Passengers’ Quick Action Halted Attack
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| Sun, 12-27-2009 - 9:04am |
Now more restrictions. I've hate flying because it's so intrusive in fact I avoid it if possible.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/27/us/27plane.html?_r=1&hp
Despite the billions spent since 2001 on intelligence and counterterrorism programs, sophisticated airport scanners and elaborate watch lists, it was something simpler that averted disaster on a Christmas Day flight to Detroit: alert and courageous passengers and crew members.
During 19 hours of travel, aboard two flights across three continents, law enforcement officials said, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab bided his time. Then, just as Northwest Flight 253 finally began its final approach to Detroit around noon on Friday, he tried to ignite the incendiary powder mixture he had taped to his leg, they said.
There were popping sounds, smoke and a commotion as passengers cried out in alarm and tried to see what was happening. One woman shouted, “What are you doing?†and another called out, “Fire!â€
And then history repeated itself. Just as occurred before Christmas in 2001, when Richard C. Reid tried to ignite plastic explosives hidden in his shoe on a trans-Atlantic flight, fellow passengers jumped on Mr. Abdulmutallab, restraining the 23-year-old Nigerian.
Jasper Schuringa, a Dutch film director seated in the same row as Mr. Abdulmutallab but on the other side of the aircraft, saw what looked like an object on fire in the suspect’s lap and “freaked,†he told CNN.
“Without any hesitation, I just jumped over all the seats,†Mr. Schuringa said, in an account that other passengers confirmed.“I was thinking, Oh, he’s trying to blow up the plane. I was trying to search his body for any explosive. I took some kind of object that was already melting and smoking, and I tried to put out the fire and when I did that I was also restraining the suspect.â€
Mr. Schuringa said he had burned his hands slightly as he grappled with Mr. Abdulmutallab, aided by other passengers among the 289 on board, and began to shout for water.
“But then the fire was getting worse, so I grabbed the suspect out of the seat,†Mr. Schuringa said. Flight attendants ran up with fire extinguishers, doused the flames and helped Mr. Schuringa walk Mr. Abdulmutallab to first class, where he was stripped, searched and locked in handcuffs.
“The whole plane was screaming — but the suspect, he didn’t say a word,†Mr. Schuringa said.
He shrugged off praise for his swift action, which he said was reflexive. “When you hear a pop on the plane, you’re awake, trust me,†he said. “I just jumped. I didn’t think. I went over there and tried to save the plane.â€
In an affidavit filed in court, an F.B.I. agent said that Mr. Abdulmutallab stayed in the bathroom for 20 minutes before the attempt, returned to his seat, told his seatmates that his stomach was upset and covered himself with a blanket. It was then that the smoke and popping sounds began.
After he was subdued and the fire extinguished, a flight attendant asked him what had been in his pocket, and he answered, “explosive device,†the affidavit said. The powder was identified by the F.B.I. as PETN, a high explosive.
The close call was followed by several tense hours as counterterrorism officials checked on other United States-bound flights to determine whether more planes were targets, as in the thwarted 2006 plot to smuggle liquid explosives aboard multiple flights leaving from Britain.
They found no immediate signs that other flights were in danger, officials said. They tightened airport security, ordering new restrictions on carry-on luggage and passenger movement inside the cabin, but did not elevate the nation’s threat level, which has been at orange since 2006.
Dozens of investigators led by the Federal Bureau of Investigation were working Saturday to understand exactly how a passenger managed to get PETN and a syringe of chemicals aboard the flight. Intelligence agencies were studying intercepted communications to see whether clues were missed and to assess whether the incident could presage more attacks.
David Schilke, 49, of Livonia, Mich., who works in the information technology department at the Ford Motor Company, was traveling home from Moscow with his wife, Iliana, and their 5-year-old son, sitting two rows behind the suspect. He said he heard a pop, and then someone asking for water and screams coming from the rows in front of him. The fire, he said, lasted for a full minute.
