http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=16780
(1)
Who Would Benefit Politically
from a Terrorist Incident on American Soil?
The Strange Case of Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab
Published in GlobalResearch.ca on January 4, 2010
DISCLAIMER: This copy
from an external site is archived in our
domain for reference purposes in case that the original is lost.
Copyright by the external site and/or author(s) holds. The
M+G+R Foundation
is not associated in any way with the external
site. The archive is not to be considered as an endorsement of any kind
from
us. Our general Disclaimer
applies.
By Tom Burghardt (2)
Global Research, January 4, 2010
Antifascist Calling..., 4 January 2010 (3)
Despite some $40 billion dollars spent by the American people on
airline security since 2001, allegedly to thwart attacks on the Heimat, the botched attempt by Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over
Detroit on Christmas Day was foiled, not by a bloated counterterrorist
bureaucracy, but by the passengers themselves.
Talk about validating that old Wobbly slogan: Direct action gets the
goods!
And yet, the closer one looks at the available evidence surrounding the
strange case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the more sinister alleged
“intelligence failures” become. As this story unfolds it is becoming
abundantly clear that U.S. security officials had far more information
on the would-be lap bomber than we’ve been told.
The Observer revealed (4)
January 3 that the British secret state had Abdulmutallab on their
radar for several years and that he had become “politically involved”
with “extremist networks” while a student at University College London,
where he served as president of the Islamic Society.
Examining “e-mail and text traffic,” security officers claim to have
belatedly discovered that “he has been in contact with jihadists from
across the world since 2007.”
Indeed, The Sunday Times disclosed (5) that the 23-year-old
terrorism suspect was “‘reaching out’ to extremists whom MI5 had under
surveillance.” The officials said that Abdulmutallab was “‘starting out
on a journey’ in Britain” that culminated with last week’s attempt to
destroy Flight 253.
It is claimed by unnamed “British officials” that “none of this
information was passed” to their American counterparts; on the face of
it, this appears to be a rank mendacity.
The Sunday Times further reported that security officials have “now
passed a file” to American counterterrorism officers that show “his
repeated contacts with MI5 targets who were subject to phone taps,
email intercepts and other forms of surveillance.”
None of this should surprise anyone, however. In light of multiple
prior warnings which preceded past terrorist atrocities, the selective
leaking of information to the British media in its own way, buttresses
the official story that the near-tragedy aboard Flight 253 was simply
the result of ubiquitous “intelligence failures.”
But as we have seen with Mohamed Atta, Richard Reid and Mohammad
Sidique Khan, Abdulmutallab’s “journey” was one undertaken by many
before, often with a wink-and-a-nod by British and American security
officials when it served the geostrategic ambitions of their political
masters.
As security researcher and analyst Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed wrote in the
New Internationalist (6)
(October 2009): “Islamist terrorism cannot be understood without
acknowledging the extent to which its networks are being used by
Western military intelligence services, both to control strategic
energy resources and to counter their geopolitical rivals. Even now,
nearly a decade after 9/11, covert sponsorship of al-Qaeda networks
continues.”
Ahmed’s findings track closely with those of Michel Chossudovsky, Peter
Dale Scott and Richard Labévière, who have painstakingly documented
that the complex of jihadi groups known as al-Qaeda have enjoyed the
closest ties with Western intelligence agencies stretching back decades.
That intelligence officers, including those at the highest levels of
the secret state’s security apparat, did nothing to hamper an alleged
al-Qaeda operative from getting on that plane–in a chilling echo of the
9/11 attacks–calls into question the thin tissue of lies outlined in
the official narrative.
An Intelligence “Failure,” or a Wild “Success” for Security
Corporations?
Charged December 26 with attempting to blow up a U.S. airliner,
according to The Washington Post (7) Abdulmutallab “was
listed in a U.S. terrorism database.”
The Post reported that the suspect’s name “was added in November to the
Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE.” It is further
described as a “catch-all list” which “contains about 550,000
individuals” and is maintained by “the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence at the National Counterterrorism Center.”
However, The New York Times revealed (8) December 31 that the
“National Security Agency four months ago intercepted conversations
among leaders of Al Qaeda in Yemen discussing a plot to use a Nigerian
man for a coming terrorist attack.”
