer for US intelligence is likely to raise just as many questions as it answers.

Citing US and Yemeni officials, Associated Press reported that the unnamed informant was working under cover for the Saudis and the CIA when he was given the bomb, which was of a new non-metallic type aimed at getting past airport security.

The informant then turned the device over to his handlers and has left Yemen, the officials told the news agency. The LA Times, which first broke the news that the plot had been a “sting operation”, said that the bomb plan had also provided the intelligence leads that allowed the strike on Quso.

Earlier John Brennan, Barack Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser and a former CIA official, told ABC’s Good Morning America that authorities are “confident that neither the device nor the intended user of this device pose a threat to us”.

US officials have said the plot was detected in its early stages and that no American airliner was ever at risk.

The FBI is conducting forensic tests on the bomb as a first step towards discovering whether it would have cleared existing airport scanning systems. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic senator for California who heads the Senate intelligence committee, gave an early hint when she said that she had been briefed about the device which she called “undetectable”.

But AP quoted an unnamed US official as saying current detection methods probably would have spotted the shape of the explosive in the latest device.

Just how major an escalation in threat is posed by the bomb remains unclear. Security sources have told news agencies that it was a step up in levels of sophistication from the original underwear bomb that was used in a failed attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.

The device used a more refined detonation system, and Brennan said “it was a threat from a standpoint of the design”.

When it comes to who made the device the focus is on an al-Qaida’s offshoot, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Matthew Levitt, a counter-terrorism expert at the Washington Institute, said that the interception of the plot amounted to a significant achievement for US security agencies.

He said: “The FBI is holding the device, which suggests that this was done by having boots on the ground. This was a sophisticated operation that shows we are making in-roads in serious places.”

Levitt, who was involved as a senior analyst in the FBI’s investigation into 9/11, said that it was natural to be sceptical in a presidential election year about security announcements. “But this was not political, it didn’t come from the White House and my sense was that it was a really unique success,” he said.

Levitt said that the spotlight would now be even more intense on Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, AQAP’s assumed bomb-making chief, who is thought to be hiding out in Yemen.

Asiri is believed to have been the creator of the Detroit underwear bomb as well as explosives that were packed into printer cartridges bound for Chicago in 2010.

Source

English kid exposes BBC complicity in covering-up ‘false flag’ terror

Kevin Boyle — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Kevin Boyle – No One To Vote For March 7, 2010

There was a documentary ( “How Safe Are Our Skies” ) on BBC2 on Thursday at 9pm about the Detroit underpants bomber. It was a disgraceful deception.

Rotten madding lies.

Here’s a young man who has put up a video about it and made a good job of exposing just what the BBC is.

It is, on ‘important’ matters, a branch of MI6.

Traitors to the British people.

These b*stards with their plummy voices and their oh-so-smooth delivery will be the death of us all.

Lyndsay Duncan (voiceover), do you understand what you are part of?

Here is Keelan Balderson’s film. Don’t miss the last 30 seconds:

Detroit Bomber – BBC White Washes Documentary.

Source: http://kevboyle.blogspot.com/2010/03/english-kid-exposes-bbc-complicity-in.html

Accused Christmas Bomber Listened to Music, Slept

wmw_admin — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

NPR – February 17, 2010

A Michigan college student who sat next to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day says the accused terrorist’s actions suggested he was in over his head. Jay Howard says that Abdulmutallab mostly slept and listened to music during the flight and seemed surprised when asked about the smoke that apparently came from under his blanket.

MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The man at the center of this story, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, remains in federal custody in Michigan. It’s been nearly two months now since he allegedly tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253. On that flight, Abdulmutallab was in seat 19A. In 19B was Jay Howard, a 21-year-old college student from Grand Rapids, returning home from a semester abroad. He spoke with my co-host Michele Norris about that flight.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Melissa, Jay Howard says there was nothing unusual about Abdulmutallab. He said he was just an average seatmate.

Mr. JAY HOWARD (Student): I had gotten in first, so when he came by, I had to stand up and let him in. And then he thanked me for getting up for him, and we sat down together.

NORRIS: Throughout that flight, their interaction was minimal. Abdulmutallab told Howard he felt ill. And he mostly listened to music and slept. Then 10 minutes into the plane’s final descent, everything changed.

Mr. HOWARD: Well, there was a large pop – like, almost everyone on the plane, I’m sure, I heard it. So, I was very curious to what had happened because it sounded very close to me. So, I was looking around and I noticed that my neighbor, Umar, had his blanket up over him, up to his chin and but I saw that there was smoke coming from underneath his blanket. And I also noticed a repulsive smell. And so I kind of questioned him, and I asked him about the smoke but he didn’t respond. And so, I removed his blanket from him and smoke dispersed throughout the plane.
And he had his hand down his pants. So, when he removed his hands from his pants, fire erupted. And he and another passenger, who had come over from a couple of rows away, tried to put it out together. So…

NORRIS: Well, if I can just reach back for a minute, when you asked him about the smell, when he had the blanket pulled up to his chin, did he just ignore you?

Mr. HOWARD: Well, he didn’t exactly ignore me. At that point, I just what I got out of him was that he didn’t exactly know either but, of course, he did know. He seemed very surprised and shocked at what was happening, like he didn’t know.

NORRIS: As you can hear, Jay Howard is very calm in describing a scary situation, but he says many of the other passengers were quite frantic. And I noticed something talking to him: He kept referring to Abdulmutallab by his first name, Umar, as if they were friends.

Mr. HOWARD: I only call him that because I mean, I don’t want to call him a terrorist because he hasn’t been treated as a terrorist and it wasn’t a national threat, and so using Umar seems to be more human.

NORRIS: You have an interesting perspective – that you choose not to see him as a terrorist, and you don’t see what he did as presenting a threat.

Mr. HOWARD: Well, I mean, it was a threat, of course, it was a threat because initially, he was trying to blow up the plane but he didn’t succeed. I mainly treat him this way because of how he reacted towards what he was doing. And what his actions told me on the plane was that he was in over his head, and that he didn’t exactly know what he was doing would entail.

NORRIS: That plane, of course, landed in Detroit. Jay Howard was questioned by the FBI. He was told not to say much about the incident. His clothes were taken for chemical analysis to help determine what Abdulmutallab’s bomb was made of. FBI agents bought new clothes for Howard on the spot, but given the limited retail options at an airport, Howard’s replacement ensemble was far from his usual style.

Mr. HOWARD: It’s was a long-sleeve, yellow polo with blue stripes across it and blue pants. And they didn’t find any shoes for me. And so I actually ended up wearing these enormous slippers that were like, golf-shoe style. It was so funny, it looked like I was just going to go golfing or something. Everyone was kind of giving me a strange look in the airport.

(Soundbite of laughter)

Mr. HOWARD: So, they had no idea what my day was like.

NORRIS: Jay Howard has since put the day behind him. He is focusing on his studies. He’s not following Abdulmutallab’s case very closely. And Melissa, he says he doesn’t dwell on what-if scenarios.

BLOCK: And we’ll continue retracing Abdulmutallab’s steps tomorrow on

MORNING EDITION, with a report on the Nigerian’s radicalization in London.

Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR’s prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123821351&sc=emaf

Congressional hearing reveals US intelligence agencies shielded Flight 253 bomber

wmw_admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

WSWS.org – February 2010

A January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security established that US intelligence agencies stopped the State Department from revoking the US visa of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian student, whom US officials suspected of being affiliated with the Yemeni terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, attempted to set off a bomb on Northwest Flight 253 into Detroit on Christmas Day. Revocation of Abdulmutallab’s visa would have prevented him from boarding the airplane.

The hearing was reported in a brief article posted January 27 on the web site of the Detroit News, headlined, “Terror Suspect Kept Visa to Avoid Tipping Off Larger Investigation.”

The revelation that US intelligence agencies made a deliberate decision to allow Abdulmutallab to board the commercial flight, without any special airport screening, has been buried in the media. As of this writing, nearly a week after the hearing, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times have published no articles on the subject. Nor have the broadcast or cable media reported on it.

This is despite—or perhaps more accurately, because of—the fact that this information exposes the official government story of the near-disaster to be a lie. President Obama, who has joined with top US intelligence, FBI and Homeland Security officials to insist that Abdulmutallab was inadvertently allowed to board the plane carrying explosives because of a failure to “connect the dots,” has from the start been deceiving the American people.

The official line strained credulity from the outset, given reports of multiple advance warnings that the Nigerian student was linked to terrorists in Yemen who were planning attacks on the US.

As was widely reported within hours of the failed bombing attempt, Abdulmutallab’s father—a former Nigerian government minister and prominent banker—went to the US embassy in Abuja in November to warn that his son was involved with radical Islamists in Yemen and had broken off contact with his family. The family said they had given US officials extensive information about their son in the expectation that they would “find and return him home.”

In his prepared statement to the House Committee on Homeland Security on January 27, State Department Under-Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy said: “In the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, on the day following his father’s November 19 visit to the Embassy, we sent a cable to the Washington intelligence and law enforcement community through proper channels (the Visas Viper system) that ‘Information at post suggests [Farouk] may be involved in Yemeni-based extremists.’”

Kennedy confirmed that all US intelligence agencies received warnings that Abdulmutallab was training with terrorists in Yemen. He noted that the initial diplomatic cable from Abuja misspelled Abdulmutallab’s name. However, Kennedy continued, “At the same time, the Consular Section entered Abdulmutallab into the Consular Lookout and Support System database known as CLASS… The CLASS entry resulted in a lookout using the correct spelling that was shared automatically with the primary lookout system used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and accessible to other agencies.”

Under questioning by the committee chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, Kennedy explained why the State Department might not revoke the US visa of a suspected terrorist: “We will revoke the visa of any individual who is a threat to the United States, but we do take one preliminary step. We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, ‘Do you have eyes on this person and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?’”

He added: “And one of the members [of the intelligence community]—and we’d be glad to give you that out of [open session]—in private—said, ‘Please, do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person. We are following this person who has the visa for the purpose of trying to roll up an entire network, not just stop one person.’”

Under questioning by Rep. Dan Lungren, Kennedy confirmed that Abdulmutallab’s case was one in which US intelligence officials had interceded to block a visa revocation.

In prepared remarks at the same hearing, National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter stated: “Within the intelligence community we had strategic intelligence that Al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP—the terrorist group in Yemen with which Abdulmutallab was in contact] had the intention of taking action against the United States prior to the failed attack on December 25th, but we did not direct more resources against AQAP, nor insist that watch-listing criteria be adjusted prior to the event.” He added that US intelligence analysts “did not push [Abdulmutallab] onto the terrorist watch-list.”