“The guy wasn’t fighting or doing anything,†Mr. Schilke said. “He was just sitting there in the flames. I was shocked that he would do that.†He added that he was surprised at how little panic there was. Many passengers who were farther away thought the pops were from fireworks, he said.
Richard Griffith, 41, of Pontiac, Mich., who said he had been sitting in the back of the plane during the episode, praised the crew for its professionalism in preventing panic.
Mr. Griffith said the passenger who had been sitting next to the suspect told him the suspect got up once midflight to use the bathroom and returned to the bathroom about 20 or 30 minutes before the attempt, apparently to brush his teeth. Otherwise, he said, “He just sat there; he didn’t talk to nobody.â€
The episode, which riveted the attention of President Obama on vacation in Hawaii and prompted counterterrorism officials to rush back to work, capped a year in which plots of violence inside the United States have surged. The attempt appeared to underscore the continuing determination of Muslim militants to kill Americans more than eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Passengers transferring from foreign flights at the Amsterdam airport, where Mr. Abdulmutallab changed planes and boarded the flight bound for Detroit, are required to be screened by security there before taking off on another flight, an airport spokeswoman said Saturday. She could not confirm the details in Mr. Abdulmutallab’s case but said he was presumably subject to that sort of screening.
Investigators planned to interview all the passengers on the suspect’s flights and to look over any security-camera video footage of him, a law enforcement official said.
Mr. Abdulmutallab apparently left Murtala Muhammed Airport in Lagos aboard KLM Flight 588, a Boeing 777, at 11 on Christmas Eve and arrived at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam a little early, at 5:37 a.m. on Christmas Day.
Three hours later, at 8:54 a.m., Northwest 253, an Airbus A330, took off for Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, with three pilots, eight flight attendants and the 278 passengers.
Amsterdam has long been an airport of concern for American aviation security officials, like other major gateways in Europe, including London, Brussels and Frankfurt, where the Transportation Security Administration sees an unusually large number of hits from people on so-called selectee or no-fly lists associated with security threats, one former senior Homeland Security official said.
In 2007, the Amsterdam airport began testing body-scanning machines that can find threats hidden under passengers’ clothing, but there are only 10 such machines out of 200 security checkpoints at the sprawling airport. In the United States, the T.S.A. has begun to substitute similar machines, called millimeter-wave technology, for walk-through metal detectors.
“Those will pick up anything underneath clothing,†said Edmund S. Hawley, who served as the agency’s administrator until January. “If he had it taped to his leg, it could have easily identified something there.â€
Mr. Hawley said of Al Qaeda and like-minded militants: “They have been trying since 2001, and they are going to keep trying. You have to keep your vigilance up over the long term. That is the hard thing.â€
New Restrictions Quickly Added for Air Passengers




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Plane suspect was listed in terror database after father alerted U.S. officials
Complete article see link......
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/25/AR2009122501355.html?hpid=topnews
A Nigerian man charged Saturday with attempting to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day was listed in a U.S. terrorism database last month after his father told State Department officials that he was worried about his son's radical beliefs and extremist connections, officials said.
The suspect, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was added to a catch-all terrorism-related database when his father, a Nigerian banker, reported concerns about his son's "radicalization and associations" to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a senior administration official said. Abdulmutallab was not placed on any watch list for flights into the United States, however, because there was "insufficient derogatory information available" to include him, another administration official said.
Abdulmutallab was granted a two-year tourist visa by the U.S. Embassy in London in June 2008. He used the visa to travel previously to the United States at least twice, officials said.
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Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde
I was searched & scanned thoroughly for wearing an underwire bra. Had to remove my jacket & was patted down by airport security.
Terror Watch Lists Come Under Scrutiny
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126196454972906951.html
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's order to review the databases used to track terrorism suspects and keep them off airplanes comes amid growing concerns about those systems from lawmakers in both parties.