Times’ reporters Mark Mazzetti and Eric Lipton, citing unnamed
“government officials,” disclosed that “the electronic intercepts were
translated and disseminated across classified computer networks” months
before Abdulmutallab boarded Flight 253 in Amsterdam.
But when the NSA intercepts landed at the National Counterterrorism
Center (NCTC (9)),
overseen by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI (10)), analysts there “did
not synthesize the eavesdropping intelligence with information gathered
in November” when Abdulmutallab’s father provided the U.S. Embassy in
Nigeria crucial information on his son’s involvement with the
Afghan-Arab database of disposable Western intelligence assets, also
known as al-Qaeda.
Seeking comment from NCTC proved to be a daunting task. As the Times
delicately put it, “officials at the counterterrorist center …
maintained a stoic silence on Wednesday, noting that the review ordered
by President Obama was still under way.”
Despite revelations in the British press, the White House maintains
that U.S. intelligence agencies “did not miss a ‘smoking gun'” that
could have prevented the botched attack, the Associated Press (11) reported January 3.
White House aide John Brennan, citing “lapses” and “errors” in sharing
intelligence said, “There was no single piece of intelligence that
said, ‘this guy is going to get on a plane.'”
As we will soon see, Mr. Brennan has every reason to hide behind such
mendacities.
Investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, the author of the essential book
Spies For Hire (12),
reported (13)
in CorpWatch, that NCTC is an outsourced counterterrorist agency
chock-a-block with security contractors in the heavily-leveraged
homeland security market.
Indeed, The Analysis Corporation (TAC (14)), a wholly-owned
subsidiary of defense and intelligence contractor Global Strategies
Group/North America, “specializes in providing counterterrorism
analysis and watchlists to U.S. government agencies.”
“It is best known” according to Shorrock, “for its connection to John
O. Brennan, its former CEO, a 35-year veteran of the CIA and currently
President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser. Brennan, the first
director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), retired from
government in November 2005 and immediately joined TAC.”
Shorrock reports that “much of TAC’s business is with the NCTC itself.
In fact, the NCTC is one of the company’s largest customers, and TAC
provides counterterrorism (CT) support to ‘most of the agencies within
the intelligence community,’ according to a company press release. One
of its biggest customers is the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence, which manages the NCTC.”
“During the 1990s” Shorrock relates, “TAC developed the U.S.
government’s first terrorist database, ‘Tipoff,’ on behalf of the State
Department.”
Shorrock chronicles how “the database was initially conceived as a tool
to help U.S. consular officials and customs inspectors determine if
foreigners trying to enter the United States were known or suspected
terrorists.”
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks and subsequent reorganization of the
U.S. security bureaucracy, the investigative journalist tells us that
“in 2003, management of the database–which received information
collected by a large number of agencies including the CIA, NSA, and
FBI–was transferred to the CIA’s Terrorist Threat Integration Center
(TTIC) and, later, to the National Counterterrorism Center.”
“In 2005” Shorrock discloses, “Tipoff was expanded and renamed the
Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE, and fingerprint and
facial recognition software was added to help identify suspects as they
crossed U.S. borders.”
Despite the utter worthlessness of a bloated database containing more
than 1.3 million names according to the American Civil Liberties Union (15), and not the grossly
undercounted figure of 550,000 cited by corporate media, TIDE has been
a boon for TAC.
“In the five years after 9/11” Shorrock
reveals, “its income quintupled, from less than $5 million in 2001 to
$24 million in 2006. In 2006, TAC increased its visibility in the
intelligence community by creating a ‘senior advisory board’ that
included three heavy hitters from the CIA: former Director George J.
Tenet, former Chief Information Officer Alan Wade, and former senior
analyst John P. Young.”
And what have the American people gained from inflating the corporatist
bottom line? In light of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, not much.
As investigative journalists Susan and Joseph Trento revealed in their
overlooked but highly-disturbing 2006 book, Unsafe At Any Altitude (16), most of the 9/11
hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, Hani Hanjour, Khalid al-Mihdhar and
Majed Moqed “were flagged by CAPPS (Computer-Assisted Passenger
Prescreening System).”
But because of CIA and FBI monkey-business that rendered watch-list
information useless to stop suspected terrorists from boarding an
airliner, “the only thing that was done as a result was that the
baggage of several members of the Al Qaeda team was held on the ground
until the cabin crew confirmed they had boarded as passengers.”