This inaction came despite the fact that US intelligence agencies were well aware of the threat posed by AQAP. According to Leiter: “The Intelligence Community highlighted the growing threat to US and Western interests in the region posed by AQAP, whose precursor elements attacked our embassy in [the Yemeni capital] Sana’a [in September 2008]. Our analysis focused on AQAP’s plans to strike US targets in Yemen, but it also noted—increasingly in the fall of 2009—the possibility of targeting the United States.”

Amazingly, the US government did not declare AQAP a terrorist group until January 19, 2010, even though it was referred to by that name in 2009. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley stated that declaring AQAP a terrorist group would “prohibit provision of material support and arms to AQAP and also include immigration-related restrictions that will help stem the flow of finances to AQAP.” Thus, for nearly a month after the attempted bombing, US officials were not required to implement a range of measures against AQAP, including “an asset freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo,” according to Crowley.

At the January 27 hearing, Leiter said that there had been “multiple” points of failure in the US government’s response to warnings of the impending attack. However, all three government officials testifying—Kennedy, Leiter and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Deputy Secretary Jane Lute—said no disciplinary action would be taken.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, who was invited to the hearing and was in Washington at the time, refused to attend. She did not notify committee members beforehand. Napolitano was widely criticized for claiming on December 27 that the “system worked” prior to, during and after the attempted bombing.

Official testimony now records that US intelligence agencies deliberately let Abdulmutallab board Flight 253, putting the lives of hundreds of passengers at risk, in the course of an as yet undisclosed intelligence operation. Whether US agencies were unaware of Abdulmutallab’s plans, or consciously decided to allow an attack to proceed, remains unclear.

In this context, it should be noted that the reason for US inaction given at the hearing—that US intelligence did not want to alert Al Qaeda that it was watching Abdulmutallab—does not hold water. As congressmen noted during the hearing, US Customs and Border Protection had prepared to interrogate Abdulmutallab upon arrival in Detroit, as he was on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database. This would be counterproductive if US agencies were mounting a concerted effort to hide their interest in Abdulmutallab.

There are a number of possible explanations for the decision to allow Abdulmutallab to board Northwest Flight 253. One possibility is that it was bound up with efforts by elements within the US intelligence apparatus to politically destabilize the Obama administration.

To seriously investigate the possible motivations behind the government’s actions, the question must be asked: What would have been the consequences of a successful attack? Hysterical media coverage would have provided fodder for the most right-wing factions in the ruling class to demand war against Yemen or other Muslim countries. At home, there would have been calls for a mass dragnet like that after the September 11 attacks, and immense political pressure for a new battery of police-state laws.

Even having failed, the attack was used as a pretext for expanding US military operations in Yemen, adding further security restrictions at airports, and expanding the “no-fly” passenger list and other databases by agencies unaccountable to the American people.

The testimony at the January 27 hearing also blows apart the line promulgated by the establishment media, which universally echoed the administration’s hackneyed phrase to explain the Flight 253 incident—a “failure to connect the dots” on the part of US intelligence agencies. This, of course, is the same phrase used in the official cover-up of the 9/11 attacks.

Thus, in a January 2 editorial entitled “Why Didn’t They See It?” the New York Times wrote: “No doubt sorting through heaps of information and determining what is urgent or even worthy of follow-up is daunting. Still, it is incredible, and frightening, that the government cannot do at least as good a job at swiftly updating and correlating information as Google.”

The Times itself, in a subsequent article published January 18, reported the results of its own investigation, based on interviews with senior White House and intelligence officials. The newspaper revealed more “missed clues,” including the fact that intelligence authorities learned in early November from a communications intercept of Al Qaeda followers in Yemen that a man named “Umar Farouk” had volunteered for a coming operation. Despite such evidence of an official cover-up, the Times maintained the line that the near-disaster was the result of mistakes, omissions and an inability to “connect the dots.”

It is now possible to answer the New York Times editorial of January 2: They did “see it,” and the Times’ incredulous and cynical attempt to explain the Flight 253 attack as the result of mere incompetence was part of a campaign of disinformation. This is a campaign in which, by its silence on the January 27 hearing, the Times continues to participate.

The Congressional hearing vindicates the analysis of the World Socialist Web Site, which exposed the highly dubious character of the official story, pointed to the possibility of US government involvement, and demanded that officials involved in handling Abdulmutallab’s case be named and investigated.

In a December 31 column (“The Northwest Flight 253 intelligence failure: Negligence or conspiracy?”) the World Socialist Web Site wrote: “The general outlines of the Northwest bombing attempt and the 9/11 attacks are startlingly similar. One might even say that what is involved is a modus operandi. In both cases, those alleged to have carried out the actions had been the subject of US intelligence investigations and surveillance and had been allowed to enter the country and board flights under conditions that would normally have set off multiple security alarms.

“Both then and now, the government and the media expect the public to accept that all that was involved was mistakes. But why should anyone assume that the failure to act on the extensive intelligence leading to Abdulmutallab involved merely ‘innocent’ mistakes—and not something far more sinister?”

In the January 18 New York Times article cited above, the newspaper also noted that Obama personally met on December 22 with CIA, FBI, and DHS officials because Obama was “worried about possible terrorist attacks over the Christmas holiday.” In another meeting the same day, the Times reported, Obama’s homeland security advisor John Brennan held talks on Yemen, “where a stream of disturbing intelligence had suggested that Qaeda operatives were preparing for some action, perhaps a strike on an American target on Christmas day.”

Nevertheless, Obama gave a December 28 internet and radio address in which he falsely described Abdulmutallab as an “isolated extremist.”

He also declared: “A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism, and we will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable… We will continue to use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us.”

Over a month after Obama made these claims, it is clear that US intelligence agencies were deeply involved and the White House is overseeing a massive cover-up.

The author also recommends:

More “missed clues” in the Northwest Flight 253 bomb plot [19 January 2010]

Questions mount over attempt to bomb Detroit-bound jetliner [4 January 2010]

The Northwest Flight 253 intelligence failure: Negligence or conspiracy? [31 December 2009]

Original source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/f253-f03.shtml

Mossad Tied to Underwear Bomber

wmw_admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Victor Thorn – American Free Press

“His explosives couldn’t have blown up his own seat. Even if full power, it wouldn’t have worked.” These were the words relayed to me during a Jan. 2 interview with military analyst and counterinsurgency specialist Gordon Duff in regard to the attempt of Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab [sometimes referred to as Abdulmutallab] to ignite 80 grams of the explosive PETN on a flight destined for America. He also explained how the patsy’s country of origin, Nigeria, is clandestinely controlled by the Israeli army and Mossad.

These entities train the military, sell weapons, run the airports, and wield power over DICON (Defense Industries Corporation). Furthermore, Mutallab’s father is a Mossad partner and Israel’s No. 1 contact in Nigeria. As the former CEO of his country’s most influential bank and the man who ran their national arms industry, Mr. Mutallab also harbors extremely close relationships with the U.S. ambassador and CIA chief in Nigeria.

On Nov. 19, 2009, Mutallab supposedly felt so alarmed about his errant son’s behavior that he met with the CIA’s station chief in Nigeria. Duff describes the father in a Dec. 31 article for Veterans Today as “one of the richest people in the world, head of a major bank, head of the national armaments industry, and close associate of the U.S. ambassador,” as well as being a Mossad asset. Yet we’re to believe that nobody prevented his Yemeni-influenced “terrorist” son from boarding a plane ultimately bound for Detroit?

Another significant detail is being neglected by mainstream media sources. The firm in charge of security at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is the Israeli-owned International Consultants on Targeted Security (ICTS).They’re also the same outfit responsible for all three airports used by “Muslim hijackers” on 9-11. ICTS also handled security for London’s bus system during their 7-7 “Muslim bombing,” while doing the same at Charles de Gaulle Airport when “shoe bomber” Richard Reid boarded a plane in Paris on Dec. 22, 2001.

When a Michigan passenger, attorney Kurt Haskell, reported that a “well-dressed” Indian man arranged for Umar Mutallab to perform a “walkaround” without a passport in Amsterdam, ICTS was one of only a few entities that could have permitted this security breach to take place.

Despite tighter screening processes since 9-11, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 experienced no delays in takeoff. According to the Mathaba News Agency on Jan. 2, “It is evident that clearing the terrorist with higher-ups took a matter of a minute or so—the ‘Indian’ obviously had a high-level pass (CIA, Mossad or high-level security clout).”

Then, during the flight, onlookers noted that another passenger spent a great deal of time filming 23-year-old Mutallab with his camcorder. Even stranger, once the suspect tried to ignite his “crotch bomb,” Mathaba reported, “Throughout the incident, the man continued recording the terrorist, calmly and without interruption.”

Next, after the plane landed, another Indian man was led away in handcuffs after bomb-sniffing dogs smelled explosives in his luggage. Now, more than a week later, officials have refused to release Schiphol CCTV airport footage from Amsterdam, the air-bound “video passenger” film, or identify the man arrested in Detroit.

This Indian link doesn’t surprise Duff. “Israel and India are very close business partners, especially via their military contracts. Also, the Indian intelligence agency (Research and Analysis Wing) works hand-in-hand with Israel. Essentially, the two governments are one.”

But the Mossad’s reach extends even further, directly into the country where Mutallab purportedly trained. On Oct. 7, 2008, BBC News reported, “Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said that security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence.”

The ties go even deeper, straight to Mutallab’s home country. In a Sept. 5, 2008 article by Tashikalmah Hallah and Francis Okeke entitled “Nigeria: Lawmakers Divided Over Mossad,” Sen. Nuhu Aliyu voiced his support for their pact with Israel. “They (Mossad) are professionals, and they are here to help train our own intelligence agents. I don’t see any way by which their presence in the country poses a threat to our national security.”

One final element of the equation needs to be addressed; specifically, the “terrorist cell” that ostensibly trained Mutallab prior to his Christmas Day terror attempt.

However, Duff paints an entirely different picture. “There is no al-Qaeda in Yemen. George Bush released a couple of phony operatives from Guantanamo, and after traveling to the Middle East, they hooked up with the Mossad. The only reason Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez released them is because they’re assets.”

Of course, the American public is being misled again into believing that this “lone nut” terrorist sneaked through the system (no-fly lists, airport scrutiny etc) due to mere incompetence, similar to what occurred on 9-11.

