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Just a week ago the establishment media was aflutter with news that a CIA double-agent had thwarted a new type of underwear bomb attack targeting U.S. flights in a plot devised by al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. But as the week progressed, a developing bombshell story got buried under President Obama’s gay marriage announcement. Not only is the supposed CIA asset not a CIA asset at all, but the entire operation was exposed prematurely and the double-agent’s life was immediately threatened by an intelligence leak that very well may have come out of the White House for political gain. As...

Here's a disturbing update to last week's amazing story about the U.S. mole who infiltrated al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and thwarted an airliner attack with a more sophisticated underwear bomb. Someone in Washington whose boss stood to gain from an election year story about alert intelligence operatives successfully protecting American voters at great personal risk leaked the heroic story to the Associated Press. The AP held the story until Obama administration sources said the CIA operative was safe. But, it turns out, the mole was not a CIA operative. The Obama administration had nothing to do with the...

Leak about UK involvement described as despicable by CIA as anger turns to Obama administration for compromising missionDetailed leaks of operational information about the foiled underwear bomb plot are causing growing anger in the US intelligence community, with former agents blaming the Obama administration for undermining national security and compromising the British services, MI6 and MI5. Mike Scheur, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, said the leaking about the nuts and bolts of British involvement was despicable and would make a repeat of the operation difficult. "MI6 should be as angry as hell. This is something that...

The man, who risked his life to get close to al-Qaeda’s master bomb-maker in the Yemen, is of Saudi origin but holds a British passport, sources told the Daily Telegraph. MI5 recruited the agent for an operation in which the CIA planned to target the bomb-maker with a missile from an unmanned drone.

The overblown thwarting of a reported plan to blow up some airliner sometime somewhere with a possible new type of super-sneaky al Qaeda bomb illustrates the perilous problems and confusing complexities of life in an open society. These kinds of clandestine ops are, hopefully, going on all the time in places we can't pronounce. We know about past failures. No one thought a boat headed straight for the moored USS Cole was particularly suspicious. Some Arabs learning to fly 747's but uninterested in learning to land them prompted no effective alarm bells. It's nice to know of these recent successful...

U.S. and Yemeni officials say the supposed would-be bomber at the heart of an al-Qaida airliner plot was actually an informant working for the CIA. The revelation, first reported by The Los Angeles Times, shows how the CIA was able to get its hands on a sophisticated underwear bomb well before an attack was set in motion. Officials say the informant was working for the CIA and Saudi Arabian intelligence when he was given the bomb. He then turned the device over to authorities. Officials say the informant is safely out of Yemen. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity...

Today it was widely reported that the CIA thwarted a “plot by al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb.” This bomb, which was to be concealed in a pair of underwear, was designed as an improvement over what Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to use to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day of 2009. This bomb was upgraded and designed to specifically avoid metal detectors. At first glance it would appear to be a job well done by the world’s leading domestic affairs meddlers. But like all of these instances, it was...

The U.S. thwarted a bomb plot by al Qaeda's Yemeni branch aimed at bringing down a jetliner with a more advanced version of an underwear bomb used in a failed 2009 Christmas Day attempt, officials said Monday. The Central Intelligence Agency, working with foreign security services, was able to seize the bomb—which they believed was intended for a U.S.-bound flight—before the would-be suicide bomber was able to move ahead with his plot, officials said. Because the plot was headed off in its early stages, officials said the effort never represented a threat to Americans or to U.S. allies, nor did...

The CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, The Associated Press has learned.

Delayed twice during the day, President Obama finally made his address the American People regarding the Christmas Day almost terror-attack by al Qaeda’s underwear bomber. The speech was a feeble attempt to make up the political ground he lost in the weeks following the attack. Until yesterday, he always found a way to place blame for the attack on others, but yesterday he said; Moreover, I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer, for ultimately the buck stops with me. As president, I have a solemn...

SNIPPET: "Discussion: I first observed discussion of binary explosives on the al-Firdaws forum in January of 2007. In light of recent events I will post here my archive:" SNIPPET: "Implementation: On Christmas Day, 2009, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab boards a flight in Amsterdam, bound for Detroit, and on final descent he attempts to set off what was most likely a binary explosive. Thank goodness he either screwed up or had bad instructions, because the chemicals he was working with were evidently quite good."

Al-Qaeda Draws New Recruits Via Internet Al-Qaeda is using the Internet to recruit vulnerable young people to its terrorist network, according to a programme aired on Saudi Arabian TV late on Tuesday. Umm Osama, the founder of al-Qaeda's first women-only website, al-Khansa, joined several others on the programme to discuss how they renounced jihadist ideology. Among those who sought a response to this question was an imam from the Medina mosque, Saleh Ibn Awad al-Mudamsi, and the father of a young al-Qaeda suspect held in an Iraqi prison. Read More Qaeda Targets U.S. Oil Interests in North Africa U.S....