And when you consider that Abdulmutallab didn’t even have any baggage
to check, alleged security “lapses” are even more glaring.
According to the Trentos, “the FBI, CIA, NSA, and Department of
Homeland Security refuse to give the airlines an accurate no fly list,
thereby allowing the most threatening terrorists to continue to fly.”
Is there a pattern here? You bet there is!
An unnamed “counterterrorist official” told The Wall Street Journal (17) December 31: “‘If you
look back to these audit reports, there are significant issues raised
with the accuracy and omissions to the watchlisting process that
haven’t been fixed, clearly,’ as of Dec. 25. ‘Essentially you’re
screening blindly, and that’s not effective’.”
However, we can be sure there will be very little in the way of a
hard-hitting investigation into this alleged security breach. The New
York Times reported (18)
that TAC’s former CEO John O. Brennan, has been “granted a special
ethics waiver … to conduct a review of the intelligence and screening
breakdown that preceded the failed Christmas Day bombing attempt on an
American passenger plane over Detroit.”
Enter the CIA, Stage (Far) Right
What “other government agency” may have suppressed intelligence on the
would-be bomber?
The CBS Evening News revealed (19)
December 29 that “as early as August of 2009,” tracking closely with
the time-frame of NSA intercepts, “the Central Intelligence Agency was
picking up information on a person of interest dubbed ‘The Nigerian,’
suspected of meeting with ‘terrorist elements’ in Yemen.”
Unnamed “intelligence sources” told CBS, “‘The Nigerian’ has now turned
out to be Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.” But that connection “was not made
when Abdulmutallab’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.” CBS claims “this information was not
connected until after the attempted Christmas Day bombing.”
Earlier reports have alleged that Umar’s father, a wealthy Nigerian
banker and former high state official, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, had only
provided Embassy officials with a vague concern that his son’s
estrangement “may have” something to do with his growing “religious
fervor.” This too, turns out to be a lie.
The Times reported that a “family cousin quoted the father as warning
officials from the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency
in Nigeria: ‘Look at the texts he’s sending. He’s a security threat’.”
Nothing vague in this disclosure, but rather more concrete evidence in
the form of “texts” which we now know were shortstopped by British
security and included “phone taps, email intercepts and other forms of
surveillance” by MI5 that led an anguished father to express
well-placed fears about his son to U.S officials.
But as the Times were told by their source, “They promised to look into it. They
didn’t take him seriously.”
And here’s where things take a decidedly malevolent turn. According to
the Times, “C.I.A. officials in
Nigeria also prepared a separate report compiling biographical
information about Mr. Abdulmutallab, including his educational
background and the fact that he was considering pursuing academic
studies in Islamic law in Yemen.”
“That cable was sent to C.I.A.
headquarters in Langley, Va.,” Mark Mazzetti and Eric Lipton
disclosed, “but not disseminated to
other intelligence agencies, government officials said on Wednesday.”
Then again, perhaps they knew all-too-well of Abdulmutallab’s glide
path and chose instead to turn a blind eye. Coming on the heels of
disclosures in the British media, the evidence suggests that CIA
intelligence provided by NSA intercepts, their own on-the-ground
operatives in Yemen and MI5 surveillance reports were scrupulously
ignored by factions within the secret state who sat on critical
information that withheld, would disarm and paralyze normal security
procedures in the face of an attack they knew was imminent.
We were told by corporate media, infamously serving as an echo chamber
for grifting politicians, Bushist officials and the 9/11 Commission’s
2004 whitewash, that the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks resulted
from “a failure of imagination” by counterterrorism officials to
“connect the dots.”
Seems there were plenty of “dots” in Abdulmutallab’s case and yet,
inexplicably, if you buy the official story, and sinisterly, if you
don’t, not a single one was “connected” prior to the time he took his
seat on Flight 253.
Despite the fact that Abdulmutallab was denied re-entry into Britain,
paid $2,800 in cash for his “ticket to Paradise,” and had no luggage
that normally would accompany a person holding a 2-year entry visa into
the U.S., the erstwhile lap bomber scored a goal each time and eluded
every intrusive “profile” presumably in place to keep us “safe.” Talk
about a hat trick!