Yet Israeli intelligence provided security at the Amsterdam Airport, where Mutallab boarded a plane with no passport; the NSA is equipped to electronically eavesdrop anywhere around the world; the Mossad is tied to Yemen, Nigeria and India; while the suspect’s father opened up banking and arms contacts in the Middle East while harboring an extremely close relationship with American and Israeli intelligence.

What we’re being fed is another propagandized cover story that is intended to keep ratcheting up Orwellian-style trauma and fear, all the while further spreading our global “terror war” to Yemen and the African continent.

Victor Thorn is a hard-hitting researcher, journalist and the author of many books on 9-11 and the New World Order. These include 9-11 Evil: The Israeli Role in 9-11 and Phantom Flight 93.

Source: http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/underwear_bomber__206.html

The Truth About Flight 253 Has Been Revealed

wmw_admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

haskellfamily.blogspot – January 28, 2010

***Please note that in the article that follows, I am not claiming that the U.S. Government knew Mutallab had a bomb or intended to hurt anyone on Flight 253 when the U.S. Government let him board.

THE SHARP DRESSED MAN WHO AIDED MUTALLAB ONTO FLIGHT 253 WAS A U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENT.

Since our flight landed on Christmas Day, Lori and I have been doing everything in our power to uncover the truth about why we were almost blown up in the air over Detroit. The truth is now finally out after the publication of the following Detroit News article:
http://detnews.com/article/20100127/NATION/1270405/Terror-suspect-kept-visa-to-avoid-tipping-off-larger-investigation

Let me quote from the article:

“Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, said Abdulmutallab’s visa wasn’t taken away because intelligence officials asked his agency not to deny a visa to the suspected terrorist over concerns that a denial would’ve foiled a larger investigation into al-Qaida threats against the United States.

“Revocation action would’ve disclosed what they were doing,” Kennedy said in testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Allowing Adbulmutallab to keep the visa increased chances federal investigators would be able to get closer to apprehending the terror network he is accused of working with, “rather than simply knocking out one solider in that effort.”‘

Now it all becomes apparent. Let me detail everything we know about the “Sharp Dressed Man” (SDM).
1. While being held in Customs on Christmas Day, I first told the story of the SDM.
2. My story has never changed.
3. The FBI visited my office on December 29, 2009, and showed me a series of approximately 10 photographs. None were of the SDM. I asked the FBI if they brought the Amsterdam security video to help me identify the SDM, but they acted as though my request was ridiculous. The FBI asked me what accent the SDM spoke in and I indicated that he had an American accent similar to my own. I further indicated that he wore a tan suit without a tie, was Indian looking, around age 50, 6’0″ tall and 250-260 lbs. I further indicated that I did not believe that he was an airline employee and that he was not on our flight.
4. During the first week of January, 2010, Dutch Military Police and the FBI indicated that over “200 Hours” of Amsterdam airport security video had been reviewed and it “Shows Nothing”.
5. The mainstream media picked up the “Shows nothing” story, which slanders my story. After visiting my office twice for a flight 253 special, Dateline NBC and Chris Hanson indicated that my story was “Unsubstantiated rumor dispelled as myth” and our story did not air during the tv special.
6. On January 2, 2010, I receive a call from a flight 253 passenger who indicated to me that it may be in my best interest to stop talking publicly about the SDM because he believes I am “wrong” in what I saw. He did not make any claim that he saw the SDM boarding gate incident at all. This call was made out of the blue after he made a “revelation” of this event on January 1, 2010. I later discover that this caller has ties to the U.S. Government.
7. On January 20, 2009, current Director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Michael E. Leiter, made a startling admission. Leiter indicated that: “I will tell you, that when people come to the country and they are on the watch list, it is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another.”
8. On January 22, 2010, CongressDaily reported that intelligence officials “have acknowledged the government knowingly allows foreigners whose names are on terrorist watch lists to enter the country in order to track their movement and activities.”

CongressDaily also reported, citing an unnamed “intelligence official” that Michael E. Leiter’s statement on January 20, 2010, reflected government policy and told the publication, “in certain situations it’s to our advantage to be able to track individuals who might be on a terrorist watch list because you can learn something from their activities and their contacts.”

9. On Janury 22, 2009, ABC News published an article that shoed a change of position in the government’s official story. Please see the following blog post for more information:

http://haskellfamily.blogspot.com/2010/01/initially-discounted.html

The U.S. government provided no explanation for the reason my story was initially discounted.
10. The SDM could not be from Al Qaeda. When speaking at the counter in Amsterdam, the SDM said the following “He is from Sudan, we do this all the time”. Who is “we”? If it is Al Qaeda, you surely don’t make such a statement to an airposrt security official.
11. The SDM could not be from airport security. The SDM did not dress in any secuirty uniform and did not appear to have any security badge. The SDM did not speak with a Dutch accent. The SDM dressed in a suit coat and pants. If the SDM was a higher up security official, he would not have to convince the ticket agent to let Mutallab on the plane without a valid passport. Instead, he would just order her to do it.
12. Could the SDM have been a U.S. Government official? He dressed in a suit and not a security uniform. Check. He indicated we do this all the time. Could “we” be the U.S. Government? Check. He spoke Enlish with an American accent. Check. Would he need to convice the ticket agent that this was a normal procedure to allow boarding without a passport? Check. Would he have the ability to obtain such clearance? Check. Could he enter this security area even though he wasn’t a passenger? Check. Would the ticket agent likely refer this request to a manager? Check. Would the U.S. Government not want this information public and try to hide it? Check.
13. The Amsterdam security video has not been released. A much more minor airport security violation occurred at the Newark New Jersay airport several days after the flight 253 incident. That video was released shortly thereafter.
14. Senators Levin and Stabenow, as well as Congressman Dingle, all refuse to discuss the matter with me.

With the information we already knew and the admission from the above referenced Detroit News article, we have evidence and claims made by government officials that the U.S. Government wanted Mutallab to proceed into the U.S. in order to obtain information on other terrorists involved with him. Once we take this statement and add it to my eyewitness account of a “Sharp Dressed Man” escorting Mutallab through the boarding process and allowing him to baord without a valid passport we can make the connection that the “Sharp Dressed Man” was a U.S. Government offical/agent.

The reasoning behind the following events now becomes very clear:

1. The reason Mutallab got through security despite the numerous warnings for months before our flight.
2. The reason why there have been so many lies from the U.S. Governemnt attempting to discredit my eyewitness account.
3. The reason why the Amsterdam airport security video is being hidden from the public.
4. The reason why the government is proposing a “Failed to Connect the Dots” account of the failure. The truth is too damning.
5. The reason why Mr. Wolf of the Obama administration indicated on the Keith Olberman Show that the White House was investigating a possible “intentional act” from within the U.S. Government as the reason for the Christmas Day attack.
6. The explanation for the cameraman and why he hasn’t been identified (Obviously, he was another U.S. Government agent) whose job was to film Mutallab for some governmental purpose.
7. The reason for the lax security after landing, which can be attributed to foreknowledge of the possible suspects involved.
8. The reason for the failure to search or secure the plane and passengers after landing, which can also be attributed to foreknowledge of the possible suspects involved.
9. The corporate media’s attempt to bury my eyewitness account.
10. Carl Levin’s, Debbie Stabenow’s and John Dingle’s intentional avoidance of my story and failure to return my calls/emails.
11. Janet Naploitano’s statement that “The System Worked”. From her point of view it probably did as this WAS PART OF THE SYSTEM!

This article is the big center piece of the puzzle that has been missing and was needed to finish the entire puzzle.
http://haskellfamily.blogspot.com/2010/01/truth-about-flight-253-has-been.html

Christmas Bombing Audio Tape Lamest Yet

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The new audio tape from “Osama bin Laden” taking responsibility for the idiotic and childish incident in Detroit where moronic Nigerian armed with a useless “bomb” is simply too much. Now using audio tapes because, supposedly, nobody in Al Qaeda got a flash drive video recorder for Christmas is even more of a joke. Please, with the hundreds of millions our Saudi allies have given to terrorists, a video camera the size of an Ipod might have been a nice touch. Even funnier was releasing the audio, using algorithm software probably illegally downloaded off the internet, and giving it to Al Jazeera.

Pundit Debbie Schussell, former Mark Siljander (VT staff writer) staffer, has bitterly complained about the strong ties between Fox News and Al Jazeera. Fox owner, Rupert Murdoch, is the most powerful “influencer” of the ultra-rightists in Israel. Attempts by the press to present Al Jazeera of today as the “pro-terrorist” media it seemed like many years ago is an epic misrepresentation.

A further abuse, of course, is not only that we are no longer seeing the easily debunked bin Laden doubles whose video tapes were “mysteriously” released by SITE Intelligence, the Rita Katz/Israeli group that seems to find them in trash bins behind delicatessens. The “new” audio tape itself contains statements claiming credit for 9/11 in direct contradiction to the real bin Laden videos, the only ones authenticated. If you wondered why the FBI doesn’t list Osama bin Laden as a suspect in 9/11, I think you have your answer. If they think the bin Laden “admissions” aren’t credibile, I wonder who the FBI is investigating or if they have simply been told to mind their own business.

The terrorist incident itself is the last thing Al Qaeda would ever take responsibilty for despite the claims by SITE Intelligence that they found an unnamed and unverified internet site that confirmed this. Who in the name of all that is holy would want to take responsibility for an idiot who was led onto an American bound plane by passing around searches, customs and passport control in an airport run by an Israeli security company but who carried a “bomb” designed by a three year old.

Who would be so stupid as to try to pass off this childish tape when reliable witnesses saw the terrorist being led onto the plane in Amsterdam in a manner that required full cooperation from security personnel, passport control and the airline itself. We don’t even have to go into the fact that the “terrorists” in Yemen that supposedly claimed responsibilty were released from Guantanamo under the personal signature of Vice President Cheney in 2007 or that before the incident, the government of Yemen tied these individuals to Israeli controllers thru captured computers.

I am only thankful that the duped terrorist, or as Lee Oswald had said, “patsy”, was the moronic son of a long time Mossad business associate in Nigeria. Mr. Mutallab, banker, but mostly head of Nigeria’s defense industry, DICON, managed almost entirely by Israelis, may have much more story to tell other than the one he told CIA Chief of Station on November 19, 2009. Do we want to follow former Homeland Security director Chertoff, not only a Jewish activist but currently representing companies selling body scanners to airports and the mysterious ability for someone on worldwide terrorist watch lists to be escorted onto a US bound airliner without passport or search?

