inside job - the Feds asked for him to remain on the flight
Why the media silence on the Flight 253 bombing hearings?
By Alex Lantier
10 February 2010
The
media’s failure to report the January 27 Congressional hearings on last Christmas’s Flight 253 bomb plot is both extraordinary and ominous. The hearings made the explosive revelation that
US intelligence agencies acted to help the bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, gain access to the plane. …
President Obama, congressmen and the media absurdly claimed that US intelligence had not stopped the attack because it failed to “connect the dots” between such pieces of information and realize that Abdulmutallab in fact could pose a threat.
The January 27 hearing went even further in exploding the official explanation given by the government and media. (See
“Congressional hearing reveals US intelligence agencies shielded Flight 253 bomber” ).
Under questioning about US visa policy, State Department Under-Secretary Patrick Kennedy said: “We will revoke the visa of any individual who is a threat to the United States, but we do take one preliminary step. We ask our law enforcement and intelligence community partners, ‘Do you have eyes on this person and do you want us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may potentially break a larger plot?’ … And one of the members [of the intelligence community]—and we’d be glad to give you that out of—in private—said, ‘
Please, do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this person.’”
This unnamed US agency endangered the lives of hundreds of passengers, and more potential victims of flying debris on the ground. All three officials testifying—Kennedy, National Counter-Terrorism Center Director Michael Leiter, and Department of Homeland Security Deputy Director Jane Lute—said their agencies would take no disciplinary action over the Flight 253 events.