Available evidence suggests that Abdulmutallab should have landed on
TSA’s hush-hush “Selectee list” for additional screening, or the
agency’s “No-fly list.” And given NSA intercepts and a CIA biographical
report on the suspect, this alone should have barred him from entering
the country if “normal” security procedures were followed. They weren’t.
As The Independent on Sunday (20)
reported last week, “the revelation of Abdulmutallab’s background has
confounded terror experts.” One such “expert,” Dr Magnus Ranstorp of
the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National
Defence College, told IoS that “the attempted bombing ‘didn’t square’.”
“On the one hand” Ranstorp said, “it seems he’s been on the terror
watch list but not on the no-fly list.”
“That doesn’t square” Ranstorp elaborated, “because the American
Department for Homeland Security has pretty stringent data-mining
capability. I don’t understand how he had a valid visa if he was known
on the terror watch list.”
Good question, Dr. Ranstorp. Perhaps because someone wanted him on that
plane. The question is, who?
One would have thought, given the “special treatment” afforded antiwar
activists (21)
by TSA at airports, that a warning about Abdul Mutallab’s possible
involvement with terrorists, by his own father no less, a former top
official in a government friendly to Washington, numerous NSA
intercepts, a CIA dossier and MI5 reports would have raised at least
one red flag!
In the suspect’s case, there were so many red flags flying you’d have
thought the Red Army was parading through Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport!
Then again, perhaps Abdul Mutallab was on that plane because, as
journalist Daniel Hopsicker was told (22) by a former aviation
executive during his investigation of the 9/11 attacks: “Sometimes when
things don’t make business sense … its because they do make sense…just
in some other way.”
As the World Socialist Web Site (23)
points out:
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? (Bill Van Auken, “The Northwest Flight 253 intelligence
failure: Negligence or conspiracy?,” World Socialist Web Site, December
31, 2009)
And so dear readers, we are left to
ponder the question, cui bono?
Who would benefit politically from a
major terrorist incident on American soil, ready, willing and able to
step into the breach and exploit the catastrophic loss of human life
that would follow in its wake?
Who indeed.
Tom Burghardt is a
researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In
addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research (24), his articles can be read on
Dissident Voice (25), The
Intelligence Daily (26),
Pacific Free Press (27),
Uncommon Thought Journal (28),
and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks (29). He is the editor of Police
State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed
by AK Press (30).
Copyright © Tom Burghardt, Antifascist
Calling..., 2010 (3)
LINKS
(1) Source: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=16780
Retrieved on March 14, 2022;
Full Text.
The highlightings in bold and italics are from the source.
Copyright © Tom Burghardt, Antifascist Calling...,
2010
The following links, as provided in the Source:
(2) Posts by
Tomas Burghardt in globalresearch.ca
(3) http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/
(4) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/03/terrorism-uksecurity
(5) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6973954.ece
(6) http://www.newint.org/features/2009/10/01/blowback-extended-version/
(7) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/25/AR2009122501355.html
(8) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31terror.html
(9) http://www.nctc.gov/
(10) http://www.dni.gov/
(11) http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2010/01/03/D9D09LP80_us_airliner_attack/index.html
(12) http://books.simonandschuster.com/Spies-for-Hire/Tim-Shorrock/9780743282246
(13) http://www.crocodyl.org/spies_for_hire/the_analysis_corporation_tac
(14) http://www.globalgroup.us.com/index.html
(15) http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/terror-watch-list-counter-million-plus
(16) http://www.unsafeatanyaltitude.com/
(17) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126226680168911825.html
(18) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/us/politics/01waiver.html
(19) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/29/cbsnews_investigates/main6035647.shtml
(20) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/wealthy-quiet-unassuming-the-christmas-day-bomb-suspect-1851090.html
(21) http://www.aclunc.org/news/press_releases/tsa_and_fbi_to_pay_$200,000_in_attorneys'_fees_to_settle_no_fly_lawsuit.shtml
(22) http://www.madcowprod.com/
(23) http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/pers-d31.shtml
(24) http://globalresearch.ca/
(25) http://www.dissidentvoice.org/
(26) http://www.inteldaily.com/
(27) http://www.pacificfreepress.com/
(28) http://www.uncommonthought.com/mtblog/
(29) http://www.wikileaks.org/
(30) http://www.akpress.org/2002/items/policestateamerica
Documents from The M+G+R Foundation referring to this article:
Related documents from The M+G+R Foundation: