Terrorism update

In my previous posts about Farouk of the Firey Fallus (a.k.a. the would-be Christmas terrorist), I did not mention that the Haskells had also reported seeing a second man arrested, or at least detained, after the airliner had landed in Detroit. Those reports -- denied at first -- now have confirmation.

A federal customs and border protection official reversed himself today, admitting a passenger from Northwest Flight 253 was placed in handcuffs, searched and released after a canine alerted officers to his carry-on luggage.

Ronald G. Smith, chief U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer in the Detroit area, sent an email to The Detroit News late Thursday apologizing that the information on the passenger -- which was reported to federal investigators by a pair of Taylor attorneys who were passengers on the flight -- was not made available earlier.

Federal officials had denied the details of the incident despite repeated accounts by attorneys Kurt and Lori Haskell of Taylor who say they saw a man get questioned by federal officials and be led away from the airport baggage area in handcuffs after a sniffer dog reacted to something in the man's carry-on luggage.

The couple said the man, who appeared to be in his early 30s and of Indian descent, was taken to a room for questioning and later led out of that room in handcuffs.

The Haskells also said that another person -- a well-dressed Indian or southeast Asian -- had helped Farouk get on the flight in Amsterdam. Since the Haskells' account has proven correct on one questioned point, we have good reason to suspect that they were accurate on the other matter.

Smith's statement is a bit odd. Previously, he had said the Detroit "second man" seen by the Haskells (and others) was someone from another flight: ""There was a second person taken into custody, but it had nothing to do with Flight 253. They did see dogs, but again, it was a totally different incident."

But that scenario was hardly likely:

Haskell said authorities marched the remaining passengers out of the baggage claim area and into a long hallway.

"This entire time period and until we left customs, no person that wasn't a law enforcement personnel or a passenger on our flight was allowed anywhere on our floor of the terminal (or possibly the entire terminal)," he wrote. "The FBI was so concerned during this time that we were not allowed to use the bathroom unless we went alone with an FBI agent. We were not allowed to eat or drink, or text or call anyone."

We have only Smith's word for the claim that the second man was arrested due to the reaction of a sniffer dog. Frankly, Smith has injured his credibility by offering more than one story. I can't help but wonder if the second man was actually the mystery videographer, and that the item of interest in his baggage was the camera. I'm not saying, but I am asking.

The second man detained in Detroit wore orange. We have no published reports as to what the videographer wore.

I suppose that we should all shout for this orange-clad Indian to identify himself -- after all, he has 15 minutes of fame coming to him, doesn't he? If enough of us ask this fellow to step up to the podium, then whoever was telling Smith what to say may actually have to go to the trouble of hiring an actor. And won't that be an awful bother! (Maybe they can call the same central casting office that brought us the ersatz "umbrella man" who testified to the HSCA.)

This incident has led to a striking barrage of propaganda. An afore-linked story on World Net Daily usefully reprints material published elsewhere on the Haskells, but the same article also blares neocon garbage like this:

"See No Jihad, Hear No Jihad, Speak No Jihad: Why the government and media seem oblivious to America's rapid infiltration by a violent totalitarian movement"

And then of course we have crap like this:

THE CONSEQUENCES OF OBAMA: TERRORISM IS BACK

By that logic, 9/11 was the consequence of Dubya's election. (Some of my readers would agree.)

Now Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutall sits, lawyered up, in a federal prison. His interrogation will proceed, if at all, under the watchful eye of his counsel. He will not finger other operatives nor warn us of other impending attacks.

In other words, the right-wing bloggers are trying to justify the torture of captured foreign criminals on American soil.

And here's a strange opinion from Rochelle Riley, a writer for the Detroit Free Press, who seems mightily impressed by Farouk's dad for ratting out his son:

Dad's stand against terrorism admirable

...But I imagine a different world in which more parents would react the way Mutallab, the father, did.

What history might we be studying now had other families or friends taken a stand for right -- even if the stand is against their children?

Oh, stop blubbering, Rochelle. Farouk (as he was known to his family) was the not-terribly-well-liked son of one of Dad's less-favored wives.

There is also a report in the African press (cited in my earlier pieces) that Farouk attended his father's retirement party in the period between the purchase of the ticket (Dec. 16) and the flight. (The warning to the CIA came in November.) I find this report credible -- persuasive, if not convincing. It makes me wonder if Mutallab was playing a far more complex game than is conceivable to most American journalists.

At any rate, whatever his motives for offering that warning, Mutallab was and is vile. That man is a classic exploiter, living in pornographic luxury while his people remain mired in agonizing poverty. This, in a resource-rich land. If Farouk had managed to blow up a dozen airliners, he still couldn't match his father's evil quotient.

I don't care if you think the following is foily -- I think these words are worth pondering:

As security researcher and analyst Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed wrote in the New Internationalist (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?