Billions in profits were realized almost instantly after this incident. Companies tied to Chertoff, Israel and India were on the receiving end.

The only reliable information the world has on Osama bin Laden is that he was killed by American troops on December 13, 2001 and buried outside Tora Bora by his following, 30 Mujahideen. At least 6 of these witnesses were alive at last check. Since his death, every “leaked” video or statement has been timed for convenient electoral “terrorist” scares, been childishly unprofessional and has only worked to discredit Islam.

Every effort has been made by the MSM/corporate press to cover the facts behind the Christmas “bombing” and push the blame on everyone but the obvious culprits. That effort was deemed so successful that now a brazen attempt to resurrect long dead Osama bin Laden to take responsibilty for trying to set off a bomb with a flame igniter that could only be exploded using a blasting cap, is being made.

Is this an attempt to make Al Qaeda look stupid?

“My name is Osama bin Laden. I had a moron carry a defective bomb onto a plane full of Islamic families returning to Detroit, the most Muslim city in the west, as part of a terror campaign. I chose a flight that connected from the Middle East so I could kill as many of the innocent faithful as possible. Please excuse this and the dozen or other mistakes made but being dead has left me less sharp than I once was. No, I do not work for the Mossad, they simply tape and distribute my interviews. This is part of an agreement with my talent agent who is Jewish. All talent agents are Jewish, ask anyone in Hollywood. What do you expect, miracles? 10% of nothing is nothing.

For my faithful followers, I expect to be a regular on Californication next season on Showtime. I’ll be the guy with the beard who seems dead.”

The second possibility, one designed for the “spiritual” crowd is this:

“I am Osama, the ghost of Tora Bora. Please give more money to Israel, vote to extend the Patriot Act and buy new airport scanners from the companies listed on my weekly newsletter distributed by SITE Intelligence. Watch for more insane threats coming in the future and have a nice weekend. Remember to stop eating pork.”

Any group that could make 5 airliners outwit NORAD, the most advanced air defense system in the world, any group that could train terrorist pilots inside the United States itself with nobody catching on, and it gets worse. Sources tell us that FBI Special Agent Stephen Butler may have “accidentally” been cashing checks for and paying rent for two of the 9/11 hijackers. Can people who can get this kind of thing done put a moron on an aircraft at an airport secured by an Israeli company, “extremely closely” related to the same company that managed security at all of the airports used on 9/11?

When Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell and his wife witnessed the famous, “he has no passport, he is a Sudanese refugee, we do this all the time”, incident in Amsterdam, only a phony bin Laden tape could make America forget, or so “they” hope. Imagine our terrorist being taken to meet the security head for the “airline” with his “Indian looking” handler, bomb strapped to his underwear. Think of this exploding moron and his handler and who they would have had to know to get past, not only airline security and the Israeli company guarding the airport but Dutch passport control as well.

Anyone with the power to load the “crotch bomber” on a plane with no passport could have put a nuclear weapon in luggage easier. Nukes are seldom on watch lists or have parents running to the CIA reporting them as “terrorists.” Next time we are being lied to, please, have more respect. Not everyone is a dumb as a Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.

It is one thing claiming that poor, long dead Osama bin Laden runs terrorists in Yemen. It is quite something else proving that he manages an airport in Europe or runs the Dutch government. When US Senators can’t get thru airport security without being detained, bin Laden’s ability to get diplomatic VIP treatment for known terrorists makes him more than a threat, it makes him a magician.

We are thankful that nobody was seriously injured and that we can all laugh about this, maybe not all of us. The people of Nigeria don’t think it is funny. Millions of Muslims aren’t seeing the joke either. Air travelers are having their bad moments also. Some, however, have benefitted in a major way, politically, financially and militarily. None of those people, however, are ever openly accused of terrorism.

Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/01/24/israel-please-no-more-bin-laden-tapes-nobody-is-buying-it/

“Sharp Dressed Man” Helped Umar Mutallab on Plane Without Passport

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Who else was involved and why aren’t we being told about this other suspect?

A Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 says he witnessed Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam without a passport.

Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who posted an earlier comment about his experience, talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by sending a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were returning from a safari in Uganda when they boarded the NWA flight on Friday

Haskell said he and his wife were sitting on the ground near their boarding gate in Amsterdam, which is when they saw Mutallab approach the gate with an unidentified man.

Kurt and Lori Haskell are attorneys with Haskell Law Firm in Taylor. Their expertise includes bankruptcy, family law and estate planning.

While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, ‘He’s from Sudan and we do this all the time.’”

Mutallab is Nigerian. Haskell believes the man may have been trying to garner sympathy for Mutallab’s lack of documents by portraying him as a Sudanese refugee.

The ticket agent referred Mutallab and his companion to her manager down the hall, and Haskell didn’t see Mutallab again until after he allegedly tried to detonate an explosive on the plane.

Haskell said the flight was mostly unremarkable. That was until he heard a flight attendant say she smelled smoke, just after the pilot announced the plane would land in Detroit in 10 minutes. Haskell got out of his seat to view the brewing commotion.

“I stood up and walked a couple feet ahead to get a closer look, and that’s when I saw the flames,” said Haskell, who sat about seven rows behind Mutallab. “It started to spread pretty quickly. It went up the wall, all the way to ceiling.”

Haskell, who described Mutallab as a diminutive man who looks like a teenager, said about 30 seconds passed between the first mention of smoke and when Mutallab was subdued by fellow passengers.

“He didn’t fight back at all. This wasn’t a big skirmish,” Haskell said. “A couple guys jumped on him and hauled him away.”

The ordeal has Haskell and his wife a little shaken. Flight attendants were screaming during the fire and the pilot sounded notably nervous when bringing the plane in for a landing, he said.

“Immediately, the pilot came on and said two words: emergency landing,” Haskell said. “And that was it. The plane sped up instead of slowing down. You could tell he floored it.”

As Mutallab was being led out of the plane in handcuffs, Haskell said he realized that was the same man he saw trying to board the plane in Amsterdam.

Passengers had to wait about 20 minutes before they were allowed to exit the plane. Haskell said he and other passengers waited about six hours to be interviewed by the FBI.

About an hour after landing, Haskell said he saw another man being taken into custody. But a spokeswoman from the FBI in Detroit said Mutallab was the only person taken into custody
http://www.newworldorderreport.com/Articles/tabid/266/ID/744/Confirmed-Sharp-dressemd-man-aided-Northwest-flight-Christmas-Bomber-Umar-Mutallab-onto-plane-without-passport-Who-was-involved-why-dont-we-know-about-this-other-suspect.aspx

Airline passengers have ‘no right’ to refuse naked body scanners

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Airline passengers will have no right to refuse to go through a full-body search scanner when the devices are introduced at Heathrow airport next week, ministers have confirmed.

The option of having a full-body pat-down search instead, offered to passengers at US airports, will not be available despite warnings from the government’s Equality and Human Rights Commission that the scanners, which reveal naked bodies, breach privacy rules under the Human Rights Act.

The transport minister Paul Clark told MPs a random selection of passengers would go through the new scanners at UK airports. The machines’ introduction would be followed later this year by extra “trace” scanners, which can detect liquid explosives. A draft code of practice covering privacy and health issues is being discussed in Whitehall.

Clark dealt with concerns raised by the Commons home affairs select committee about the ability of airports abroad to upgrade their security to similar levels by indicating that extra support and help was under discussion.

Lord West, the counter-terrorism minister, told the MPs the government had firmly ruled out the introduction of “religious or ethnic profiling” into transport security. Instead, he said, airport security staff were being trained in “behavioural profiling”, which meant spotting passengers who had paid cash, were travelling with only a book for luggage on a long-haul flight or were behaving erratically at the airport.

He said the decision to raise the terror threat level to “severe” – meaning an attack was highly likely but not imminent – had been taken by security service officials at the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre last Friday.

The decision, thought to be based on an increase in intelligence traffic on threats from Yemen, was confirmed by the home secretary, Alan Johnson.

West refused to discuss the intelligence behind the decision, saying he was not going to jeopardise “getting the bastards”.

The body scanner trials, which are due to start at Heathrow next week, will involve a machine that has spotted the type of concealed device used in the Detroit airline bombing attempt.

The airport’s owner, BAA, is preparing to install a scanner in each of its five terminals. The trials will use two different technologies that see through passengers’ clothing. One trial will involve “backscatter” technology, which exposes travellers to low-level x-rays. This is already in use at Manchester airport. Security staff at Manchester recently replicated the underwear bomb that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab smuggled on to Northwest Airlines flight 253. The machine singled out elements of the fake weapon.

“We could see that there was something on the person that would have required a further search,” said a spokesman for Manchester airport, whose machine requires passengers to stand between two Tardis-like blue boxes.

Under the new security regime, due next month, the suspect passenger would then be led away for a secondary examination that would include using chemical swabs to test for explosives. Pat-down searches of passengers and hand luggage inspections will also increase.

The second type of machine uses a “millimetre wave” system, which bounces radio waves off the human body to form a 3D image of the passenger. Both types of technology have raised privacy concerns owing to the graphic nature of the passenger images, with civil liberties campaigners calling the process “virtual strip-searching”.

The Department for Transport has drawn up a preliminary code of conduct for using the machines, and it will follow some guidelines used in the US. These state that the security officer guiding the passenger through the machine never sees the image, and that the employee viewing the scan must be based away from the passenger, in a secure room. The two officers communicate with wireless headsets; and, once viewed, the scan cannot be saved, printed or transmitted.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/26/new-body-scanners-heathrow

New bin Laden Tape Aired

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has warned that the prospect of a terror attack was “very real” hours after a new audio tape, puportedly from bin Laden was aired.

Broadcast on al-Jazeera, the tape claimed responsibility for the botched bombing of Flight 253 over Christmas.

Even if he is still alive, bin Laden was a known intelligence asset who had extensive contact with the CIA. The fact that he is still free after nearly ten years, the invasion of Afghanistan and the most intensive manhunt in history should itself raise questions.

It has yet to be confirmed that bin Laden actually features on the tape but it comes on cue as Britain’s home secretary increased the terror threat level from “substantial” to “severe”.

The failed bombing attempt of Flight 253 to Detroit itself left many questions unanswered. Such as who helped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab board the plane, even though he didn’t have a passport?

