Flight 253 terrorist attack...Passenger witness account...

[stevie_d_64]

A friend of mine on another website found this, and we are all trying to keep this documented somewhere where we frequent...I have also asked him to provide me a source URL for the post so we can have that onhand for future reference...I will try to get that on here as quickly as I can...

I’ll copy/paste the guy’s comment before it gets removed from the mlive site by HS...

“Posted by pug
December 26, 2009, 5:47AM
I was on this flight today and am thankful to be alive. My wife and I were returning from an African safari and had this connecting flight through Amsterdam. I sat in row 27, which was 7 rows behind the terrorist. I got to see the whole thing take place and it was very scary. Thanks to a few quick acting people I am still alive today.

For those of you talking about airline security in this thread, I was next to the terrorist when he checked in at the Amsterdam airport early on Christmas. My wife and I were playing cards directly in front of the check in counter. This is what I saw (and I relayed this to the FBI when we were
held in customs):

An Indian man in a nicely dressed suit around age 50 approached the check in counter with the terrorist and said “This man needs to get on this flight and he has no passport.” The two of them were an odd pair as the terrorist is a short, black man that looked like he was very poor and looks around age 17(Although I think he is 23 he doesn’t look it). It did not cross my mind that they were terrorists, only that the two looked weird together. The ticket taker said “you can’t board without a passport”. The Indian man then replied, “He is from Sudan, we do this all the time”. I can only take from this to mean that it is difficult to get passports from Sudan and this was some sort of sympathy ploy. The ticket taker then said “You will have to talk to my manager”, and sent the two down a hallway. I never saw the Indian man again as he wasn’t on the flight. It was also weird that the terrorist never said a word in this exchange. Anyway, somehow, the terrorist still made it onto the plane. I am not sure if it was a bribe or just sympathy from the security manager.

FBI also arrested a different Indian man while we were held in customs after a bomb sniffing dog detected a bomb in his carry on bag and he was searched after we landed. This was later confirmed while we were in customs when an FBI agent said to us “You are being moved to another area because this area is not safe. Read between the lines. Some of you saw what just happened.”(The arrest of the other Indian man). I am not sure why this hasn’t made it into any news story, but I stood about 15-20 feet away from the other Indian man when he was cuffed and arrested after his search.

What also didn’t make the news is that we were held on the plane for 20 minutes AFTER IT LANDED!. A bomb could have gone off then. This wasn’t too smart of security to not let us off the plane immediately.

You can see what time I am writing this as I am having a hard time sleeping tonight. Just thought some of you would like to know what I saw, Merry Christmas.”

I am posting this on this website to refer to regardless of the validity or not...I am sure the powers at be will try to discredit this regardless of the truth or not until the breakdown in security can be discovered and swept under the rug, so to speak...

[Oldgringo]

FOXNews is all over this.

Apparently, The POTUS has spoken from his Hawaiian Hideway and said something...about someting. I didn't listen, he may have said it's GWB's fault.

[The Annoyed Man]

Steve,

Here are some links:

AP sources: Al-Qaida link in failed plane attack
Dec 25 06:36 PM US/Eastern
By LARRY MARGASAK and LARA JAKES
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. officials say a Northwest Airlines passenger from Nigeria said he was acting on behalf of al-Qaida when he tried to blow up a flight Friday as it landed in Detroit.

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., identified the suspect as Abdul Mudallad, a Nigerian. King said the flight began in Nigeria and went through Amsterdam en route to Detroit.

One of the U.S. intelligence officials said the explosive device was a mix of powder and liquid. It failed when the passenger tried to detonate it.

Al Qaeda Failed. What About Us? Ten Questions.
Stewart Baker
Skating on Stilts blog
Dec 25, 2009

1. According to early reports, the suspect is 23-year-old Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, and his name "appears to be included in the government's records of terrorist suspects, according to a preliminary review." The first question, then, is how he managed to get a visa to come to the United States.
...
5. If they did, was he screened specially at Schiphol? Did DHS put an air marshal on his flight?
...
7. How good was the air travel screening in Nigeria?

8. If it wasn't that good, and I suspect it wasn't, in part because the plane was not bound for the US, did Schiphol fall down on the job by not properly rescreening Abdulmutallab?

9. Have we let European objections to US screening standards affect the security of flights with connecting passengers?

Passengers help foil attack on Detroit-bound plane
Dec 26 04:54 AM US/Eastern
By JIM IRWIN
Associated Press Writer

Smith said one passenger, sitting opposite the man, climbed over passengers, went across the aisle and tried to restrain the man. The heroic passenger appeared to have been burned.