Lawmakers questioned watch-list policies Sunday after a Nigerian man who had been on such a list tried unsuccessfully to bring down a trans-Atlantic jetliner carrying 278 people Christmas Day.
"We have to have a better process to decide which people to move to the 'no-fly' list and which" should have secondary screening at airports, Rep. Jane Harman (D., Calif.), chairwoman of a House homeland security subcommittee on intelligence, said in an interview. "This is a learning experience. There was a failure."
Officials said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old suspect, received a visa at a U.S. consular outpost in London in 2008 allowing him to repeatedly enter the U.S. as a tourist.
In November 2009, officials said he was added to an entry-level, or preliminary, terrorism watch list maintained by the government. That came after his father warned officials at the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria that the young man had become radicalized by Islamic extremists. The father also warned that his son might be in contact with terrorist groups.
Mr. Abdulmutallab's entry onto the first list, called the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, essentially meant U.S. intelligence officials had opened a file on him, authorities said. There are more than 550,000 names on that list, which are shared across the government.
But authorities didn't have enough credible or derogatory information to elevate him to a narrower, more serious list of terrorism suspects, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday on NBC. "We did not have the kind of information that under the current rules would elevate him," she said.
Lawmakers want to know why his entry into the first terrorism database didn't automatically prompt a review of his visa status, or why he didn't get more serious scrutiny, which could have led to him being elevated.
With more screening, Mr. Abdulmutallab could have landed in a smaller database of 400,000 names, called the Terrorist Screening Data Base, the main database on international terrorism within the U.S. government, officials said.
That list is maintained by an multiagency group managed by the FBI. It is supposed to contain names of individuals who are "known or reasonably suspected to be or have been engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of or related to terrorism," according to an FBI Web site.
With additional scrutiny Mr. Abdulmutallab also might have been added to the roughly 14,000-person database maintained by the Transportation Security Administration called the "Selectee" list. Those people are supposed to be automatically selected for intensified, secondary screening at airports.
The next step up is the so-called no-fly list, which contains fewer than 4,000 names of people who are banned from jetliners.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R., Mich.) said Sunday in an interview that serious alarm bells should have sounded after Mr. Abdulmutallab's father went to U.S. authorities. "Within the intelligence community, I would think this would have gone right to the top of the pile, saying, 'We've got to look at this guy,'" Mr. Hoekstra said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/29/world/africa/29mutallabtext.html?ref=us
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>"Privacy advocates, for example, have tried to stop or at least slow the introduction of advanced checkpoint screening devices that use so-called millimeter waves to create an image of a passenger’s body, so officers can see under clothing to determine if a weapon or explosive has been hidden. Security officers, in a private area, review the images, which are not stored. Legislation is pending in the House that would prohibit the use of this equipment for routine passenger screening.
To date, only 40 of these machines have been installed at 19 airports across the United States — meaning only a tiny fraction of passengers pass through them. Amsterdam’s airport has 15 of these machines — more than just about any airport in the world — but an official there said Sunday that they were prohibited from using them on passengers bound for the United States, for a reason she did not explain."<
>"Mr. Mutallab, the suspect’s father, was scheduled to make a public statement on Monday after talking to Nigerian security officials in Abuja. A cousin of Mr. Abdulmutallab, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to offend the family, said in an interview on Sunday that there was no sign of radicalism in Mr. Abdulmutallab while he was growing up in Nigeria, though he was devout.
“We understand that he met some people who influenced him while in London,” where Mr. Abdulmutallab studied engineering, the cousin said. “He left London and went to Yemen where, we suspect, he mixed up with the people that put him up to this whole business.”
He added: “I think his father is embarrassed by the whole thing, because that was not the way he brought the boy up. All of us are shocked by it.”"<
Segments from.....
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/us/28terror.html?_r=1&hp
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8434805.stm
The US was aware that "a Nigerian" in Yemen was being prepared for a terrorist attack - weeks before an attempted bombing on a US plane.
