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Ear to the Ground

White House Releasing Details of Flight 253 Security Issues

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Posted on Jan 7, 2010
Northwest flight 253
AP / J.P. Karas

Northwest Airlines Flight 253 sits on the runway after arriving at Detroit Metropolitan Airport from Amsterdam on Christmas Day.

The White House’s decision to release information that points to why U.S. intelligence agencies failed to nab the foiled underwear bomber before he boarded Northwest Flight 253 on Dec. 25 may have something to do with publicly shaming those agencies, but whatever the motivation, “a declassified version of a report detailing the security gaps” will be available Thursday, according to The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is coming to the defense of National Counterterrorism Director Michael Leiter, who took a vacation with his 7-year-old son the day after Christmas, The New York Times reported Thursday.  —KA

The Washington Post:

Customs and Border Protection officials screen passengers against terrorist watch lists before international flights leave for the United States, then check names against a larger database while the flight is en route. During the second check, officials noted information that Abdulmutallab’s father had provided to U.S. officials in Nigeria, warning that his son had drifted into extremism.

Still, there was no guarantee that the information provided by the father would have been enough to deny Abdulmutallab entry into the country.

“We had in our possession information that likely could have prevented or disrupted the incident on the 25th of December from happening,” said White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.

Some experts have said the failure to connect the dots of the plot confirmed fears that the massive amounts of terrorism-related information being gathered in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks might outgrow the capacity to manage it.

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By scotttpot, January 8, 2010 at 11:26 am Link to this comment

The CIA/Blackwater finds a patsy who they brainwash into an attack with a bomb
that is intentionally made to fail to scare the crap out of idiot America and further
undermine President Obama and peace in the Middle East.
The system worked.

Report this

By vlad, January 8, 2010 at 6:03 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

Sheer bogosity.  Fraud, fraud, fraud.  Bogus, bogus, bogus.

Hey, here’s an idea.  Why don’t we pretend the Xmas “bombing” was real and write endless analyses.

Report this

By dihey, January 8, 2010 at 4:57 am Link to this comment

There is no doubt in my mind that this incident will drive President Obama even more to the right than he already is to prove to the nation and the world, with chin jutted forward, that he is really tough on terrorists.

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DieDaily's avatar

By DieDaily, January 8, 2010 at 2:17 am Link to this comment

Spot on Robert. And how about the fact that the Shoe
bomber (another classic mentally deficient patsy) got
through the same security contractor (ICTS of Israel)
carrying the same explosive (PETN) which also failed to
ignite. As I have said before, this site will be
fantastically improved by the elimination of any and
all Waspington Post articles. There is bad reporting,
and then there is the WP. There was much better
reporting than this in Soviet Russia. Much better.

Report this
Robert's avatar

By Robert, January 7, 2010 at 6:06 pm Link to this comment

CROTCH BOMBER - Another Christmas Arrest Uncovered -Same Route, Same Airline, Same Day, Different Flight

“On the day of the Flight 253 incident, reporter Michael Rosenfield of WXYZ in Detroit appeared live on CNN during the evening news and reported that, earlier that day, another passenger was arrested on a different flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Same route, same airline, same day. This report appears to have been corroborated by a woman who was apparently a passenger on that flight in an on-camera interview; an interview which was even played at least once on CNN on December 25. However, the media subsequently blended this separate incident with the widely-reported “failed bombing” incident. Hence, the many media reports of Mutallab “screaming about Afghanistan” despite the fact that the witnesses actually describe him as being amazingly calm and totally silent.”
***********

Click on link to watch~:

http://redactednews.blogspot.com/2010/01/another-christmas-arrest-uncovered-same.html

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By gerard, January 7, 2010 at 4:40 pm Link to this comment

“Some experts have said the failure to connect the dots of the plot confirmed fears that the massive amounts of terrorism-related information being gathered in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks might outgrow the capacity to manage it.”

Experts?  Anybody with a grain of common sense could see this coming and prophesy that the entire system would fall of its own weight.  Remember the adage:  If anything can go wrong, it will—and the more complicated and burdened the system, the more precipitous its collapse.

So now what?  How about giving up on the “layers and layers” that also includes magnetometers, explosive detective technology, increased use of bomb-sniffers,
“behavior detection specialists” and additional law enforcement.  Stop, and take a deep breath.  And think:  What would intelligent people do if they wanted to end a war against a poor, and very foreign, country or two or three, half-way across the world. whose people are desperate for food, jobs, education and self-respect, yet who are enslaved by poverty and fear?  etc. etc.
  Truly, there is no substitute for intelligence—but not the kind that puts its faith in fear, suspicion, invasive technology and brute force.

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By jack, January 7, 2010 at 3:26 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

in the article - ...“a siege mentality” that sacrifices America’s open society and liberties, which he said was a goal of the al-Qaeda terrorists.

Actually it’s the mission of the shadow operatives that run Al Queda AKA “AL-CIA-duh” - to achieve that goal for their masters: THE GLOBAL FINANCE OLIGARCHY - the only ones who benefit from THE GLOBAL WAR OF TERROR.

There’s so much evidence supporting this event as a classic black-op/psy-op, it’s literally embarrassing to see the Washington regime-propaganda-tool Post replicated and sourced in Truthdig with no analysis.

For crying out loud, Robert Scheer, do you trust the CIA-infested Washington Post any more now than you did in your Ramparts days?

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