Afterward, the suspect was taken to a front-row seat with his pants cut off and his legs burned. Multiple law enforcement officials also said the man appeared badly burned on his legs, indicating the explosive was strapped there. The components were apparently mixed in-flight and included a powdery substance, multiple law enforcement and counterterrorism officials said.

The MSM is up to their usual, predictable story-spiking:

Ali Velshi Stops Rep. King From Naming Northwest Airlines Terrorist
By Noel Sheppard
NewsBusters
December 26, 2009 - 00:00 ET

CNN's Ali Velshi on Friday stopped Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) from divulging the name of the terrorist who tried to set off a bomb as a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam began to land in Detroit.

Velshi did this claiming, "[W]e have not got any information on anyone being charged. So thank you for bringing us information. But would ask you not to name anybody on TV right now, we do not have any word of official charges."

By this time, other news outlets including the Associated Press, CBS, and Fox News had given the suspect's name, Abdul Mudallad.

and

Guess The Missing Word In NY Times Report On Attempted Plane Bombing
By Mark Finkelstein
NewsBusters
December 26, 2009 - 08:23 ET

Imagine that there had been a series of three incidents in which members of a [invented for present purposes] fanatical Jewish sect had attempted to bring down airliners from Arab countries.

In reporting on the latest attempt and describing the previous ones, do you think the New York Times might have mentioned the religion of the perpetrators? So do I.

But with the legerdemain required to describe a spiral staircase without using one's hands, the Gray Lady has managed in its article today to report yesterday's attempt to bring down a NWA airliner, and the earlier attempts by Richard Reid [the "shoebomber'] and the those who plotted to bring down as many as ten jets leaving the UK for the United States, without using the word "Muslim."

These are all courtesy of my friend Pete on another site.

[stevie_d_64]

Here's the one I was talking about...

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index ... ard_n.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

We have a serious problem here, and the usual sluff-off is not going to work this time...

I highly recommend we turn up the heat and get our seemingly feckless elected officials asking and demanding the firing of Janet Nepolitano, right now...

Unless folks around here like the idea of Americans dying in terrorist attacks and all that...(That was a rhetorical, and probably poor taste comment of my part, but I want to make an impact...)

Obviously, there are people in place who could actually implement and do things (better than it is being handled now) that would minimise the risks, but I am at a loss to explain why they are not doing so...(this is also sarcastic and rhetorical)

But what do I know...right???

[Lodge2004]

Some interesting facts about the terrorist:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 51090.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[juggernaut]

Richard Colvin Reid hid explosives in his shoes and hundreds of millions of innocent people have been forced to remove their shoes to pass through airport security.

Now this terrorist hides explosives in his underwear.

I think I'm going to avoid flying for a long time.

[The Annoyed Man]

Richard Colvin Reid hid explosives in his shoes and hundreds of millions of innocent people have been forced to remove their shoes to pass through airport security.

Now this terrorist hides explosives in his underwear.

I think I'm going to avoid flying for a long time.

Good point!

Here's more, courtesy of my friend Pete:

Flight 253 passenger: Sharp-dressed man aided terror suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab onto plane without passport (MLive.com exclusive)
By Sheena Harrison | MLive.com
December 26, 2009, 2:22PM

A Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 says he witnessed Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab trying to board the plane in Amsterdam without a passport.

Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who posted an earlier comment about his experience, talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by sending a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were returning from a safari in Uganda when they boarded the NWA flight on Friday.
...
While Mutallab was poorly dressed, his friend was dressed in an expensive suit, Haskell said. He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, 'He's from Sudan and we do this all the time.'”

If confirmed by security camera footage - I assume EuroFolk have sense enough to have security cameras! - this could be huge. Trying to get on without a passport should have had the gate agent calling for security, pronto! Who was the agent and why did (s)he give this twerp a pass? And who accompanied the twerp (possibly a non-passenger in a supposedly secure area?!)?

[Purplehood]

Perp = Son of a Nigerian Minister
Bad press for Nigerians = Bad press for Prez with close Nigerian family ties

[Oldgringo]

If this terrorist was a Baptist, Quaker, Jew, Morman, Methodist, Episcopalian, Bhuddist, Neo-Nazi, Native American or a member of some other known group, would his background affiliation and perhaps motivation been mentioned? The POTUS came out today, spoke on the subject, and didn't seem to know who this guy was or what his affiliation or motivation may have been for trying to destroy himself, the plane, all aboard and maybe a few on the ground.

Who are these faceless people bent on the destruction of the U.S. and its citizens and why aren't they being called out? Don't we (U.S) have all sorts of "spooks" and other LEO's around the world who are supposed to be looking into these things BEFORE they happen?

[Jonathanaf]

What I don't understand is how this highly-explosive powder can be detected. Is it possible just to train dogs and have them sit at security and sniff people up and down?

