Pundita

Tuesday, January 12

Haiti earthquake (UPDATED 23 X as of 4:10 PM ET)

(All times in these notes are Eastern Standard)

See my 2:20 PM update about some aid agencies being evacuated.

UPDATE 1/14 5:20 PM

Reuters: U.S. military mobilizes thousands for Haiti relief: "The U.S. military is mobilizing thousands of soldiers, sailors and Marines for relief efforts in Haiti."

*********************UPDATE 4:10 PM
From RBO: 3:34 PM 1/14:

It needs to be said. This situation has moved from earthquake status to aftershock to bringing in supplies and helpers but all too late. No way to move debris to find bodies dead or alive. This is when all the horror stories start and the occasional miracle happens. Heat, filth, rubble, hopelessness. All the $100 million contributions cannot change this picture.

From my emails to correspondents over the past hour:

Oh, man
Shep Smith (Fox) just asked reporter on the ground whether that was a body or live being bulldozed in the rubble behind him. Reporter has evidentially gotten used to seeing his. He said there's no more living in that rubble. he said this is one of the stinkiest areas of city. So this means we can forget trying to get anywhere near an accurate death toll.

Looters now following in the wake
Reporter he was just speaking with said they better get security in there fast
Aftershocks are continuing. You're right. They need to abandon the city. Weather report just now: hot and humid. Well, at there's no rain to contribute to mudslides. Also, a major tourist town was devastated. I have lost the name of the town in the shuffle of reports.

No evidence of organized relief operation
Fox reporter just said that when he arrived at airport about 9 hrs ago he expected to see pallets of water and food piled up. Nothing.

From Fox: Haitians descending on airport trying to get out
Very dangerous situation building up. All Haitians fearing riots will break out. Of course airport is reserved for just a few people getting out and aid flights coming in. "Haitians realize it's now every man, woman, child for himself." Temperature 90 degrees; smell of rotting corpses overwhelming. No signs left of organized attempt to dig out survivors from "acres and acres" of rubble. (French sending in about 70 rubble clearing experts.) Now all efforts on getting aid to those still alive.
quake.
************************
UPDATE 1/14 2:50 PM

(See 2:20 update about some aid agencies being evacuated.)

Fox: US military has established FOB at Haiti airport. They will coordinate all flights into and from the airport and they're going to oversee offloading of all the supplies. They're bringing in forklifts so that will halt the gridlock (see last update), although it could take several hours.

> WSJ reports:

*************************Crisis on top of crisis

UPDATE 1/14 2:30 PM
> Fox reported that some aid agencies (didn't say how many or which ones) are now evacuating their people from Port au Prince to protect them because of the worsening security situation there and difficulty getting enough food/water to their own people.

> Fox reports traffic jam: The international airport in Haiti was just reopened for 24 service a few hours ago but now the FAA is limiting and/or suspending flights into the airport because there's no room on the tarmac for all the supplies being off-loaded. There's only one landing strip and not enough equipment for offloading the huge pallets of supplies.

Also, there's a gasoline shortage so pilots are being warned that depending on where they're coming in from, they might not have enough fuel for return trip.

> Fox reporter in Puerto Rico says that because of the airport problem in Haiti many of the large transport planes are landing at the international airport in that country, which is only two hours from Haiti. Then they wait for clearance to take off for Haiti.

> Fox reports that the port is still not open.

> From a CNN TV report this morning, evidentially there is potable water in some parts and/or buildings in Port au Prince; earlier today a reporter at a hotel there showed that hotel staff had turned on the water, run a large garden hose from a sink, and slung it over the balcony to people on the street. People were going there with any kind of container they could find to fill up.

How did the hotel manage to keep safe water? Unknown, but if it's just that they have an enough gasoline stockpiled to keep emergency generator running to pump the water, well, that would be one explanation. I think I know which hotel this is -- probably the same one that's opened its doors to foreign journalists, aid officials and not charging them anything.
************************
1:20 PM - Notes

After I posted the 6:45 AM update for 1/14 I crashed for a few hours, during which Brenda at RBO continued adding updates at her blog, which I'm now posting below. So we're up to 17 updates, I think, or at least according to Brenda. She also added four U.S. Navy videos to the 6:45 update (See her blog.)

