A senior Obama administration official, speaking on background Friday to a group of reporters, characterized the Fort Hood shooting as “an act of terrorism,” the first time an administration official has used that term in describing the massacre.
“To me, what he did certainly was using terror at its worst,” the official said, defining terrorism as the use of violence to promote political beliefs. The official spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity in order to provide insight into the administration’s discussions.
The acknowledgement was stunning given the criticism from conservatives over the administration’s reluctance to call the incident an act of terror.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates declined to characterize the Nov. 5 incident, which killed 13 people and wounded 43 others, as terrorism when pressed at a Pentagon briefing earlier Friday, saying he did not want to disrupt an ongoing legal case. When asked similar questions about terrorism shortly after the attack in November, Gates said, “I’m not going to go there,” and said he needed more facts.
Two reports on the shooting are now in the hands of the Obama administration. A Pentagon report which was released publicly Friday morning described the Army’s failure to flag inappropriate behavior from the suspected shooter, Maj. Nadal Hasan. The report said the Army has not done enough to stop “self-radicalization” within its ranks.
A Pentagon review released Friday portrayed a systemic breakdown within the military that permitted an Army psychiatrist, now charged with killing 13 people, to advance through the ranks despite concerns from his superiors about his behavior.
The review, the first into the Nov. 5 shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Tex., concluded that the Department of Defense was poorly prepared to defend itself from internal threats well beyond the single case of the military doctor accused of the killings, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
The review’s findings, although they were focused only on the military and not on other agencies, are the latest signal that the government has not achieved the smooth communications and agility among intelligence agencies that has been sought since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Guess What Napolitano & Brennan Said They Were ‘Shocked’ by?
Napolitano was most “shocked” by Al Qaeda’s “determination” and its tactic of using an “individual” in a terror attack as opposed to using multiple hijackers like they did on 9/11. Al Qaeda is determined? Shocking. Al Qaeda uses single suicide bombers? Wow, they’ve never tried that before. Brennan was most “shocked” that Al Qaeda in Yemen was able to launch attacks on the homeland. Funny, because both the Arkansas and Ft. Hood attacks had Yemen connections.
Shortly after alleged gunman Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood and killed 13 people, the Pentagon’s top intelligence officer reportedly sent a classified report to the White House detailing a prior failure to connect the dots.
According to CBS News, the 18 e-mails Hasan exchanged with radical Muslim imam Anwar al-Awlaki leading up to the rampage that were being monitored by a wiretap were never seen by the terrorism task force that was determining whether the Army major posed a threat.
After the task force had concluded Hasan didn’t pose a threat, it didn’t request later information on his exchanges with Awlaki.
Because Hasan was a member of the military, the FBI showed the e-mails to a Pentagon investigator with the note “comm” written on it. The word reportedly was seen as meaning “communication” to the Pentagon official, but to the FBI it meant “commissioned officer.”
Thus, no alert was raised in regard to Hasan’s communications with Awlaki.
The incident at Fort Hood mirrors U.S intelligence agencies’ failure to pull together fragments of data needed to foil the failed Christmas Day bomb plot on the Detroit-bound airliner.
Officials had received fragments of information as early as October about an alleged terror recruit they later learned was Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
President Obama on Thursday called for intel agencies to do a better job of recognizing serious terror threats that coincided with the release of a declassified summary of a two-week review of the incident.
CNN Reporter To Brennan: Isn’t Your Counterterrorism Plan A Bit Basic?
Dan Pfeiffer, White House Communications Director, took to the official White House blog Wednesday to post a response to critics of Barack Obama and his handling of counterterrorism. Pfeiffer believes that the intelligence failure that led to the failed bombing on Christmas day — nearly a year into Obama’s presidency — can be blamed on a war launched almost seven years ago in Iraq. The banality of his claim is surpassed only by its absurdity.
What’s more interesting is Pfeiffer’s claim that his boss has finally refocused U.S. counterterrorism on its proper targets in places like Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen.