[surprise_i'm_armed]

Perp = Son of a Nigerian Minister
Bad press for Nigerians = Bad press for Prez with close Nigerian family ties

Obama's family ties are Kenyan, not Nigerian.

**************************************************************
By the way, I understand that the BG was seated in 19A
and the fast-acting passenger was seated in something
like 20J. The hero basically went UP AND OVER a whole bunch of
seats to get from the right side of the plane to the leftmost
seat, in order to pounce on the perp.

Kudos to you sir for the quick response while closer people
were stunned and unresponsive.

SIA

[jimlongley]

What I don't understand is how this highly-explosive powder can be detected. Is it possible just to train dogs and have them sit at security and sniff people up and down?

This was a question often asked when I first worked at TSA, and it was answered pretty much this way: The time and expense required to use bomb sniffing dogs on every passenger would be huge, and the false alarms would be many. A dog can only work a relatively short amount of time, and it must work relatively slowly, and each dog requires its own handler.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The machines that TSA uses are "good enough" and will catch a very high percentage of attempts to sneak explosives through, so much so that a terrorist would have to try many times in order to get one bomb through. The fact that the only two instances that we know of where terrorists succeeded in getting a bomb on a plane, which then failed spectacularly, have occurred on flights that originated where security might be somewhat less stringent than what we have may have something to do with it.

Passengers in the US, and the airlines that carry them, would revolt if forced to really endure strip searches and bomb sniffing dogs, we want our security cheap and dirty, and quick, and everyone complains when it slows down or inconveniences them, it's always the other guy that needs to be inconvenienced.

The system, even here in the US, has holes that can be exploited if they are known - and it is worse in other countries, which is how Reid got his shoe bombs on the plane, and probably how this yoyo got his crotch bomb aboard. In Reid's case, shoes were not being checked and he got aboard with enough PETN to severly damage the plane. If he hadn't had such sweaty feet, he might have killed some folks. In this other case, even if he was patted down, they would have avoided contact with the area the bomb seems to have been in, and this exploited a known hole and allowed him to get it aboard.

When I was with TSA I used a couple of those holes to "sneak" stuff through security in inter-airport testing, but I knew the system intimately by then, and knew what to do and how to do it, and I still didn't succeed every try.

Look at all of the flack around the issue of the backscatter machine which would drastically reduce the possibility of this kind of thing happening - "It's an invasion of privacy"; "It's pornography" and such things - just let me tell you how much I get turned on by mannequin like views of hairless torsos.

There is absolutely no way we will ever close all of the holes, some of them are unanticipated and some are known but low percentage, but no system is ever perfect and therein lies the rub. The closer we get to perfect the less we will be satisfied with the delays and restrictions imposed and the harder the bad guys will try to find and exploit other holes.

To me the ideal thing would be if we went back to a simpler time, where each of us was responsible for our own selves and the right to swing a fist stopped at the other person's nose.

Sorry [/rant]

[Oldgringo]

Airline terrorist restraints:

1. How can we fight an enemy that we can't name?
2. If the U.S. inspections are too lengthy or too invasive for entry into, or travel within, the U.S., stay home.
3. If connecting flights/airlines can't/won't adhere to U'S. standards, see 2. above.
4. If the passenger looks like, or smells like, or comes from a possible terrorist locale, see 2. above.
5. in all other cases, see 2. above.

What's the problem?

[Purplehood]

Perp = Son of a Nigerian Minister
Bad press for Nigerians = Bad press for Prez with close Nigerian family ties

Obama's family ties are Kenyan, not Nigerian.

**************************************************************
By the way, I understand that the BG was seated in 19A
and the fast-acting passenger was seated in something
like 20J. The hero basically went UP AND OVER a whole bunch of
seats to get from the right side of the plane to the leftmost
seat, in order to pounce on the perp.

Kudos to you sir for the quick response while closer people
were stunned and unresponsive.

SIA

Darn, I am the stereotyping kind of guy that I tend to despise. Thanks for the clarification.

[The Annoyed Man]

Airline terrorist restraints:

1. How can we fight an enemy that we can't name?

That right there is the principle issue. And it's not that we can't name them, it's that we won't name them... the proverbial "we" that is.

Me? I know darn well it isn't Argentinian gauchos, Japanese businessmen, or Icelandic reindeer hunters who are a threat to bring a bomb on a plane. I know darn well it is not a racial issue either. Radicalized Chechen Muslims are as likely to bomb a plane (and have done so already) as are radicalized Arab Muslims, or radicalized Philippino Muslims or radicalized Indonesian Muslims. The common thread here is "radicalized Muslims."

Any fool can see that. But only a fool refuses to name it. What does that say about the administration and their enablers in the 527 media?