Why he was allowed to board the flight even though MI5 knew of his extremist links? And why the bomber’s father, reportedly a Mossad asset, warned the authorities of the terror risk his son posed and nothing was done?

None of these questions has been addressed by the authorites or the mainstream media. Instead we get a string of anomolies connected to Flight 253 reported without question and now a sudden increase the terror threat level.
Nor does the corporate media ask why the man hunted in the most intensive man hunt in history is still able to make pronouncements so publicly.

Whatever the answer, the latest claimed bin Laden tape seems intended to up the level of public anxiety. Aided and abetted, of course, by the pronouncements of Zionists like Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband.

Whether it will or not remains to be seen. For the more public pronouncements he makes the more bin Laden will be seen for what he really is: a contrived threat used to inspire fear and trepidation.

Insouciant Americans

Sun, 17 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The Underwear Bomber case indicates that whoever is behind these bomb scares is laughing at our gullibility.

How realistic is it that al-Qaida, an organization that allegedly pulled off the most fantastic terror attack in world history, would in these days of heightened security choose for an attack on an airliner a person who is the most conspicuous of all? Umar Farouk Mutallab had a one-way ticket, no luggage, no passport, and his father, reportedly a CIA and Mossad asset, had reported him to the CIA and Mossad. Does anyone really believe that al-Qaida would choose as an airliner bomber a person waving every red flag imaginable?

This obvious question has escaped the US media, a collection of salespersons marketing full body scanning machines for airports.

Would al Qaida, with its extensive knowledge of explosives, have armed Umar with a “bomb” that experts say couldn’t have blown up his own seat?

It is difficult to imagine a more gullible population than America’s, but do even Americans believe this story?

Since 9/11 the F.B.I. has been busy enticing people, who lack organizational skills, into “terrorist plots” that consists of F.B.I. initiated hot air talk. These ridiculous stings are then taken to trial, and the media fans the flames of fear of “home-grown terrorist plots against Americans.”

There is little doubt that those interested in leading the U.S. deeper into a police state and deeper into a “war on terror” are active in adding orchestrated events to whatever real ones real terrorists manage to accomplish. The paucity of real terrorists has caused the U.S. government and its Ministry of Truth to promote the Taliban to terrorist rank. The problem is that these “terrorist acts” are taking place thousands of miles away in lands that the average American cannot find on a map and, thus, lack scare value. To keep the peril alive for Americans, we have the Underwear Bomb Plot.

What will be next? An elaborate head of hair laced with nano-thermite?

The “war on terror” is a far greater threat to Americans than all the terrorists in the world combined. This is so because the “war on terror” has destroyed the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. American citizens are now helpless in the event someone in government decides that some constitutionally protected behavior, such as free speech, or a contribution to a children’s hospital in Gaza, where Hamas, a U.S.-declared “terrorist organization,” happens to be the elected government, constitutes aiding and abetting terrorism.

On January 5 a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia gave away the most essential protection of liberty by declaring that the U.S. government is not bound by law during war. The ruling absolves Washington from complying with America’s own laws and from complying with international laws, such as the Geneva Conventions. It makes a mockery of all war crime trials everywhere. By elevating the executive branch above the law, the court gave the government carte blanche.

The rationale offered by the court for refusing to uphold the law came from Judge Janice Rogers Brown, who said that America had been pushed by war past “the leading edge of a new and frightening paradigm, one that demands new rules be written. War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust.” By “adjust” she means “ be set aside” or “be thrown out.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to defend both the Constitution and the principle that government is not above the law. Last December 14 the Supreme Court refused to review a ruling by the Federal Appeals Court in the District of Columbia, which dismissed a torture case with the argument that “torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants.” In other words, neither U.S. nor international laws against torture can be enforced in U.S. courts. The opinion was written by Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson.

The “war on terror,” which is enriching Halliburton, Blackwater (now operating under an alias), and the military/security complex, while denying Americans health care, is running up debt that is a threat to Americans’ purchasing power and living standards. The contrast between America’s sanctimonious rhetoric and the murder of civilians and torture of prisoners has destroyed America’s reputation and caused Europeans as well as Muslims to despise the United States.

The sacrifice of the Constitution and rule of law to a hyped “theorist threat” has destroyed the heart and soul of America herself.

As a poet wrote, “our world in stupor lies.”
Source: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24380.htm

US border guards knew alleged terrorist was on flight

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Officials from the Transport Security Administration discovered Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s name on the Customs and Border Protection database after he boarded his Northwest flight in Amsterdam and were waiting to question him upon landing in Detroit, according to senior law enforcement officials.

The disclosure appears to show US intelligence was close to uncovering the terrorist plot, despite the barrage of criticism it has come under since Abdulmutallab, 23, failed to detonate a bomb aboard a Northwest airliner on Christmas Day.

The opportunity for detecting a passenger as a potential threat before boarding is limited, a senior Homeland Security official said, adding that in-depth vetting only begins once the flight manifest has been generated, a few hours before takeoff.

If the intelligence on Abdulmutallab had been discovered sooner, the officials said, he could have been interrogated before boarding the flight.

“The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection,” said a an official quoted by 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… They could have made a decision on whether to stop him from getting on the plane,” he said.

Abdulmutallab was formally charged on Wednesday for attempted murder and trying to use a weapon of mass destruction aboard a US plane. He faces life imprisonment.

President Barack Obama has sharply rebuked intelligence and security services for missing a series of “red flags” that could have unmasked the plot earlier.

“That’s not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it,” he said in an unusual public dressing-down of the intelligence services.

The White House is set to release an unclassified version of a report into the intelligence failures.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6944598/Detroit-attack-US-border-guards-knew-alleged-terrorist-was-on-flight.html

US lies about “crotch bomber” patsy

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The US government who lied for wars in other resource-rich countries are lying about what happened on Delta Flight 253 with an alleged underwear/crotch bomber. Below is a summary of facts reported at this time, along with a 4-minute news interview from Webster Tarpley, followed by an extensive interview of Mr. Tarpley by Alex Jones.

The longer explanations of the following bullet points are in the reporting from Veterans Today editor Gordon Duff, US Intelligence Examiner Fred Burks, Prison Planet, 9-11 was an Inside Job, American Everyman Scott Creighton, and Citizens for Legitimate Government Lori Price.

Before the flight to the US:

* Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab traveled to Yemen to meet with “terrorists.” However, his mother also lives in Yemen, which could also explain the visit.

* The alleged terrorists in Yemen had been in Guantanamo Prison. They were released without trial by the Bush Administration even though they were reported as among the most dangerous detainees.

* The government of Yemen reports that Islamic terrorists there have been arrested who have proven ties to Israeli intelligence.

* Abdulmutallab’s father, though we are told is a retired “Nigerian banker,” ran their defense industry in close cooperation with Israeli Intelligence (Mossad).

* Abdulmutallab’s father warned US embassy officials of his son’s dangerous behavior; this is corroborated with other US intelligence of warning.

* Abdulmutallab’s visa to the US was never withdrawn, though he was on a “terrorist watchlist.” This would make his trip impossible unless protocol was ignored.

* Flying from Nigeria, Abdulmutallab entered the Netherlands without passing through customs; impossible to do without assistance from an intelligence agency.

* At the Amsterdam airport, Abdulmutallab was assisted by a man appearing to be Indian, who claimed Abdulmutallab was a Sudanese refugee with no passport (he would not have been allowed to enter the EU without a passport through customs). This man and whoever authorized boarding without a passport are huge stories we haven’t heard. Where is the airport videos of this?

* Airport security in Amsterdam is contracted to an Israeli company with the most sophisticated technologies who had developed the concept of security profiling.

During the flight to the US:

* Witnesses reported a man standing ten rows behind Abdulmutallab stand and use his camcorder to film the incident before it began. This important testimony was not pursued to discover the identity and role of this seemingly complicit person.

* Witnesses report Abdulmutallab was oddly vacant and calm; typical of a programmed “Manchurian Candidate.” This might explain the behavior of the person filming: a “handler” who gave the code for Abdulmutallab to perform an act. Manchurian Candidates are now acknowledged historical fact. Research this if you are unfamiliar with the disclosed history.

After the flight:

* Witness on flight 253, attorney Kurt Haskell, reports that there was another suspect handcuffed at the airport after landing that the FBI repeatedly lies and changes their story in explaining. Haskell says the detained passengers were told this man was identified by a bomb-sniffing dog as having explosives in his luggage.

* The Detroit News confirms the FBI has changed their story four times.

* A photo of Abdulmutallab with an alleged al Qaeda flag is from the same organization that previously photo-shopped false background images.

* 50 grams of PETN positioned on a seat and cushioned underneath a passenger are tested and would not cause significant damage to the plane.

* The US and UK government are using this incident to justify attack and possible invasion of Yemen.

* We’re reminded that yes, Yemen has oil and natural gas reserves worth stealing.

Source: http://www.examiner.com/x-18425-LA-County-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2010m1d2-US-lies-about-Flight-253-crotch-bomber-patsy-summary-of-the-evidence-Yemen-attack-implication?cid=examiner-email

Evidence Mounts For U.S. Complicity in Terror

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

When nothing adds up, its time we starting looking at what we know. Our recent terrorist, now dubbed “the crotch bomber” is another dupe. He could have been working for anyone, drugged, brainwashed or simply influenced, maybe by crazy Arabs, maybe by the Mossad, maybe by the CIA. We only know the game is falling apart.

We do know a couple of things. Dad, back in Nigeria, ran the national arms industry (DICON) in partnership with Israel, in particular, the Mossad. He was in daily contact with them. They run everything in Nigeria, from arms production to counter-terrorism. Though Islamic, Muttalab was a close associate of Israel. He has been misrepresented. His “banking” is a cover. Next, what do we know about the two Al Qaeda leaders Bush had released, the ones who planned this?
According to ABC news, the Al Qaeda leaders running the insurgency in Yemen were released from Guantanamo, although two of the highest ranking known terrorist there, without trial.

Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody.

Both of the former Guantanamo detainees are described as military commanders and appear on a January, 2009 video along with the man described as the top leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Abu Basir Naser al-Wahishi, formerly Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary.

With all the hoopla about trials in New York, not a word is said when top level terrorists are released to Saudi friends of the Bush family who let them go. We are now fighting these two Bush friends in Yemen. They are running a major insurgency there. We have been using Cruise missiles and our jets to attack their bases in the last weeks.