Pfeiffer mentions Yemen twice. That’s not a surprise considering the rise to prominence of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and radical cleric Anwar al Awlaki, both based in Yemen. Awlaki, a senior al Qaeda cleric and recruiter, has offered guidance (at least) to Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, and Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the failed Flight 253 bomber. And Abdulmutallab reportedly had extensive training and support from AQAP. As a result, Yemen — a nation unfamiliar to most Americans — has been on our front pages and leading our broadcasts in the past few weeks. So Pfeiffer wants everyone to know that Obama, in his “war against al Qaeda,” has been busy building “partnerships” to target terrorist safe-havens in, among other places, Yemen.
To coin a phrase: What a difference a year makes.
On January 22, 2009, Obama signed an executive order requiring the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay within twelve months. To near universal praise, Obama claimed his action would allow America once again to occupy the “moral high ground” and to “restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism.”
On the same day that Obama made his announcement, the State Department website www.America.gov published an interview with US Ambassador to Yemen Stephen Seche. No other country would be as important to closing Guantanamo Bay as Yemen. Some 100 of the 248 detainees there at the end of the Bush administration were Yemenis. And, with only a few exceptions, those that remained at the facility remained there for a reason. They were seasoned jihadists and they were extremely dangerous.
That fact made Seche’s comments notable. He said that it was the goal of the new administration to repatriate a “majority” of the Yemenis at Gitmo. And not just send them to their native country to be detained, but so that they could “make a future for themselves here.”
“Certainly we would like to be able to bring them back to Yemen and have them integrate themselves back into their own society with their families,” said Seche. Although he acknowledged some “inherent risks” in returning the detainees to the general population, Seche suggested that only a few of the detainees present real problems. “Except in the case perhaps of some very hardcore elements, we believe that the majority of these detainees can be put productively into a reintegration program with the goal over time of enabling them to find a way back into Yemeni society without posing a security risk.”
The statement was shocking. More than a dozen of the Yemenis held at Guantanamo Bay at the time were alleged by the US government to have been personal bodyguards for Osama bin Laden. Many of the other Yemenis at Gitmo had been trained at al Qaeda training camps (74 percent) or stayed at al Qaeda guesthouses (74 percent). Others had been captured fighting Americans or alongside senior al Qaeda figures — 15 of them captured in raids that netted top al Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh. Still others had admitted their terrorist involvement without coercion and in open hearings — sometimes accompanying their confessions with threats to one day kill again.
Forget about no-fly lists, full-body scanners and air marshals. All the loud recriminations about who should have done what to stop the UndyBomber from boarding a plane to Detroit on Christmas Day miss a more fundamental point: Young, single, rootless foreign Muslim Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab should never, ever have received a temporary visa into our country in the first place. No visa, no plane ticket. No ticket, no passage to airline jihad.
Even absent the intelligence we had on this al-Qaida-trained operative before his fateful trip, Hillary Clinton’s State Department was required to know better than to issue a coveted entrance pass to a globe-trotting, Nigerian-born nomad. Under federal law (section 214(b) of the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act to be precise), State Department consular officials must determine that foreigners applying for temporary visas (students, tourists and business people) will in fact return to their home countries as required and will not abuse their visa privileges.
This means making sure that the temporary visa applicant has strong ties to his native land. It’s supposed to be a tough burden to overcome. Yet, Abdulmutallab showed no such propensities at the time he applied for his temporary visa at the U.S. Embassy in London in June 2008. He was a 20-something student who had flitted from Nigeria to Yemen to Togo to England without a family or job. He was, in other words, a textbook itinerant waving more red flags than a bullfighter.
Question: How much due diligence did the State Department consular official on the front line who interviewed Abdulmutallab actually show? Reports say it took just four days for his visa to be approved. Barely two months later, Abdulmutallab turned up in Houston for a two-week seminar at Al Maghrib Institute, a Muslim Brotherhood-tied Islamic education center that has been dubbed “Jihad U” by veteran terrorism analysts.
Now, I’m presuming that a consular official did in fact interview Abdulmutallab before rubber-stamping his visa. Before the September 11 attacks, countless visa applicants — including 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers — skipped personal appearance requirements and bypassed the interview process as a convenience provided by Foggy Bottom panderers. This was supposed to change.
I asked the State Department Thursday for more information about the presumed consular office interview and hasty approval of Abdulmutallab’s visa. Spokeswoman Megan Mattson invoked confidentiality rules protecting his visa form. But there is an overriding public interest in what his application might reveal about our atrociously lax consulate practices. The General Accounting Office obtained and released the 9/11 hijackers’ temporary visa forms, which showed that basic information about where they were headed (two hijackers wrote “Wasantwn”) and what business they claimed to be doing (one wrote “teater” as his occupation) was suspiciously shoddy.