The big news of the morning is that U.S. Special Operations got the Haiti airport functional enough that it's now reopened for 24-hour operations. That is huge; now critical supplies can start flooding in. (See 9:45 AM update below for more info).

Brenda also sent me this: New: Tweet @southcomwatch or go to SOUTHCOM.mil -- US Southern Command -- for Haiti updates.
**************************
UPDATE 1/14 12:10 PM

Charles Forelle and Pooja Bhatia report for the WSJ Haiti Despairs as Quake Deaths Mount:

youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvzu3sTjels]
***************************
UPDATE 1/14 9:45 AM

White House: U.S. Special Operations Reopens Haitian Airport

Elizabeth Williamson, WSJ, reported 9:41 AM:

*************************
UPDATE 6:45 AM Thursday, January 14

Who's in Charge?

Dazed Blue Helmets

Veteran Reuters reporter, Briton Andrew Cawthorne's haunting, evocative journal entries as he sorts through his impressions since arriving in Haiti.

[...] U.N. peacekeepers -- 9,000 are stationed in Haiti -- dot the streets but look bemused, overwhelmed and worried about their own circumstances.

"I have not even been able to call my wife yet. She may think I'm dead," said one Chilean peacekeeper, who asked not to be named.

He and some blue-helmet colleagues from other Latin American nations sat on a line of vehicles -- including a tractor, earth-mover, and two cranes -- facing a road covered in rubble that they had been tasked with clearing.

"Where do we start? Just look at this," the soldier said. "And imagine what it's like in the areas we can't get to." [...]

Road clearing? The heavy machinery is needed now for rescuing people buried under rubble. Who's in charge? Chaos. Despair.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told French media his country's ambassador reported that everyone in the U.N. building, including mission chief Hedi Annabi, appeared to be dead. U.N. officials would say only that Annabi is unaccounted for." (AP/Fox - January 13)

Washington Post January 14:

150 U.N. staff members remain trapped under rubble in Haiti

As rescue crews dug through the wreckage of the Christopher Hotel, which houses the mission's headquarters in Port-au-Prince, the world body confirmed the deaths of 16 officials, including 13 Brazilian and Jordanian peacekeepers. However, it said it expected that most of those still missing would not survive.

"It's clear a high number of them might be dead," said Alain Le Roy, the top U.N. peacekeeping official.

Fog of War

Yesterday Fox announced that all 172 U.S. embassy staff were accounted for. Today's Washington Post reports:

U.S. officials expressed particular concern about the 172 Americans posted at the embassy, and about the roughly 45,000 Americans who live in Haiti, few of whom had been in contact with officials by midday [Wednesday]. The embassy building is one of a handful that were relatively unscathed, officials said, and is serving as the center of the U.S. relief effort.

For now I'm going to assume that the staff are okay. I'll check again later today.

Gunshots

Yesterday evening a CNN anchor mentioned that Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who'd arrived earlier in the day in Port au Prince, had reported that he'd heard gunshots. The anchor didn't say where Gupta was when he heard the shots. Ever since the quake has struck there has been cooperation in the rescue efforts and no reports of major looting or serious crime. But that could change quickly.

Also yesterday the head of the country's national police set some confusion to rest; he explained that the authorities had released all the prisoners in the main prison because the roof was starting to collapse. That moots yesterday's hot question of whether the U.S. and Haiti's government should consider sending the prisoners to Gitmo. First the released prisoners would have go be found and quite understandably they've made themselves scarce. The police chief is asking police forces around the world to send officers to Haiti and pitch in with law enforcement.

Relief Effort from Stateside: a colossus girds for battle against disaster

Larry Johnson (who had worked for the U.S. Dept. of State for years) reporting on John Batchelor's radio show last night. From my notes on his discussion:

-- For a humanitarian effort, all U.S. military in Haiti would report to the U.S. Ambassador, not the U.S. military command.

-- USAID (under the U.S. Department of State's authority) has activated the OFDA disaster response plan, headed up by Rajiv Shah. That's what President Obama and his cabinet were working on yesterday and helping to coordinate the plan with myriad agencies.

-- The plan is textbook and well-rehearsed, so all that the Obama team had to do was follow instructions. Larry (who is no friend of the Obama Administration) has given Obama good marks for his efforts.

So far everything is proceeding like clockwork -- except, I note, the web page for OFDA, which as of 2:00 AM had not been updated with information about the response to Haiti. However, the site has plenty of information so you can get an idea of what they're doing.