CBS NEWS LEARNS CIA HAD ADVANCE INFORMATION ON DETROIT TERRORIST

CBS News has learned that as early as August of 2009 the Central Intelligence Agency was picking up information on a person of interest dubbed “The Nigerian,” suspected of meeting with “terrorist elements” in Yemen.

Sources tell CBS News “The Nigerian” has now turned out to be Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. But that connection was not made when Abudulmutallab’s father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria three months later, on November 19, 2009. It was then he expressed deep concerns to a CIA officer about his son’s ties to extremists in Yemen, a hotbed of al Qaeda activity.

THE CIA OFFICIAL STATEMENT

CIA admits broad information during the November interview, information not acted on in any responsible way but failed to understand that the terrorist they were warned of in November was the one they had been tracking since August.

“We learned of him in November, when his father came to the U.S. embassy in Nigeria and sought help in finding him. We did not have his name before then,” said Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman. “Also in November, we worked with the embassy to ensure he was in the government’s terrorist database – including mention of his possible extremist connections in Yemen. We also forwarded key biographical information about him to the National Counterterrorism Center.

CIA, ISRAEL AND YEMEN

It is claimed by groups claiming to be Al Qaeda in Yemen that the Detroit attack was in retaliation to US attacks on bases in Yemen run by Al Qaeda leaders released by Bush.

The government of Yemen, as reported in the BBC, says that the Al Qaeda terrorists, led by those released by Bush, are really Israeli agents though they have organized attacks against US targets:

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said the security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence. Mr Saleh did not say what evidence had been found to show the group’s links with Israel, a regional enemy of Yemen. The arrests were connected with an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa last month which killed at least 18 people, official sources were quoted saying.

“A terrorist cell was arrested and will be referred to the judicial authorities for its links with the Israeli intelligence services,” Mr Saleh told a gathering at al-Mukalla University in Hadramawt province. “Details of the trial will be announced later. You will hear about what goes on in the proceedings,” he added.

The 17 September attack was the second to target the US embassy since April. Militants detonated car bombs before firing rockets at the heavily fortified building.

Mr Saleh did not identify the suspects, but official sources were quoted saying it was same cell – led by a militant called Abu al-Ghaith al-Yamani – whose arrest was announced a week after the attack.

With continual reports from Pakistan that India and Israel have been involved in terrorst attacks against US supporters there and the recent reports that the Detroit bomber was assisted by an Indian while boarding in Amsterdam and partially confirmed reports that a second bomber, an Indian, was arrested and taken from the plane in Detroit. MILive broke this story in the US which originated with Reuters:

Reuters reports Dutch military police are investigating claims that an accomplice may have helped Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab board Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam on Christmas day without a passport.

Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., took to the comments section of this Web site early Saturday to share his story: That he and his wife, Lori, saw a well-dressed man help Abdulmutallab board the flight without a passport under the guise he was a Sudanese refugee. The military police have already said Abdulmutallab did not go through passport control at Schiphol when he arrived from Lagos.

In another interview on Inside Edition, Haskell described what happened:

A passenger has come forward with disturbing new details about the plot to bring down a jet, including the astonishing claim that the accused terrorist was able to board the plane without a passport.

Kurt Haskell showed INSIDE EDITION his boarding pass for Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. The lawyer, who lives outside Detroit, was returning home from an African safari when he says he saw the terror suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallabm, and another man, who he thought was Indian, approach the ticket agent.

“Only the Indian man spoke,” says Haskell, “And what he said was, ‘This man needs to board the plane but he doesn’t have a passport.’ ”

“His clothes were like jeans and a t-shirt or something, he looked kind of thin, like a 16-year-old teenager, and the other man, looked like he was 50 years old, looked like he was a wealthy, Indian man. I just couldn’t figure out why they were together,” Haskell tells INSIDE EDITION.

An earlier CBS news report today stated:

CBS News has learned the State Department system designed to keep track of active U.S. visas twice failed to reveal Nigerian terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had been issued an active visa allowing him multiple entries into the United States.

According to a law enforcement source, the first failure came on Nov. 19, 2009, the very same day Abdulmutallab father’s, Dr. Umaru Mutallab, a prominent banking official in Nigeria, expressed deep concern to officials at the U.S. Embassy in Abjua, Nigeria, that his 23-year-old son had fallen under the influence of “religious extremists” in Yemen.

The second failure to flag an active visa belonging to Abdulmuttalab occurred the very next day in Washington, after Mutallab’s concerns were forwarded to officials there. It was only after the Christmas Day terror attack in Detroit that U.S. officials learned that Abdulmuttalab had been issued a visa by the U.S. Embassy in London valid from June 16, 2008, through June 12, 2010. ..

Thus, in another set of coincidences, the system put in place after 9/11, meant to prevent the misuse of student visas for terrorist acts, single, Islamic engineering students tied to religious extremists being a risk factor in that area, failed totally.

Picture the November 19 interview. A poor taxi driver comes to the US embassy: “My son, he is hanging around with a rough crowd. He says he wants to blow something up!”

No, wait, that was someone else. Picture the November 19 interview. One of the richest people in the world, head of a major bank, cabinet minister, head of the national armaments industry, close associate of the US Ambassador and someone known around the world makes an appointment to come to the US embassy.

He wouldn’t have met a clerk. The US Ambassador himself would have arranged for the highest ranking officer in the embassy hold the interview. Mr. Muttalab would have been greeted by the ambassador when he came to the embassy.

MUTALLAH MEETS WITH CIA CHIEF OF STATION IN NIGERIA, NOVEMBER 19

We have confirmed that Mutallah met with the CIA chief of station in Nigeria.

Imagine this person of great power and influence, with friends at the highest levels of the CIA and Mossad. When he came to announce his son may be a terrorist, he was a loving father asking for help? He would have made this points:

* My son is a danger to himself and others, please keep him safe

* Do not allow my son to travel to the United States under any imaginable circumstances as he is likely to be involved in acts of terrorism

* Please assure me that you will act immediately and contact me as to what measures you have taken

Were any of this true, this is what would have been said. Were any of what we have been told true, none of what we saw in Detroit could have happened. What we know is that something very different than this really happened. Go ahead and Google “muttalab, nigeria, bank, mossad, defense”

Let’s look at the Wayne Masden report on the failures at the airport in Amsterdam along with direct ties between this case and the shoe bomber Richard Reid:

The Mutallab case also resembles that of another
attempted plane bombing, that of the hapless “shoe bomber” Richard
Reid.

It has also been revealed that Mutallab is the son of Alhaji Umaru
Mutallab, the former chairman of First Bank of Nigeria. According to
This Day of Lagos, the elder Mutallab claims he reported the
extremist views of his son to Nigerian security agencies, as well as
to the U.S. embassy in Abuja, yet no attempt was made to prevent the
radically-inclined Nigerian student to board the plane in Schiphol.
The attempted plane bomber was schooled at the British International
School in Lome, Togo and attended college in London and moved to
Egypt and Dubai. The elder Mutallab is a frequent visitor to the United States and he is married to a Yemeni woman. …

Marsden points out the well established family ties to Yemen thru his wife. He further points out how Israel managed to bring the terrorist son of Mutallab through multiple airport security obstacles with the same ease the United States shephered a known terrorist through a visa process. What we hadn’t seen is how much this process had been tested during the “shoe bomber” episode.

For a number of years, passengers at Schiphol flying to the United
States have been subjected to intense grilling by security personnel
linked to an Israeli firm.

US bound passengers at Schiphol are asked a number of personal questions, including where they have stayed either in the Netherlands or in their country of origin. Hotel receipts are routinely requested by security personnel and the addresses of private temporary residences are recorded. Mutallab boarded a KLM flight in Lagos for Schiphol where he transited for his onward flight to Detroit on Northwest/Delta.

Six months prior to Reid’s near shoe bombing of American Airlines
flight 63 from Paris to Miami in December 2001, while memories of
9/11 were still fresh in everyone’s mind, Reid attempted to board an
El Al flight from Schiphol to Tel Aviv.

Reid was taken aside by El Al security and identified as a terrorist suspect. Reid paid for a one-way ticket with cash and would not reveal what he planned to do in Israel.

However, rather than turning Reid into Dutch security for
further action, he was allowed to board the El Al flight by Israel’s
Shin Bet security so his movements during his five days in Israel
could be monitored.

Six months later, Reid attempted to ignite his shoe on the flight from Paris to Miami. Israel had not informed British, American, or any other security agency of the concerns about Reid. Reid’s aunt, Claudette Lewis who raised Reid in south London, was quoted as saying she believed her nephew had been “brainwashed.”

Reid later said El Al failed to detect that he had explosives in his
shoes on the flight to Tel Aviv, an amazing revelation considering
the Israeli airline’s tight security.

The links between El Al security and Mossad are extremely close with
abundant cross-pollination of senior personnel back and forth.

The security company that allowed Reid to board American Airlines 63
at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris was ICTS (International
Consultants on Targeted Security) International. ICTS’s senior
management are all ex-Israeli security officials, many of whom worked
for El Al security.

It was ICTS that largely developed the passenger “profiling”
procedures used at Schiphol and other airports around the world
through its subsidiary, ICTS Holland Products BV.

JUST THE FACTS:

Let’s review what we know thus far:

* Our terrorist traveled to Yemen to meet with terrorist there

*The terrorists in Yemen had been in Guantanamo but had been ordered released by the Bush Administration though they were, perhaps the most dangerous detainees held

* The government of Yemen tells us that Islamic terrorists there have been arrested who have proven ties to Israeli intelligence

*Our terrorists father, though we are told is a retired “Nigerian banker” actually ran their defense industry in close cooperation with Israeli Intelligence (Mossad)

*Our terrorist’s visa to the US was never with withdrawn, though he was on a “terrorist watchlist”

* Our terrorist, though flying from Nigeria, entered the Netherlands without passing thru customs, something impossible to do without assistance from an intelligence agency

* Our terrorist, while at the Amsterdam airport, was being assisted by a man appearing to be Indian, who claimed our Nigerian terrorist was a Sudanese refugee with no passport (no passport was used entering the EU, something technically impossible)

* However, Dutch authorities, the same ones who confirmed he entered the country with no passport also confirmed he had a valid US visa, though on a terrorist watch list that is shared with Dutch authorities.

* Airport security in Amsterdam is contracted to an Israeli controlled company with, not only the most sophisticated technologies, but, in fact, the company that had developed the concept of security profiling.

* The parallels between this case and the Richard Reid “shoe bomber” case are much more than admitted.

WHERE THE STORY IS GOING

We keep going back to 2007. Why were these terrorists released to Saudi custody? Why did Saudi Arabia release them soon afterward? With the 2nd major terrorist front in the world being Yemen and the terrorist operation there under the control of released Bush detainees, there is reason for suspicion.

While we have all of these facts, easily verifiable, we have a much stronger case against the Bush Administration or Israel than Al Qaeda. There is no real evidence that Al Qaeda would be operating in Yemen without American or Saudi help and even, as stated by the Government of Yemen, direct material assistance from Israel.

Why would such a thing be done, something against all reason unless terrorism itself was part of a larger regional plan and a “war on terror” was only a ruse.

When Pakistan comes to us and says that Israel and India are involved in terrorism there and we ignore it, is it because it isn’t credible or because the US government has been involved, as we seem to be involved in Yemen?

WHY THE STORY HAS TO GRIND TO A STOP OR….”THE WHOLE DIRTY MESS WILL COLLAPSE”

Why are we satisfied to take one person into custody, one person who ties to so many irregularities and ask nothing else?

As with 9/11 and so many other seeminly impossible times when so many things go wrong that only great power and the cooperation of many agencies in many countries could make it possible, why do we ask nothing.

We have a major investigation in Nigeria, not only of the father and his connections to Israel but our own embassy and why they left this visa alone when the individual was a known terrorist.

How could this terrorist travel to Yemen to meet with an organization run by former detainees released by Bush and his Saudi friends, former detainees that Yemen claims are working for israel? How could he do this and be allowed to return to Nigeria, a country whose intelligence services are tied to Israel and trained by Israel. They would have known in a second.

How did this terrorist enter the Netherlands without showing a passport? Try it. You will meet lots of Dutch people who will keep you in a small room for hours, days even. It is absolutely impossible.

People are picked up in the EU while in passport control for non-payment of child support. I am being told they can’t find a terrorist?

We haven’t begun to discover how he got past security equipment and screening. It isn’t like he isn’t the highest profile potential terrorist who has entered Nigeria in decades. He is Islamic, young and traveling alone. Ask any young Islamic traveler how many times they have been searched.

Is on a terrorist watchlist. This is like the “no fly list” on steroids. You aren’t just denied flight, you are put under immediate surveillance.

If he had shown his passport, it would have shown him entering Yemen, a known terrorist training ground. This would have stopped him also.

With the Bush administration releasing terrorist leaders and shepherding them back into their former profession, with our embassy, State Department, Homeland Security and every other organization we spent so many billions of dollars to “coordinate” all failing, is there, just perhaps, a minor sign of conspiracy?

I would call President Obama to account for failures to discover what appears to be a conspiracy of his predecessor but, as the GOP blogs that fill the internet are working overtime to obscure the facts and place the blame on Obama alone, there could be no greater proof of non-involvement.

Frankly, if the Obama administration was involved with Bush, as it seems they are, then the Bush/Cheney “disinformation” attack dogs would be leashed. They are not. Thus, Bush and Cheney should be targeted for investigation.

Veterans Today Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran and regular contributor on policial and social issues.

Source: http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9951&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

MI5 knew of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s UK extremist links

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The security services knew three years ago that the Detroit bomber had “multiple communications” with Islamic extremists in Britain, it emerged this weekend.

Counterterrorism officials said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was “reaching out” to extremists whom MI5 had under surveillance while he was studying at University College London.

Officials said the 23-year-old Nigerian was “starting out on a journey” in Britain that culminated in his attempt to bring down flight 253 as it prepared to land in Detroit, Michigan, on Christmas Day.

None of the information was passed to American officials, which will prompt questions about intelligence failures prior to the attack.

British officials have now passed a file to their US counterparts on Abdulmutallab’s activities in Britain while he was a student from 2005 to 2008. It shows his repeated contacts with MI5 targets who were subject to phone taps, email intercepts and other forms of surveillance.

Intelligence officials have defended their decision not to flag Abdulmutallab as a possible terrorist risk. They say he was one of many youths who mix with extremists, but are not themselves thought to be involved in plotting or supporting terrorism.

A senior Whitehall official said the intelligence agency had conducted a quick assessment of Abdulmutallab while he was living in London and concluded that he was not a threat to national security.

“There had to be a judgment made depending on the nature of the relationship as to whether there was any threat,” said one official. “Someone will have judged: okay, [he is] noted but if there was no evidence of a threat, [they would] move on.”

British officials believe Abdulmutallab was recruited to undertake the Detroit plot after he left Britain, most probably while he was in Yemen last summer. Up to a dozen young British Muslims are thought to be engaged in terrorist training there, according to officials.

While in Britain, Abdulmutallab attended a mosque in Goodge Street, central London, which is run by the Muslim World League, a Saudi-based organisation. The league promulgates a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, but has repeatedly condemned terrorism.

One of the radical preachers believed to have inspired Abdulmutallab is the American-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is based in Yemen and is believed to have inspired several terrorist cells in Britain and the United States.

The Sunday Times has established that Abdulmutallab first encountered Awlaki while he was studying Arabic in Yemen in 2005.
US intelligence officials are now investigating the scale and nature of contacts between the two men.

Britain and the US are to jointly fund a counter-terrorism police unit in Yemen along with more support for the Yemeni coastguard. Downing Street said Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama had agreed the move as part of the response to the failed Detroit plot. The two countries will also be pushing for more UN intervention to tackle the emerging terrorist threat in Somalia.

Mr Brown will hold talks with ministerial colleagues and intelligence advisors this week, and the initial findings of a review of security at UK airports — ordered in the wake of the Detroit incident — will be delivered “in days”, according to Downing Street
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6973954.ece

US ‘stopped Dutch installation of full body scanners’

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The United States prevented Dutch authorities from installing full body scanners before the suspected Christmas Day bomb plotter passed through security at Amsterdam’s airport, the Dutch government claimed today.

The Dutch claimed that they had been trying to install the machines for flights to the US since 2008 but had been blocked by US officials who wanted passengers to all destinations screened.

In light of the failed attack all passengers travelling from Holland to the US will now have to go through full body scanners the Dutch Interior Minister announced following discussions with the Americans.

Guusje ter Horst said the millimetre wave scanners that can see beneath passengers’ clothes will be in use at Schiphol airport within three weeks and remain a permanent fixture for all flights to the US.

Asked whether the new scanners could have prevented the suspected plotter, Umar Farouk Almutallab, from getting on the flight, Ms ter Horst said: “From the moment that you put in millimetre wave scanners then you would have been able to detect that he [Mr Almutallab] was carrying something on his body.

“We didn’t have this at the time and we know that metal detectors can’t detect explosive materials.

“The US didn’t want these put in exclusively for American flights but as a general rule across the airport. But we have discussed with the US so that all passengers will go through these body scanners before they board.”

A spokesman for the Dutch counter-terrorism department told The Times that discussions with the US about installing body scanners date back to last year.

The two countries were at a deadlock over their installation because the US didn’t want them exclusively for American bound flights.

But since the Christmas Day incident the “whole spectrum has changed” and US authorities have now agreed for the millimetre wave scanners to be introduced only for American flights, he said.

In the most recent foiled attack, Mr Almutallab passed through metal detectors while in transit at Schiphol from Nigeria to Detroit, the Dutch government said, but these did not pick up the 80g of professional explosive material he is suspected of having sewn into his underpants.

The Nigerian was travelling on an Italian passport and investigators are looking into why he was not on the list of potential threats.

“This suspect was on a list but this did not come to any light,” Ms ter Horst said, “We did not know that he was part of this list which was a US suspect list.”

She called for a single, global list of suspects to prevent terrorists falling through the gaps.

They are also investigating who he made contact with during the hours he waited for his flight to Detroit.

The explosive device was “prepared in a professional way, the way it was activated was amateurish” and the materials used had been used in previous attacks, the Dutch minister said.

It was only this and the actions of crew and passengers that prevented a “much bigger tragedy” of a successful explosion blasting through the aircraft’s fuselage, she added.

“We managed to (avoid) an international attack of an individual who tried to damage the lives of many innocent people, but we should not be frightened to travel because of this and we should not give in to the terrorists and stop travelling.”

It also emerged today that an unnamed Somalian man with the equipment to create an on-board explosion was prevented from getting on a plane heading for Dubai last month.

The man, who is in custody in Mogadishu but has not been named, was caught with powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe that together could have caused an explosion.

The hallmarks bear similarities to the terrorist plot to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner.

Abdulahi Hassan Barise, a police spokesman, said the suspect was arrested before the Daallo Airlines flight departed on November 13. It was scheduled to travel from Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and Dubai.

Two international officials in Nairobi said Wednesday the incident is similar to the Detroit attack in that the Somali man had a syringe, a bag of powdered chemicals and liquid.

US officials are aware of the incident and hastening to investigate any possible links with the Detroit attack.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article6971582.ece

Also see:
“Sharp Dressed Man” Helped Umar Mutallab on Plane Without Passport

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?id=11873

Flight 253 passenger Kurt Haskell: ‘I was visited by the FBI’

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Following up on a visit from FBI officials about an eyewitness account first described to MLive.com, Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell described the visit in comment sections across MLive on Wednesday.

Haskell and his wife, Lori, were aboard Flight 253 when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to destroy the plane. They say another man tried to help Abdulmutallab board the plane in Amsterdam.

Haskell had two detailed posts in two different stories. Here is Part One, originally posted here:

“Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans. Let me explain.

Ever since I got off of Flight 253 I have been repeating what I saw in US Customs.

Specifically, 1 hour after we left the plane, bomb sniffing dogs arrived. Up to this point, all of the passengers on Flight 253 stood in a small area in an evacuated luggage claim area of an airport terminal. During this time period, all of the passengers had their carry on bags with them. When the bomb sniffing dogs arrived, 1 dog found something in a carry on bag of a 30 ish Indian man. This is not the so called “Sharp Dressed” man. I will refer to this man as “The man in orange”. The man in orange, who stood some 20ft away from me the entire time until he was taken away, was immediately taken away to be searched and interrogated in a nearby room. At this time he was not handcuffed. When he emerged from the room, he was then handcuffed and taken away. At this time an FBI agent came up to the rest of the passengers and said the following (approximate quote) “You all are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. I am sure many of you saw what just happened (Referring to the man in orange) and are smart enough to read between the lines and figure it out.” We were then marched out of the baggage claim area and into a long hallway. This entire time period and until we left customs, no person that wasn’t a law enforcement personnel or a passenger on our flight was allowed anywhere on our floor of the terminal (or possibly the entire terminal) The FBI was so concerned during this time, that we were not allowed to use the bathroom unless we went alone with an FBI agent, we were not allowed to eat or drink, or text or call anyone. I have been repeating this same story over the last 5 days. The FBI has, since we landed, insisted that only one man was arrested for the airliner attack (contradicting my account). However, several of my fellow passengers have come over the past few days, backed up my claim, and put pressure on FBI/Customs to tell the truth. Early today, I heard from two different reporters that a federal agency (FBI or Customs) was now admitting that another man has been held (and will be held indefinitely) since our flight landed for “immigration reasons.” Notice that this man was “being held” and not “arrested”, which was a cute semantic ploy by the FBI to stretch the truth and not lie.

