The Christmas Day attempt by the son of a prominent Nigerian banker and business tycoon connected closely to top Nigerian leaders to detonate a chemical improvised explosive device aboard Delta Airlines flight 253 from Amsterdam Schiphol to Detroit was a false flag operation carried out by the intelligence tripartite grouping of the CIA, Mossad, and India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), according to WMR’s Asian intelligence sources who closely monitor the activities of the three agencies in India and Southeast Asia.
The tripartite alliance of the CIA, Mossad, and RAW were behind the terrorist attacks on Mumbai earlier last year and on December 28 Rupee News reported the three agencies worked together, along with former Afghan KHAD intelligence agents, to assassinate former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto: “The Benazir assassination was pre-planned and executed via triangulation by KHAD, RAW, CIA and Mossad using the most modern radioactive weapons available in the market. The Israeli PM publicly admitted helping India in Kargil recently. The purpose of the covert KHAD, RAW, CIA, Mossad operations is to destabilize Pakistan. The IMF plan to de-fang Pakistan in 2000 did not work, but provincial autonomy will make the center bankrupt triggering an implosion.”
The outcome of the failed terrorist attempt by Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab on the Detroit-bound plane has resulted in major Christmas gifts for the neocons and militarists who still call the shots on U.S. policy: the deployment of privacy-invasive millimeter wave (MMW) full body scanning equipment at airports in North America and Europe. The ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, Representative Peter King (R-NY), who is an ardent defender of the Catholic Church and its prelates in Ireland, has defended the scanning system which can image the naked bodies of passengers, including children and babies, an increase in the U.S. military and intelligence presence in Yemen, retention of US USAPATRIOT Act surveillance provisions, an increase in racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims — and because Mutallab is African — blacks in the United States, and more cumbersome travel restrictions for airline passengers.
The neocon propagandists are already spinning counterclaims to reports that indicate that Mutallab was a witting accomplice of a larger plot cooked up by American, Israeli, ajd Indian intelligence agents to carry out yet another false flag terror operation on American soil. The eyewitness testimonies of Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell and his attorney wife Lori Haskell are being pilloried by the corporate media after the two were featured on major U.S. television networks. Haskell and his wife witnessed a “well-dressed Indian man” arrange for Mutallab to board Delta 253 without a passport at the check-in desk at Schiphol.
Haskell told CBS News: “Only the Indian man spoke, and what he said was, this man needs to board the plane, and he doesn’t have a passport. And the ticket agent then responded saying you need a passport to board the plane, and the Indian man then said he’s from Sudan. We do this all the time.”
WMR has learned that the Indian man is suspected by Asian intelligence services of being a RAW agent who used his influence to convince airline and airport security personnel that Mutallab was a bona fide Sudanese refugee. Mutallab reportedly spent several hours in a Schiphol airport lounge before boarding the Delta flight. Dutch agents are reportedly scanning Schiphol CCTV footage and have reason to believe that Mutallab had accomplices at the airport, which bolsters the witness accounts of the Haskells. The FBI has interviewed the Haskells and the bureau, as is its modus operandi, appears to be intimidating witnesses and pressuring them to support the government’s party line.
The neocon spin machine is also refuting reports that Mutallab traveled to the United States without a passport and that his ticket was only one-way. The facts emerging are that Mutallab was not traveling on a Nigerian passport but on an Italian passport. Mutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, happens to hold the Italian Order of Merit. In addition, Mutallab’s ticket was purchased in Accra, Ghana, with $2,831 in cash and was later re-issued, on December 16, with a different itinerary at the KLM office in Lagos. The original itinerary was Lagos-Amsterdam-Detroit-Amsterdam-Accra but the return leg on January 8, 2010, was changed from Amsterdam to Lagos instead of Accra.
Previously, WMR reported that the security company that cleared Mutallab in Schiphol is ICTS, a firm that is headquartered in Israel and Amstelveen, Netherlands. The firm also cleared attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid for a Miami-bound American Airlines flight from Paris in December 2001. Reid, who was bound for Antigua, was profiled after he purchased his ticket at a travel agency in the 18th arrondissement in Paris. Reid had previously traveled to Turkey, Pakistan, Israel, Egypt, the Netherlands, Belgium and France and he obtained pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN), a component of the explosive Semtex, and his specially designed shoes in Amsterdam. Reid was linked by French authorities to French convert to Islam Jerome Courtailler, who, in 2004, was sentenced in absentia by a Dutch court to six years for plotting to attack U.S. targets in Belgium and France. Mutallab’s undershorts also contained PETN.
There is a possibility that Mutallab was recruited to carry out a false flag attack after another one failed on November 13. A Somali man was arrested at Mogadishu airport with the same chemicals, powder, and syringe combination that Mutallab used to ignite his clothing. The Somali man was attempting to board a Daallo Airlines flight from Mogadishu to Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, Djibouti, and Dubai. Daallo is the national flag carrier of Djibouti and is owned by Dubai World’s Istithmar World Aviation (IWA) Holdings. Dubai World’s recent financial woes sent shock waves through the global financial community. It is also noteworthy that Delta 253 passenger Jasper Schuringa, the young man who wrestled Mutallab to the ground and prevented him from carrying out his terrorist mission, was driven to Schiphol on Christmas morning by his friend Chris Van Amersfoort. Van Amersfoort’s Facebook page lists himself as a “fan of” Dubai World’s owner “His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum,” the Emir of Dubai.