The White House said today there had been no “smoking gun” which should have alerted US intelligence agencies to the threat posed by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be suicide bomber who tried to bring down a jet over Detroit on Christmas Day.
The claim by John Brennan, Barack Obama’s top adviser on counterterrorism, came as the administration went into damage limitation mode in an attempt to deflect on-going Republican criticism over its record on combating al-Qaida.
Brennan said there had been “no single piece of intelligence — no smoking gun if you will — that said Mr Abdulmutallab was going to carry out this attack”.
Instead, there had been “little snippets” of information gathered from intelligence sources.
The challenge was to ensure all those “millions upon millions of bits of data that come into us” were shared to strengthen the security system, said Brennan, and ensure other potential bombers would not be allowed to board planes destined for the US.
Brennan acknowledged there had been “some human errors, some lapses”, in the Abdulmutallab case but on a day-to-day basis, the system was working. Brennan also criticised Dick Cheney, the former vice-president under George Bush, who has accused Obama of pretending that America is not at war.
(NOTE: fark.com: Feds claim they couldn’t have known that a Nigerian on the watch list with no passport and no luggage who bought his one-way ticket with cash and whose father warned us, was a terrorist)…
The Obama administration has transferred dozens of names from a broad terrorism database to watch lists that are more closely monitored in an effort to plug security holes revealed by the Christmas Day airline-bombing attempt.
President Barack Obama met Monday with White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan, National Security Adviser James Jones and Deputy National Security Adviser Tom Donilon ahead of a broader security team meeting Tuesday.
At that meeting, White House officials said, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller is expected to detail the investigation into how Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was able to allegedly smuggle explosives onto a Northwest Airlines flight, despite warnings about him and numerous signs a terrorism plot was in the works.
Attorney General Eric Holder will detail plans to prosecute Mr. Abdulmutallab in federal court, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will discuss detection capabilities that are being reviewed and bolstered. Mr. Brennan will lay out initial findings of a security review, and more than a half-dozen agency heads, from the Department of Energy to the Central Intelligence Agency, will present their internal reviews as well as changes they are implementing in the wake of the Christmas Day plot.
Mr. Obama has attributed the plot to the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen, which also has claimed credit for sending Mr. Abdulmutallab on his alleged mission.
White House spokesman Bill Burton said counterterrorism officials have examined “thousands upon thousands” of names from the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, to which Mr. Abdulmutallab was added in November. Dozens of names were shifted to the Transportation Security Administration’s no-fly list, or to the Secondary Security Screening Selection list, also known as the selectee list.
The Christmas Day bombing attempt and recriminations that followed have set in motion policy responses with global reverberations. Security forces in Yemen, following consultations with U.S. officials, killed two alleged al Qaeda militants Monday in a village outside the capital of San’a, where the U.S. and British embassies remained closed due to terrorism threats. France, Germany and Japan shuttered their embassies in San’a on Monday, citing similar threats.
At least a dozen former Guantánamo Bay inmates have rejoined al-Qaeda to fight in Yemen, The Times has learnt, amid growing concern over the ability of the country’s Government to accept almost 100 more former inmates from the detention centre.
The Obama Administration promised to close the Guantánamo facility by January 22, a deadline that it will be unable to meet. The 91 Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo make up the largest national contingent among the 198 being held.
Six prisoners were returned to Yemen last month. After the Christmas Day bomb plot in Detroit, US officials are increasingly concerned that the country is becoming a hot-bed of terrorism. Eleven of the former inmates known to have rejoined al-Qaeda in Yemen were born in Saudi Arabia. The organisation merged its Saudi and Yemeni offshoots last year.
The country’s mountainous terrain, poverty and lawless tribal society make it, in the opinion of many analysts, a close match for Afghanistan as a new terrorist haven.
Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, voiced concern about the growing strength of al-Qaeda in Yemen. “Obviously, we see global implications from the war in Yemen and the ongoing efforts by al-Qaeda in Yemen to use it as a base for terrorist attacks far beyond the region,” she said.