Just a question, could that mean that the man in orange had no passport?

However, a few hours later, Customs changed its story again. This time, Mr. Ron Smith of Customs, says the man that was detained “had been taken into custody, but today tells the news the person was a passenger on a different flight.” Mr. Ron Smith, you are playing the American public for a fool. Lets take a look at how plausible this story is (After you’ve already changed it twice). For the story to be true, you have to believe, that:

1. FBI/Customs let passengers from another flight co-mingle with the passengers of flight 253 while the most important investigation in 8 years was pending. I have already stated that not one person who wasn’t a passenger or law enforcement personnal was in our area the entire time we were detained by Customs.

2. FBI/Customs while detaining the flight 253 passengers in perhaps the most important investigation since the last terrorist attack, and despite not letting any flight 253 passenger drink, eat, make a call, or use the bathroom, let those of other flights trample through the area and possibly contaminate evidence.

3. You have to believe the above (1 and 2) despite the fact that no flights during this time allowed passengers to exit off of the planes at all and were detained on the runway during at least the first hour of our detention period.

4. You have to believe that the man that stood 20 feet from me since we entered customs came from a mysterious plane that never landed, let its passengers off the plane and let this man sneak into our passenger group despite having extremely tight security at this time (i.e. no drinking even).

5. FBI/Customs was hauling mysterious passengers from other flights through the area we were being held to possibly comtaminate evidence and allow discussions with suspects on Flight 253 or to possibly allow the exchange of bombs, weapons or other devices between the mysterious passengers from other flights and those on flight 253.

Seriously Mr. Ron Smith, how stupid do you think the American public is?

Mr. Ron Smith’s third version of the story is an absolute inplausible joke. I encourage you, Mr. Ron Smith, to debate me anytime, anywhere, and anyplace in public to let the American people see who is credible and who is not.

I ask, isn’t this the more plausible story:

1. Customs/FBI realized that they screwed up and don’t want to admit that they left flight 253 passengers on a flight with a live bomb on the runway for 20 minutes.

2. Customs/FBI realized that they screwed up and don’t want to admit that they left flight 253 passengers in customs for 1 hour with a live bomb in a carry on bag.

3. Customs/FBI realize that the man in orange points to a greater involvement then the lone wolf theory that they have been promoting.

Mr. Ron Smith I encourage you to come out of your cubicle and come up with a more plausible version number 4 of your story.”

Haskell continued his comment in a different post on MLive.

“For the last five days I have been reporting my story of the so called “sharp dressed man.” For those of you who haven’t read my account, it involves a sharp dressed “Indian man” attempting to talk a ticket agent into letting a supposed “Sudanese refugee” (The terrorist) onto flight 253 without a passport. I have never had any idea how it played out except to note that the so called “Sudanese refugee” later boarded my flight and attempted to blow it up and kill me. At no time did my story involve, or even find important whether the terrorist actually had a passport. The importance of my story was and always will be, the attempt with an accomplice (apparently succesful) of a terrorist with all sorts of prior terrorist warning signs to skirt the normal passport boarding procedures in Amsterdam. By the way, Amsterdam security did come out the other day and admit that the terrorist did not have to “Go through normal passport checking procedures”.

Amsterdam security, please define to the American public “Normal passport boarding procedures”.

You see the FBI would have the American public believe that what was important was whether the terrorist in fact had a passport.

Seriously think about this people. You have a suicide bomber who had recently been to Yemen to but a bomb, whose father had reported him as a terrorist, who supposedly was on some kind of U.S. terror watchlist, and most likely knew the U.S. was aware of these red flags. Yet, he didn’t go through “Normal passport checking procedures.” What does that mean? Maybe that he flashed a passport to some sort of sympathetic security manager in a backroom to avoid a closer look at the terrorist’s “red flags”? What is important is that the terrorist avoided using normal passport checking procedures (apparently successfully) in order to avoid a closer look into his red flags. Who cares if he had a passport. The important thing is that he didn’t want to show it and somehow avoided a closer inspection and “normal passport checking procedures.” Each passport comes with a bar code on it that can be scanned to provide a wealth of information about the individual. I would bet that the passport checking procedures for the terrorist did not include a bar code scan of his passport (which could have revealed damning information about the terrorist).

Please note that there is a very easy way to verify the veracity of my prior “sharp dressed man” account. Dutch police have admitted that they have reviewed the video of the “sharp dressed man” that I referenced. Note that it has not been released anywhere, You see, if my eye witness account is false, it could easily be proven by releasing the video. However, the proof of my eyewitness account would also be verified if I am telling the truth and I am. There is a reason we have only heard of the video and not seen it. dutch authorities, “RELEASE THE VIDEO!” This is the most important video in 8 years and may be all of two minutes long. Show the entire video and “DO NOT EDIT IT”! The American public deserves its own chance to attempt to identify the “sharp dressed man”. I have no doubt that if the video indicated that my account was wrong, that the video would have already swept over the entire world wide web.

Instead of the video, we get a statement that the video has been viewed and that the terrorist had a passport. Each of these statements made by the FBI is a self serving play on semantics and each misses the importance of my prior “sharp dressed man” account. The importance being that the man “Tried to board the plane with an accomplice and without a passort”. The other significance is that only the airport security video can verify my eyewitness account and that it is not being released.

Who has the agenda here and who doesn’t? Think about that for a minute.”
Source: http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/flight_253_passenger_kurt_hask.html

Flight 253 passengers believe others involved in plot

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

A Taylor attorney who was aboard a terrorist-targeted Christmas Day flight to Detroit says he was not surprised to hear al-Qaida claim responsibility for the attempted bombing Monday because he does not believe the man now in federal custody acted alone.

Kurt Haskell said he and his wife, Lori, were playing cards near the boarding gate in Amsterdam when he saw a well-dressed man who appeared to be of Indian descent come to the assistance of the man he later learned was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The 23-year-old Nigerian was having trouble boarding the plane he is accused of trying to blow up because he had no passport, Haskell said.

“I think what I saw was his handler … getting him on the plane,” said Haskell, who was returning from a safari in Uganda.

The Indian man, who looked about 50 years old, told ticket agents Abdulmutallab did not have a passport but needed to get on the plane, the Haskells said.

The ticket agent told the man nobody was allowed to board without a passport, to which the well-dressed man replied: “We do this all the time; he’s from Sudan,” Lori Haskell said, adding she and her husband believe the man was trying to pass Abdulmutallab off as a Sudanese refugee.

The two were then directed down a corridor to talk to a manager, she said.

“This meant nothing to me until this man tried to blow up the plane,” Kurt Haskell said.

Abdulmutallab is charged with attempting to destroy an aircraft and placing a destructive device aboard an aircraft. He allegedly had chemical explosives concealed under his clothing. His attempt to detonate them as the plane approached Detroit created a fire, but he was restrained by passengers and flight crew who put out the blaze, federal authorities say.

The FBI and federal prosecutors would not comment Monday on the Haskells’ story, but foreign media reports said military police in the Netherlands were examining security video to check the account of an airport accomplice. Some foreign media reports quoted the military police as saying Abdulmutallab boarded the flight without going through passport control.

U.S. officials have said Abdulmutallab had a multi-entry visa to the United States. They have not specifically said whether he had a passport, but visas are typically, though not always, stamped into passports.

Travel path questionable

Edward Hasbrouck, author of the travel book series “The Practical Nomad” and an expert on international travel, said something about the story does not add up.

If Abdulmutallab did not have the proper travel documents, it is not clear how he got from Lagos, Nigeria, to the Netherlands, because someone from KLM, as well as government officials, would have checked his documents, Hasbrouck said.

In-transit passengers in Amsterdam are subjected to searches of their carry-on bags and pat-downs and sometimes, but not always document checks, he said. If Abdulmutallab’s travel documents became an issue in Amsterdam, airline officials would have a strong incentive not to let him board because they would be charged with the costs of detainment and deportation, plus administrative fines, if he was refused entry to the United States, he said.

Still, refugees who lack proper documentation are sometimes permitted to enter the United States without a passport, Hasbrouck said.

“Maybe he had some evidence that he had a visa to the U.S., but not the actual visa or not the passport,” he said.

Claim: Other man detained

Kurt Haskell said he does not believe the well-dressed man ever boarded the flight because he looked for him when the FBI gathered all the passengers for questioning at Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

“I think that it was all completely planned,” Lori Haskell said.

“I totally don’t think it was one guy.”

She said that as the plane approached Detroit, she heard a popping sound she first thought was ice on the landing gear. Then a flight attendant walked by and said, almost to herself: “Does anyone hear that buzzing sound? I think I smell smoke.”

Commotion then followed as smoke began to fill the cabin, flames shot up the wall of the plane, and passengers jumped on Abdulmutallab and, along with cabin crew, put out the fire, Haskell said.

Kurt Haskell said he saw a third man, who also appeared to be of Indian descent and looked about 30 years old, get taken away for FBI questioning and later led away in handcuffs after dogs detected something in his luggage after the flight landed.

He said one FBI agent later told passengers authorities had “those responsible” in custody.

The FBI in Detroit said only one man was arrested, and prosecutors in Detroit have refused to say whether there are other suspects in the case.
Source: http://detnews.com/article/20091229/METRO01/912290365

Staff Writers Nathan Hurst and Deb Price contributed.

Also see:
“Sharp Dressed Man” Helped Umar Mutallab on Plane Without Passport

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?id=11873

More Than A Coincidence?

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

ICTS provides security at Amsterdam airport where a Nigerian with a bomb allegedly taped to his leg and links to al Qaeda boarded a plane to Detroit. The Israeli-owned ICTS also provided security at all the airports from whence the 911 hijackers departed