Posted on 05/30/2007 3:21:49 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Report confirms terror dry run
By Audrey Hudson THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published May 30, 2007
Download the inspector general report (PDF)
A newly released inspector general report backs eyewitness accounts of suspicious behavior by 13 Middle Eastern men on a Northwest Airlines flight in 2004 and reveals several missteps by government officials, including failure to file an incident report until a month after the matter became public.
According to the Homeland Security report, the "suspicious passengers," 12 Syrians and their Lebanese-born promoter, were traveling on Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on expired visas. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services extended the visas one week after the June 29, 2004, incident.
The report also says that a background check in the FBI's National Crime Information Center database, which was performed June 18 as part of a visa-extension application, produced "positive hits" for past criminal records or suspicious behavior for eight of the 12 Syrians, who were traveling in the U.S. as a musical group.
In addition, the band's promoter was listed in a separate FBI database on case investigations for acting suspiciously aboard a flight months earlier. He was detained a third time in September on a return trip to the U.S. from Istanbul, the details of which were redacted.
The inspector general criticized the Homeland Security officials for not reporting the incident to the Homeland Security Operations Center (HSOC), which serves as the nation's nerve center for information sharing and domestic incident management.
The report comes three years after the incident, which was not officially acknowledged until a month later, after The Washington Times reported passenger and marshal complaints that the incident resembled a dry run for a terrorist attack. After reviewing the report, air marshals say it confirms their earlier suspicions.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
This was a dry run. It was obvious at the time. Why these twelve “musicians” are not entertaining their bretheren at Gitmo, I will never understand.
Nah.
/sarcasm
All joking aside.... they are coming again....
BTTT
It couldn’t be reported because they had already checked two muslims on the flight. If they questioned this many more, it would have been viewed as “profiling”, and we can’t have that /sarc off
I've had this theory it will take another plane being driven into a building for the FEDS to admit an event was terror related...this sort of makes my point viable..
I understand.
And on another point...
The feds do put out a lot of detailed press releases, generally speaking; what the lame stream media does with the info is another story altogether, in my opinion.
Cindy this was a classic coverup...I won’t blame the press for this one.
Or the guy with XDR TB, either.
Could be this is part of the reason Bassem Youssef and the FBI are involved in a lawsuit over the way he, as an employee, has been treated.
~snip~
“Agency management was not only covering up numerous probes and dry-run encounters from Congress and other federal law-enforcement agencies, it was also hiding these incidents from their own flying air marshals,” said P. Jeffrey Black, an air marshal stationed in Las Vegas.
Homeland Security officials initially denied the complaints and blamed passengers who reported the incident to the press as behaving hysterically. However, the inspector general report shows that air marshals had the group of men under surveillance before they boarded the plane.
... “This report is evidence of Homeland Security executives attempting to downplay and cover up an unmistakable dry run that forced flight attendants to reveal the air marshals and compel the pilots to open the flight deck door,” said Robert MacLean, a former air marshal who was fired last year for revealing that the service planned to cut back on protection for long-distance flights to save money.
....The men were briefly detained, but only two were questioned.
“The Federal Air Marshal supervisor examined the visas, but did not notice the visas had expired on June 10, 2004,” the report said. One of the air marshals assigned to the flight noticed the expiration, but “erroneously believed he was not legally entitled” to run a background check.
According to the report, the marshal’s “primary concern, at that time, was not whether the visas expired, but to copy the visa pages so that Customs and Border Patrol could later run a database check on these individuals.”
~snip~
And THESE are the folks who are going to be responsible for carrying out the comprehensive border control???
God help us.
I understand what you are saying Dog.
I wanted to include that point, GENERALLY SPEAKING, regarding the wot/gwot.
As the Pit Yorkie said "You can't professionalize unless you Federalize"....
Our officials may turn a blind eye but I a single American will not. And I will act if neccessary.
Women’s Wall Street did an extensive series on it called “Terror in the Skies.”
Also I recall having posted about a flight I had taken on a Northwest from Orlando to ...Detroit and having had my suspicions aroused to the point of trying to figure out what could be used as a weapon to bring down the suspects.
There were a lot of reports coming out around that time for about 6-9 months of folks being suspicious.
“Immigration can’t keep tabs on 12 terrorists; while trying to convince us they can manage 12 million illegals.”
Outstanding point!
Glad to see you guys back around these parts.
Squantos, how is your brother doing?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.