Daallo Airlines has an interline agreement with a single U.S. airline, which happens to be Delta Airlines, the same airline that saw Mutallab successfully board its flight 253 in Schiphol. It has similar agreements with other airlines that fly to the United States, including Qatar Airways, Saudia, Ethiopian Airlines, and Alitalia.
Schuringa’s father works for Shell and, in 1993, they were evacuated by the French foreign Legion from Gabon during riots by demonstrators opposed to the tainted re-election of Gabon’s presidential dictator Omar Bongo. The Curacao-born Jasper Schuringa attended film school in Miami and he also lived in Oman. After accusations in the media that he was publicizing himself over the Muttalab incident, Schuringa largely receded from public view. Schuringa was en route to Costa Rica via Detroit to visit his sister. The National Counter-terrorism office in The Hague is being mum about any connections it had with Schuringa, according to the Dutch paper Parool.
On October 18, a little less than a month prior to the attempt by the syringe- and chemical-armed Somali to board the Daallo Airlines flight from Mogadishu, Shaykh Muqtaar Abu Zubeyr, the leader of Somalia’s radical Al Shahab Islamic Movement, warned Somalis in leaflets distributed in Mogadoshu’s Bakaraha market and other points in the city not to fly on Daallo Airlines, Somalia’s largest carrier, because he said the airline had “close ties” with the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia, the United States and the “Jewish government” of Israel.
Before moving from Egypt, Mutallab was in an MBA course in Dubai at the time of the Daallo warning. Mutallab later dropped out of school in Dubai.
Mutallab’s father, Umaru, the retired chairman of First Bank of Nigeria (FBN), is among the top elite of Nigeria, counting among his friends the top royalty of northern Nigeria, including the Emir of Gombe, the Emir of Zazzau, and the Sultan of Sokoto, as well as Nigerian President Umaru Musa Yar’ Adua, who has been recovering from a mysterious illness in Saudi Arabia. Mutallab’s empire included FBN (UK), which its president described as “the very first UK bank owned by a Nigerian bank and could be counted as an equal to other UK banks.” Mutalan was also a contender to be President of the National Council of the Nigeria Stock Exchange. In 2003, Mutallab formed Nigeria’s first Islamic bank, Jaiz International Bank.
The same bureaucratic stovepiping issues used by the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities to explain away the lack of intelligence on the 9/11 attacks are at play with the Delta 253 incident. Of course, all these problems were to have been solved by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the Directorate of National Intelligence. Mutallab was entered as a terrorist suspect in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) database of 500,000 names maintained by the director of National Intelligence’s National Counter-terrorism Center (NCTC) but not on the “no fly” list maintained by the Transportation Security Administration(TSA).
On November 19, just six days after the Somali attempted to board the plane in Mogadishu with a syringe and chemicals, the elder Mutallab met with the CIA Station Chief at the U.S. embassy in Abuja, the Nigerian capital. Mutallab told the CIA official that he was concerned about the radicalization of his son, who was called “Alfa” — a term for an Islamic scholar — while attending the British International School in Lome, Togo. The elder Mutallab was quite emphatic that his son posed a significant security risk.
After dropping out of the MBA program in Dubai, the younger Mutallab turned off his cell phone and destroyed the phone’s SIM card before leaving Dubai for Yemen where it is said he wished to improve his Arabic. It is not known who bought Mutallab’s ticket to Detroit in Accra and why the return destination was changed from Accra to Lagos. Mutallab’s multiple entry visa for the United States was issued on June 16, 2008, with an expiration date of June 16, 2010.
In response to the elder Mutallab’s warning, the U.S. embassy in Abuja sent a Visa Viper cable to the State Department and NCTC on November 20. However, Mutallab’s name was not added to the no-fly list. The State Department is refusing to disclose the classification of Mutallab’s visa and State Department spokesman Ian Kelly is refusing to reveal information on Mutallab’s visa application.
The Daily Trust of Abuja penned the following editorial in the aftermath of the flight 253 incident: “The story caused anxiety among regular air travellers, not only for the safety of planes, but also for the kind of reception that Nigerian travellers to Europe and the US, especially Muslim ones, are likely to get in the next months and years. The story also excited Northern Nigeria’s many conspiracy theorists, who think another grand Western plot is in the offing to tarnish the image of Muslims, possibly as a prelude to another invasion.” The editorial added, “Among officials of Nigeria’s embattled Federal Government, though, the story caused a mix of anxiety and relief. Anxiety, because it threatens to throw this country’s fitful Rebranding Campaign into further chaos. But it provided welcome relief from endless newspaper commentaries on President Yar’adua’s health.”
The Nigerians are obviously suspicious also about those behind the attempt on the aircraft. The Abuja editorial continues: “Bringing down a plane is not a thought that comes easily to people in Northern Nigeria. Most people here, with me as a typical example, cannot breathe easily in a plane until it hits the tarmac. A man who holds fast to a plane’s aluminium frame for support during a turbulent take-off hardly can think of bombing it. This explosive substance that Faruk allegedly used in the Delta Airlines plane, pentaerythritol or PETN, may be known to British school kids, but I have never heard of it. To think that I once taught in a university’s Faculty of Science. If indeed Faruk told the Americans that he was an Al-Qaeda operative, then he was a very poor one, to be frank. His bomb, which he said he got in Yemen, was weak [exploding like a fire cracker] and technically deficient [failed to go off properly]. He was easily subdued by a film producer, did not struggle when he was grabbed, did not say anything when they held him, and almost as soon as he reached the FBI station, he began to sing like a canary. Sounds very much like the gentle British lad that he is.”
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report