State's DipNote blog is providing information on that agency's efforts and provides information sources; they've also set up links for texting donations to relief agencies.

-- Larry: OFDA activated search-and-rescue teams in Los Angeles, Fairfax (Virgina) and Miami-Dade County. These are three of the best trained teams in the United States. They got the plane packed and were off to Haiti within 24 hours --- half the usual time. They take their own supplies; they understand there won't be any supplies in Haiti.

-- Larry, in answer to John's question about how people in Haiti are functioning without food and potable water: "The adrenaline rush has kept people going; it's like that during the first two days. On the third and fourth days people start to crash."

Today's Washington Post:

[...] Naval ships steamed south and flights began shuttling search-and-rescue teams to dig through rubble in Port-au-Prince. Military aircraft flew over the island, mapping the destruction, while U.S. officials coordinated the efforts of nongovernmental aid agencies. Coast Guard helicopters began flying seriously wounded Americans from the U.S. Embassy on the island nation to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, about 200 miles away.

[...]

But even as U.S. agencies lined up to help, officials sounded a note of concern, saying they are deeply worried about whether Haiti's infrastructure can handle the influx of help. The island's airport and seaport sustained substantial damage in the temblor.

"If the port is severely damaged, that makes it very, very difficult" to deliver relief supplies, said U.S. Coast Guard Rear Adm. James A. "Jim" Watson IV, director of Atlantic area operations.[...]

Last night Fox reported that the port is "unusable." From what John Batchelor reported last night I think it's more accurate to say that the port is closed for U.S. inspection; it has to be certified safe for offloading all the heavy equipment. The extent of the damage to the port is unknown at this point -- at least, as of early this morning. The U.S. is deploying a veritable armada, including a floating hospital. See Wikipedia for the list.

Haiti's Neighbor

The Dominican Republic has not had terribly friendly relations with Haiti, their only neighbor on the island of Hispaniola. However, DR's president and the citizens of that country have thrown themselves into doing whatever they can to help the Haitians in their darkest hour. According to Wikipedia's section on international assistance at their 2010 Haiti Earthquake page:

President Leonel Fernández rallied the international community to help its neighbor to overcome a "real tragedy." Its air force is currently picking up survivors for aid and is transporting trained dogs to sniff for victims under rubble.

The Dominican government has sent eight mobile medical units along with 36 doctors including orthopedics, traumatologists, anesthesiologists, and surgeons. As well, 39 trucks with canned food have been dispatched, along with 10 mobile kitchens and 110 cooks who can prepare 100,000 meals per day.

The Dominican Airport at El Higuero (5 miles North of Santo Domingo) is working as a hub to carry help local and international resources. According to sources, 19 private planes and 14 military helicopters are being used to carry help to Haiti.

An air bridge is working between Port-au-Prince and Santiago where people are being attended at the Hospital Metropolitano de Santiago (HOMS), a private hospital in Santiago city.[...]

Andrew Cawthorne was not impressed. From his 12:38 AM ET entry today:

[...] There appears to be little major relief work under way yet.

Neighboring Dominican Republic has sent in some truckloads of aid and a few ambulances, which came screaming back out of Haiti with some injured people before night fell on Wednesday

He hasn't seen the air bridge. I don't think he got much sleep:

In the frightening pitch black of quake-stricken Haiti's night, religious songs rise from groups of people huddled in open spaces for safety and solidarity.

The chanting and clapping, mainly by women, echo from hill to hill, street to street, as Haitians pray for their dead and ask God to spare them more suffering after an earthquake that has killed thousands and flattened much of the capital.

While the widespread singing provides comfort, the jarring shrieks and sobs of injured children -- some lying in the street clutching bloody gashes -- are a haunting reminder of the untended suffering in Haiti.

The dawn has arrived in Haiti. I haven't looked at television yet to see what the new day brings. I myself stayed awake through the night. I'll sleep now, for a few hours, then turn on the TV.
*****************************************
UPDATE 6:30 PM
> Fox report at 6:00 PM:

"US has accounted for all 172 embassy employees in Haiti"
"Giant C-4 aid delivery planes arriving at airport- pilots flying in by sight"

> Interesting Tom Foreman discussion at CNN around 5:00 PM about the physics of the quake -- quoting scientists who're trying to estimate the number of dead. He showed that the quake 'run' was actually away from the most heavily populated area (shanty towns on hillsides) toward the least populated. He also noted that the shanty town houses tended to have lighter roofs -- e.g., tin. This might mean fewer deaths than in better off areas using concrete.