ABC News and the New York Times say there was intelligence to this effect, but its source is unclear.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab flew from Lagos to Amsterdam before changing planes for a flight to Detroit on which he allegedly tried to detonate a bomb.
The Netherlands is to introduce body scanners on US flights within weeks.
Dutch Interior Minister Guusje Ter Horst said Mr Abdulmutallab did not raise any concerns as he passed through Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport to board the flight.
She said the airport would be able to use body scanners on all flights to the US from the airport in three weeks, adding that they would be a permanent fixture.
Obama denounces lapses
US President Barack Obama has said security failures were unacceptable.
He has said a systemic failure allowed Mr Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, to fly to the US on 25 December despite family members warning officials in November that he had extremist views.
The source of the intelligence about "a Nigerian" in Yemen was reported as coming from the Yemeni government or from US intercept intelligence, which can refer to intercepted e-mail and phone calls.
Mr Obama said he wanted to know why a warning weeks ago from Mr Abdulmutallab's father did not lead to the accused being placed on a no-fly list.
"We need to learn from this episode and act quickly to fix flaws in the system," Mr Obama said.
"When our government has information on a known extremist and that information is not shared and acted upon as it should have been, so that this extremist boards a plane with dangerous explosives that could have cost nearly 300 lives, a systemic failure has occurred."
Some passengers and crew tackled Mr Abdulmutallab in his seat about 20 minutes before landing in Detroit as he allegedly tried to detonate explosives in his underwear.
Following a preliminary investigation, the Dutch interior minister described the bomb as professionally made but executed in an "amateurish" way.
Mr Abdulmutallab has reportedly told investigators that he trained in Yemen with al-Qaeda.
He was living in Yemen from August to early December, the foreign ministry said, according to an earlier report from the official Saba news agency.
He had a visa to study Arabic at an institute in the capital, Sana'a.
CIA spokesman George Little earlier said the agency had become aware of Mr Abdulmutallab in November when his father, who had lost contact with him, visited the US embassy to seek help in finding him.
He said the agency had ensured the Nigerian's name was added to the government's terrorist database, and was forwarded to the National Counterterrorism Center.
Nigerian airports 'safe'
Meanwhile, Nigeria has rejected suggestions that its airport security was lax in allowing Mr Abdulmutallab to begin his journey from Lagos.
Nigeria's Information Minister Dora Akunyili told the BBC: "We are not disorganised and our airports are very safe."
Ms Akunyili said CCTV footage from Lagos airport showed Mr Abdulmutallab from check-in through to boarding the plane.
Lagos airport security has been tightened since the incident.
UK Transport Secretary Lord Adonis said it would be irresponsible if Britain did not carefully review its airport security, but stressed that President Obama's comments about flawed checks were directed at American security processes.
"We believe our security processes are robust - and with... additional checks to and from the United States, I believe it is perfectly safe and responsible for people to continue travelling," Lord Adonis said.
((If he was on the list why wasn't he thoroughly searched?))
Well, just because he was on a watch list, visited Yemen many times, hung out with terrorists, and his own father told authorities that he was a terrorist....doesn't necessarily mean that he was a terrorist. You see....we have to be VERY careful not of offend anybody these days. Our administration would rather hundreds of people die than we offend a couple of Muslim terrorists. It's the "new" American way.
Even though it took Obama THREE days to respond to this, he clearly pointed out that it was an "isolated incident". So you see....you have nothing to worry about. If you are a Muslim male, age between 20-40, have a record of hanging with terrorists....you will BREEZE through security. Nobody wants to be accused of racially profiling. However, if you are an aging grandma or a young mother with babies....be prepared for a strip search.
Gee, we have had 4 terrorist caught about 20 miles from where I live. One guy was a trucker that was going to take down the Brooklyn Bridge. The other 3 were going to blow up a Mall pretty close to me. When they were caught, I sure don't remember "W" coming on the news saying anything.
Maybe Obama should pass a law that every one rides a plane Naked!
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