A Yemeni, Hani Abdo Shaalan, who was released from Guantánamo in 2007, was killed in an airstrike on December 17, the Yemeni Government reported last week. The deputy head of al-Qaeda in the country is Said Ali al-Shihri, 36, who was released in 2007. Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, who was released in 2006, is a prominent ideologue featured on Yemeni al-Qaeda websites.
Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for the Pentagon, said: “This is a large question that goes beyond the issue of transferring detainees. The bulk of the remaining detainees are from Yemen and that has been the case for a long time. We are trying to work with the Yemeni Government on this.”
The Obama administration, facing a growing terrorist threat out of Yemen, is turning to a counterterror tool that for the past four years has allowed the United States to battle extremism in dozens of countries outside the official war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan: cold, hard cash.
The Pentagon since 2006 has budgeted more than $1 billion to train and equip foreign militaries and security forces through a program known in Congress as “Section 1206.” Pakistan has absorbed more of that money than any other country, but other nations — most notably Yemen — are rising in prominence on the list of recipients.
Gen. David Petraeus, head of Central Command, announced on a surprise visit to Yemen over the weekend that the United States will more than double its counterterrorism funding — $67 million in fiscal 2009 — to the country.
Yemen received renewed attention after a terror attack on the U.S. Embassy there in 2008. The attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas has brought the country into focus once again as a staging ground for extremists. Aided by U.S. funds, the Yemeni government has stepped up attacks on terror targets inside its borders.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Monday that he couldn’t pinpoint exactly how high the funding would be for any country in the year ahead, but he said the Pentagon is working on a proposal with the State Department.
“We are working along with the Department of State to draft [Section] 1206 proposals that would help build Yemen’s counterterrorism capacity, as we are with many of our regional partners,” Whitman said.
In the wake of the “underwear bomber,” why is it still politically incorrect to talk about profiling? The TSA makes all of us remove our shoes and surrender our shaving cream. Shouldn’t they also keep a profile of what potential terrorists do and aggressively screen people accordingly? Not just obvious things like screening people whose parents have reported them as possible terrorists (DUH.), but also people buying tickets with cash, buying one-way tickets, traveling with little/no luggage (oh, wait, the underwear terrorist did ALL of those things).
I like what David Harsanyi writes:
It is an unavoidable fact that these “bad people” tend to come from certain places and subscribe to a certain religious affiliation. Focus on them.
From the evidence, it is clear that it is impossible to cover every base, but the wasted billions shaking down the average passenger offers little more than psychological comfort.
Yemeni forces clashed with Al Qaeda fighters Monday, leaving two militants believed to be behind threats to the U.S. dead, a security official told Reuters.
One militant was wounded and the fighting was still going on, the official said.
“These elements are believed to be behind the threats directed to the U.S. embassy,” Reuters quoted the official as saying.
The Yemeni government ordered an “unprecedented” number of troops into a region controlled by a branch of Al Qaeda, as the U.S. and Britain, concerned about the threat of terrorism, both kept their embassies closed Monday in the capital of Sana.
The Obama administration increased the pressure on Islamic militants in Yemen Sunday after the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for plotting the failed attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. The White House’s top counterterrorism official didn’t rule out U.S. military action.
American authorities announced that as of Monday, anyone traveling from or through nations regarded as state sponsors of terrorism — as well as “other countries of interest” — will be required to go through enhanced screening techniques before boarding flights.
The Transportation Security Administration said those heightened security measures would include full-body pat-downs, carryon bag searches, full-body scanning and explosive detection technology.
The U.S. State Department lists Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism. The other countries whose passengers will face enhanced screening include Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.
On the first day of what was supposed to be tighter screening ordered by the U.S. for airline passengers from certain countries, some airports around the world conceded Monday they had not cracked down.
The United States demanded more careful screening for people who are citizens of, or are flying from, 14 nations deemed security risks. But enforcement of the U.S. rules appeared spotty.
“Everything is the same. There is no extra security,” said an aviation official in Lebanon, one of the countries on the list. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The Obama administration ordered the changes after what authorities say was a failed attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up a jetliner bound from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day.
The U.S. Transportation Security Administration said the enhanced screening techniques would include full-body pat-downs, searches of carry-on bags, full-body scanning and explosive-detection technology.
On Monday, passengers arriving on international flights reported they had been patted down individually, or had their luggage inspected by hand – steps that have been in place on many international flights since the failed bombing.
Instead of grilling Abdulmutallab as an unlawful combatant member of al-Qaeda, the US now has to offer plea deals in the criminal justice system to get him to talk. Is this “smart power,” or is it a foolish obstinacy that prevents the proper approach to national security? After all, no one doubts that Abdulmutallab joined AQ, a foreign enemy of the United States. If the US thought otherwise, there wouldn’t be any reason to offer a deal at all. Instead of having military and intelligence counterterrorism experts do the interrogation, we’re reduced to playing Law and Order with a foreign terrorist who just missed killing hundreds of people.
This approach will hardly strike fear into the hearts of would-be terrorists.
The video has some interesting moments, including Brennan’s insistence that we have to close Gitmo because AQ uses it for propaganda purposes. Contrast that with Eric Holder’s earlier statement that he wouldn’t let terrorists dictate whether we try them in the military or civil system. Isn’t caving to AQ’s propaganda merely to exchange a explicitly-designed terrorist detention center for a makeshift one in Illinois the same thing?
Some Democrats are joining Republican lawmakers in opposing the transfer of suspected terrorists from the Guantanamo Bay prison to Yemen, citing Al Qaeda’s increased activity in the poor Arab nation.
President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, told Fox News that the transfers will continue if the administration deems them warranted.
“The Guantanamo facility must be closed,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It has served as a propaganda tool for Al Qaeda. We’re determined to close it. We’re not going to, though, do anything that is going to put American security at risk.”
But some Democrats, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein of California, have urged a halt — echoing Republicans who oppose plans to close Guantanamo.
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., a member of the Homeland Security Committee, said Sunday that officials should review the transfers. She does support plans to close the prison and open one in Illinois for terrorism suspects.
…
Sen. Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent who has opposed closing Guantanamo, said transferring any of the Yemeni detainees back home would be irresponsible.
“We know from past experience that some of them will be back in the fight against us,” Lieberman told ABC’s “This Week.”
Janet Napolitano — former Arizona governor, now overmatched secretary of homeland security — will forever be remembered for having said of the attempt to bring down an airliner over Detroit: “The system worked.” The attacker’s concerned father had warned U.S. authorities about his son’s jihadist tendencies. The would-be bomber paid cash and checked no luggage on a transoceanic flight. He was nonetheless allowed to fly, and would have killed 288 people in the air alone, save for a faulty detonator and quick actions by a few passengers.
Heck of a job, Brownie.
The reason the country is uneasy about the Obama administration’s response to this attack is a distinct sense of not just incompetence but incomprehension. From the very beginning, President Obama has relentlessly tried to downplay and deny the nature of the terrorist threat we continue to face. Napolitano renames terrorism “man-caused disasters.” Obama goes abroad and pledges to cleanse America of its post-9/11 counterterrorist sins. Hence, Guantanamo will close, CIA interrogators will face a special prosecutor, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed will bask in a civilian trial in New York — a trifecta of political correctness and image management.
And just to make sure even the dimmest understand, Obama banishes the term “war on terror.” It’s over — that is, if it ever existed.
Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term “asymmetric warfare.”
And produces linguistic — and logical — oddities that littered Obama’s public pronouncements following the Christmas Day attack. In his first statement, Obama referred to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as “an isolated extremist.” This is the same president who, after the Ford Hood shooting, warned us “against jumping to conclusions” — code for daring to associate Nidal Hasan’s mass murder with his Islamist ideology. Yet, with Abdulmutallab, Obama jumped immediately to the conclusion, against all existing evidence, that the bomber acted alone.
More jarring still were Obama’s references to the terrorist as a “suspect” who “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device.” You can hear the echo of FDR: “Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — Japanese naval and air force suspects allegedly bombed Pearl Harbor.”
Some Democrats have joined in calling for Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down following the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines flight a week ago.
Though the CIA and an agency under the Director of National Intelligence have been under particular scrutiny in the preliminary review of possible missteps, Napolitano so far has taken the most heat from lawmakers. Not only does her department oversee the Transportation Security Administration, but her initial claim Sunday that “the system worked” was widely ridiculed and interpreted by critics as a sign that she’s in over her head.
Democrats are accusing Republicans of going too far in their criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the attempted Christmas Day terror attack, saying the GOP is blatantly exploiting the failed bombing of an airliner to gain the upper hand in the 2010 midterm elections.
Administration officials tell Obama the system to protect the skies from terrorists was deeply flawed and, even then, the government failed to follow its own directives.
The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Jan. 21 hearings as part of an investigation to begin sooner. “We will be following the intelligence down the rabbit hole to see where the breakdown occurred and how to prevent this failure in the future,” said Sen. Kit Bond, top Republican on the committee. “Somebody screwed up big time.”
Few questioned that judgment, even if Obama’s fellow Democrats rendered it in more measured tones. Vacationing in Hawaii, Obama received an preliminary assessment ahead of meetings he will hold in Washington next week on fixing the failures of America’s anti-terrorism policy. Administration officials said the system to protect the skies from terrorists was deeply flawed and, even then, the government failed to follow its own directives.
We found these reports from different sources. Seen together, these disparate reports paint a very different view of the recent failed terrorist attack on Flight 253. If any of this is true, the implications are frightening.
Congressman Ron Paul gives his thoughts on Yemen, the attempted airline bombing, the motivations of Al Qaeda, the radicalization of the Middle East, and the negation of our liberties to government provided “security.”
Detroit attorney Kurt Haskell appeared on the Alex Jones Show today and detailed his experience at the Amsterdam airport and on flight 253. Mr. Haskell provided information not covered by the corporate media.
…
Passengers were told to remain seated in the aircraft for 20 minutes after landing despite the fact security did not know at that point if there was an explosive on the plane or if the fire started by the suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab while on descent to the airport had spread under the floor in the cabin or to the fuel tanks in the wings.
After being allowed to disembark from the plane by officials, passengers were detained in customs with their carry-on luggage for six hours while they waited to be interrogated by the FBI, according to Haskell.
At this point a bomb-sniffing dog pointed at carry-on luggage in the possession of a man Haskell described as Indian around 30 years old. Officials led the man away to an interrogation room. Haskell said he was concerned because the bomb-sniffing dog had flagged the man, indicating he may have had explosives in his carry-on luggage. The Indian man was subsequently led away in handcuffs.
…
Haskell said the corporate media refuses to cover this aspect of his story. He has repeated it to “countless” news agencies and they uniformly have not included it to his knowledge.
Mr. Haskell questioned why officials have not released the Amsterdam airport security video that will undoubtedly reveal crucial information about the “sharp-dressed man” who escorted a disheveled Mutallab to the boarding area. Haskell described the suspected terrorist as appearing to be a “poor black teenager.”
The well-dressed Indian man did all the talking. He insisted Mutallab be boarded on the plane without a passport and when an airport employee refused to do so Mutallab and the Indian man went to talk with a supervisor. The Indian man tried to pass off Mutallab as a Sudanese refugee and have him boarded despite the fact doing so would be in violation of regulations concerning refugees. In general, documentation must be provided by an embassy in order for refugees to board international flights.
Mr. Haskell did not see Mutallab again until the botched terror bombing inside the plane on the approach to Detroit. He did not know how Mutallab finally boarded the aircraft.
The FBI was not pleased with Kurt Haskell when they conducted a follow-up interview earlier today in Michigan. They showed him close-up photographs of various people, including Mutallab. “They kind of tried to trick me,” Haskell explained. The agents tried to pass off two photos of Mutallab as different people. Kurt asked the agents if they were attempting to impeach his story and smear him.
The Indian man was not included in the photographs.
Haskell asked them why he was not shown a full body shot of the suspect. Haskell was eight rows back from the suspect. The FBI agents did not answer and were displeased with the question. He also asked the FBI agents if it would be more appropriate to bring the surveillance video from the Amsterdam airport instead of still photos. “I don’t think they liked that comment from me,” Haskell added. The FBI said they did not have the videotape. They also made a point to tell Haskell they were asking the questions and not him.
The agents showed Haskell a photograph of the man flagged by the bomb-sniffing dog and taken into custody in customs. “Isn’t this the man who had the bomb in his carry-on bag that you arrested in customs who you refuse to admit exists?” Haskell asked the agents. “They really didn’t like that comment from me and had no comment back to me but I said it sure looks like the man you refuse to admit exists.”
