False Flag Operation?

Official Version of Thwarted Attack on U.S. Airliner Full of Contradictions and Inconsistencies

More than one observer of the supposed terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approached Detroit on Christmas day got a feeling of déjà vu: Haven’t we seen all this before? In truth, much of what happened points to a false flag operation. The history of American military intervention across the globe is demonstrably replete with such conspiracies.

Excuses for War

The United States has been caught, again and again, successfully manipulating public opinion by using false flag attacks to justify their strategic goals. A few well-known examples: the 1898 explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, which was used to justify America’s declaration of war against Spain; the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Incident used to legitimize the U.S. attack on North Vietnam; the Bush administration plan to shoot down an aircraft bearing U.N. markings over Iraq and blaming it on Saddam Hussein. These are facts, not theories. There is a great deal that indicates the case of the arrested Nigerian student and the obsessive hype of his Islamic extremist ties to Yemen’s al-Qaida were parts of a concoction by one of America’s 16 security agencies.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian who was arrested, came from a region that deserves special notice. The United States imports one-fifth of its oil from Nigeria and other West African nations. So-called terrorism experts have recently been warning that it is imperative the region be included in “the war on al-Qaida.” Conveniently, a supposed al-Qaida branch in Yemen now claims responsibility for the failed attack, thus giving the United States its long-desired excuse to intervene in the internal affairs of the nation on the Arabian Peninsula that controls access to the Red Sea.

A feeling of déjà vu also emerges from the numerous discrepancies and contradictions in the official account of events that unfolded concerning Flight 253. Among them, for example, the marked disinterest officials had for the urgent and credible warnings prior to the attempted sabotage. The same goes for the unusual observations made by independent witnesses. The supposed repeat of U.S. intelligence failures also fits neatly into the picture. Officials were long aware of the Nigerian student’s personal details. Finally, the fact that the attempt was a near miss is also suspiciously familiar. The only thing different this time is al-Qaida’s supposed prompt claim of responsibility for what amounted to a blatant flop. Above all, the debacle being paraded before the public is being exploited by U.S. intelligence agencies in order to gain more funding and increased power.

Similarities

Following initial denials, the CIA has since admitted they had received sufficient early warning of the attack. One month before the flight, they obtained the Nigerian student’s name and even his passport number after his father, a former Nigerian government official and influential banker, had contacted the U.S. embassy in Nigeria and relayed his son’s terrorist intentions to the local CIA representative in November. The intelligence apparatus was thus aware that Abdulmutallab had become a religious fanatic who had spent several months last summer in a Yemeni training camp. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano told the New York Times that his agency had informed all pertinent U.S. agencies in order to ensure Abdulmutallab’s name was “put on U.S. government terrorist watch lists.*” However, that did not happen.

Whenever an airline passenger pays his fare in cash and has only carry-on luggage, current U.S. anti-terror procedures regard this as a red flag. Regardless of the fact that both these criteria were met in this case, no special precautions were taken. The fact that the student’s name was not on any U.S. terrorist watch lists in a nation that so hysterically pushes awareness of terrorism can hardly be an oversight. Rather, the similarities to the 9/11 attacks are striking. In the lead-up to the incident, no less than three independently operating FBI anti-terror teams had gotten wind of the plan, but further investigations were stopped on orders from higher-up. In addition, the fact that Abdulmutallab’s explosive charge did not detonate but merely resulted in a slow burn is reminiscent of the first attack on the World Trade Center in 2003. As later investigations showed, the “Islamic terrorist group” responsible for the attack had been completely infiltrated by the FBI. The FBI even provided them with the explosives. Instead of exploding, they only smoked, but that was enough to result in the deaths of several innocent victims.

[*Editor’s Note: Gimigliano’s quote could not be verified in the New York Times, but was published in the Detroit Free Press.]