Posted on 01/03/2010 8:05:26 AM PST by opentalk
Shortly before Thanksgiving, a concerned Nigerian banker warned the local U.S. Embassy about his missing son's ties to Yemeni radicals and a possible terrorist threat.
It wasn't until Christmas that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab resurfaced - in seat 19A of a Detroit-bound airliner, his underwear loaded with enough explosives to kill all 289 people aboard.
The 35 days between were rife with missed clues, missteps and miscommunication as authorities - in a 9/11 repeat - failed to connect the terrorist dots surrounding the Al Qaeda-trained bomber.
.."Somebody screwed up big time," said Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The first sign of something amiss came months earlier, when British officials - convinced his application was bogus - refused to renew Abdulmutallab's student visa in May 2009.
He was placed on a British watch list barring him from reentering the country.
...The Nigerian, with his valid U.S. visa, appeared Dec. 16 at an airport in Ghana. He paid $2,381 cash for a round-trip ticket from Lagos, Nigeria, to Detroit.
The cash purchase was another potential warning sign. More blatant was a Dec. 21 online video where an Al Qaeda terrorist in Yemen warned, "We are carrying a bomb to hit the enemies of God."
When Abdulmutallab reached Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Nigeria on Christmas Eve, the world traveler brought no luggage - just a small carry-on bag.
Yet the terror suspect, who spent a mere 27 minutes at the airport, never received any extra attention from the $2-an-hour security guards.
They missed the 6-inch-long plastic container sewn into his underwear, loaded with the powerful powder explosive PETN.
Just one month before the failure, the Transportation Security Administration gave a passing security grade to the Lagos airport.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
I love the name Mark Steyn gave the head of DHS...Janet Incompetano.
This has all the odor of an inside job. I wonder if there are any photos of him going through security.
Hard to understand why he was given the visa.
Because of all the open source red flags surrounding this terrorist attack, I have renewed my old tag line.
because our government is rife with traitors.
re: because our government is rife with traitors
So it would seem, but you know, sometimes you get the same outcome with people who are simply totally inept. Then, you mix a few of each and you have certain disaster.
I can see a traitor being completely flummoxed by the total ineptitude of those $2 an hour security people!
“Rife” should imply “ripe,” but the most important fruit is really high and hard to reach. Wait and watch?
Turns out that the “Ball Bomber’s” father is no angel either! Looks like he was just coverin’ his own butt. Didn’t want anyone to investigate him to much!
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/01/father-of-northwest-ball-bomber-integral-to-rise-of-sharia-wahabbism-in-kenya-.html
Can't blame Bush for that one, Obama...
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