Kurt Haskell was circumspect and careful not to speculate during the interview with Alex Jones. He indicated he is only interested in the facts and does not want to endanger his version of events by speculating on motives.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and President Barack Obama seem intent on denying that foreign terrorism is a threat to the United States while taking half-measures that leave our borders undefended, says Michigan Republican Rep. Pete Hoekstra.
Newsmax.TV asked the ranking Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence whether Napolitano is the right person to be Homeland Security secretary, in light of her belated admission that her massive bureau failed to prevent a man whose name appeared in a terrorism database to board a U.S.-bound flight from Amsterdam.
“I think that she has done some things which really cause me great concern,” Hoekstra replied. “When I heard that statement that the security system worked, it was total disbelief. It’s not a success when you have a bomb on board a plane that almost detonates. That is failure.
“She made some other major blunders when she said we were not to use the word terrorist anymore — and use the term man-made disaster,” he told Newsmax.TV’s Kathleen Walter. “What in the world does that mean coming from one of our highest ranking government officials?
“And then earlier this year, she also released a report that seemed to imply that veterans, pro-life individuals, and people like that pose a great, if not a greater threat to our homeland security than radicals,” he concluded. “That’s not the kind of leadership that we need when we faced the kind of threat that we face today.”
The lawmaker also made it clear that he did not feel the president’s response to the latest attack is strong enough – reviewing watch lists and screening procedures.
“It does not satisfy me,” he said. “We need the president to take a strong stand, identify this as a threat, and indicate that we are going to do everything that we can to defeat this threat.
“The president has made some very, very serious blunders as far as I am concerned. The decision to move KSM’s [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] trial to New York City, the decision to close Gitmo, where he may end up sending 80 to 90 detainees from Gitmo to Yemen, is just a very, very bad decision.
On Christmas Day, an Islamist fanatic tried to blow up an airplane whose passengers were mostly Christians. And we helped.
Our government gets no thanks for preventing a tragedy. Only the bomber’s ineptitude preserved the lives of nearly 300 innocents.
How did we help Umar Abdulmutallab, a wealthy Muslim university graduate who decided that Allah wanted him to slaughter Christians on their most joyous holiday?
By continuing to lie to ourselves. Although willing — at last — to briefly use the word “terror,” yesterday President Obama still refused to make a connection between the action, the date and Islam.
Was it just a ticketing accident that led to a bombing attempt on Christmas? Was it all about blackout dates and frequent-flyer miles?
It wasn’t. You know it. And I know it. But our government refuses to know it. Despite vast databases crammed with evidence, our leaders — of both parties — still refuse to connect Islamist terrorism with Islam.
Our insistence that “Islam’s a religion of peace” would have been cold comfort to the family members of those passengers had the bomb detonated as planned.
Abdulmutallab’s own father warned our diplomats that his son had been infected by Islamist extremism. Our diplomats did nothing. Why? Because (despite a series of embassy bombings) the State Department dreads linking terrorism to Islam.
President Obama yesterday pulled his head out of the sand long enough to promise a thorough review of US se curity practices after the near-suicide bombing of a commercial airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day.
Then he stuck it right back in.
Obama, in a brief address from Hawaii, did manage to utter the “T” word: “A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism.” But he refused to define the nature of the threat.
Nor did he fire Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — a pity, because if any government official ever earned the boot, it’s her.
Sunday, she claimed “the system” she allegedly oversees “worked” on Christmas Day — even though Nigerian jihadist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab brought a bomb aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and almost detonated it.
The claim was nonsensical, as she finally noted yesterday — “the system didn’t work” — but not before destroying the credibility she needs to hold the job.
Yet Obama is short on credibility, too. Why can’t he bring himself to describe the threat for what it is: an Islamist holy war against America?
The bomber’s own father warned US officials in October that his son had fallen in with Islamic radicals.
Abdulmutallab himself reportedly told federal officials he trained with al Qaeda in Yemen — and, for what it’s worth, al Qaeda in Yemen confirms that.
And ABC News reported yesterday that two of Abdulmutallab’s Yemeni trainers had been released from Guantanamo Bay to the Saudis in 2007 — and then set free after (no joke) “art therapy rehabilitation.”
Meanwhile, Brian Jenkins of the Rand Corporation reports 12 incidents of Islamist terror either in the United States or involving Americans abroad in 2009, the most in any year since 9/11. (These include the Fort Hood massacre.)
See the trend line?
Obama refuses to.
“Those who would attack our country” is how he described the jihadis — a formulation he used four times in his brief address.
But if the president refuses to define the enemy, how can he expect America to defend against that enemy?
Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of Defense documents.
American officials agreed to send the two terrorists to Saudi Arabia where they entered into an “art therapy rehabilitation program” and were set free, according to U.S. and Saudi officials.
Gee, who would have expected “art therapy” to fail on terrorists?
The Obama administration’s decision to try the Nigerian man suspected of attempting to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas as an ordinary civilian criminal rather than as an “unprivileged enemy belligerent” in a military commission, as the 9/11 hijackers initially were, highlights the inconsistent approach taken by both the current and previous administrations, civil libertarians and defense lawyers say.
The Justice Department appears to have immediately treated the case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian who claims he trained in Yemen with al-Qaeda, in the way it has long treated suspected terrorism: as a criminal act to be prosecuted in a civilian federal court.
Arrested on Friday, Abdulmutallab was charged the next day, while being treated for burns in a hospital room in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was charged with attempting to blow up Northwest Flight 253, which left from Amsterdam and was headed for Detroit.
Asked why the Department of Justice treated Abdulmutallab as a civilian rather than a suspected belligerent, DOJ spokesman Dean Boyd said: “At this time, we have no comment on the ongoing investigation or any prosecutorial deliberations — beyond the public charging documents that have been filed in the case.” The criminal complaint is here.
Defense lawyers who represent Guantanamo detainees who have not been treated as civilians applauded the Obama administration’s move, but noted the lack of a coherent rationale for continuing to treat other alleged terrorist plots as acts of war.
“There is something striking about fact that they treated the 9/11 attacks as an act of war but treat somebody who’s trying to blow up a plane as an ordinary criminal,” said David Remes, legal director of Appeal for Justice who represents almost a dozen Yemeni men still detained at Guantanamo Bay. “What is the basis of the distinction?”
Hundreds of al-Qaeda militants are planning terror attacks from Yemen, the country’s Foreign Minister said today.
Abu Bakr al-Qirbi appealed for more help from the international community to help to train and equip counter-terrorist forces.
His plea came after an al-Qaeda group based in Yemen claimed responsibility for the failed Christmas Day airliner bomb plot.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, alleged to be behind the attempt to blow up an American-bound aircraft, spent time in Yemen with al-Qaeda and was in the country only days before the failed attack.
The underwear worn by terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on a Christmas flight from the Netherlands to Detroit contained the charred remains of the explosives he allegedly packed inside them in hopes of blowing up the airliner, authorities said.
Photographs of the briefs were revealed Monday night.
The bomb, seen for the first time, is reported to have contained a six-inch pack of highly-explosive powder called PETN, which weighed about 80 grams (less than 3 ounces) and was sewn into the briefs.
According to ABC News, a government test with 50 grams of PETN blew a hole in the side of an airliner — the same amount carried by so-called shoe bomber Richard Reid over Christmas in 2001.
A global search for accomplices in the Detroit airliner plot is under way after an Al Qaeda group based in Yemen claimed responsibility for the operation and the would-be bomber was reported to have said that more attacks were being planned.
The man who authorities say strapped a highly powerful explosive to his torso and tried to detonate it in midair never would have gotten aboard the plane if a different security detector had been used when he boarded the flight, security experts and officials say.
“Puffer” machines, full-body imaging scanners, a simple frisk or bomb-sniffing dogs all would likely have detected the chemical explosive PETN, experts say. But Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian suspected of trying to blow up Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, encountered none of those deterrents when he traveled from Nigeria to Amsterdam and ultimately to Detroit.
Abdulmutallab may likely have passed through a magnetometer, the conventional metal detector used at most airports. It’s a sophisticated device that detects firearms, box-cutters, belt buckles and nail clippers — but it’s useless in finding a small amount of powder capable of bringing down an airliner packed with passengers.
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