UPDATE 4:30 PM

(Fox reported at 4:45 that State Dept. was giving a briefing on the situation in Haiti. It's being televised on CSPAN2.)

> 4:00 PM summary from Fox News Cable:

The port at the moment "not usable."

Sewer service and potable water not available

Most of 45,000 Americans in Haiti still unaccounted for.

Citigroup reports that their office in Port au Prince (or suburb; they didn't specify) was destroyed. "The fate of the 40 Citi employees in the building is unknown."

> The news about the port is very disturbing because it's confirmed that only one runway at the international airport is working and tower communications are still out. So the first thing they have to do, before U.S. relief ships can dock, is repair the port.

> "A Coast Guard helicopter evacuated four critically injured U.S. Embassy staff to the naval station in Guantanamo for treatment, a statement from the U.S. Southern Command said." -- See report below for link.

> Around 3:30 PM Fox interviewed some sort of official (sorry; it's been a hectic day) who said the Pentagon doesn't want to discuss the possibility, at this point ,of transferring Haitian refugees or prisoners from the damaged or destroyed main Haiti prison to Guantanamo. Official said that military is saying that this is an issue for another day. That comports with what SOCOM Gen. Foley said during the briefing this morning.

> Despite the alleged port disrepair, and while several countries are sending all kinds of aid (e.g., Italy sending a mobile hospital), this is fast shaping up to be a U.S. military story, as it was during the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. U.S. has close proximity to Haiti and is marshaling aid via military/Coast Guard ships. Brenda just sent information about U.S. military actions to help Haiti, which I will put up below.

> Even though CNN is doing great coverage of the disaster and has already gotten what seems to be several reporters into Port au Prince, Fox cable now seems to be focusing on interviews with U.S. military/civilian government spokespersons stateside. So if you're following the situation via American TV, keep checking back at Fox News Cable as well -- and don't neglect their website if you can't get Fox cable.

> The U.S. Department of State is reportedly going to give a televised briefing at some point this afternoon on U.S. aid efforts. That according to Fox. We'll see.

> Also, don't neglect Wikipedia as a source. As they did with the swine flu outbreak they've marshaled a small army of volunteers to keep the public updated. See 2010 Haiti Earthquake page. They provide information on international aid efforts, donations, etc.

> Okay, here's what Brenda sent. (When she crossposts this 12th update she'll be adding more videos.)

YouTube videos on SOCOM and USAID briefings on U.S. aid.

1. Report: U.S. Coast Guard, Navy head to Haiti to help with earthquake relief efforts.

U.S. Coast Guard crews are clearing ports in Haiti of debris and flying overhead to assess damage today while Navy sailors are en route to the country in the wake of Tuesday's devastating earthquake.

Coast Guard vessels and aircraft left for Haiti at 3:30 this morning, with the cutters tasked with making sure the ports are open and free of debris so relief supplies can arrive and the aircraft charged with assessing the damage and identifying places where people need help, said Petty Officer James Harless, of Coast Guard District 7 in Miami.

The Coast Guard sent four cutters to Haiti — Valiant, from Miami; Forward, from Portsmouth, Va.; Tahoma, from Portsmouth, N.H., and Mohawk, from Key West, Fla. The Coast Guard also sent two C-130 aircraft, one fixed-wing Falcon and three HH-60 "Jayhawks."

A Coast Guard helicopter evacuated four critically injured U.S. Embassy staff to the naval station in Guantanamo for treatment, a statement from the U.S. Southern Command said.

"This is just a really bad situation with a lot of devastation, and unfortunately it looks like a lot of loss of life," said Lt. Cmdr. Rob Wyman, Coast Guard Atlantic Area public affairs officer. "We're engaged and acting quickly to get the right pieces in place to contribute to the overall response effort. We're doing everything we can right now."

The U.S. Southern Command is sending a team of 30 people to Haiti to support the relief efforts. The team includes military engineers, planners, a command and control group and communication specialists.

A U.S. Navy P-3 Orion aircraft from the Forward Operating Location at Comalapa, El Salvador, took off early this morning to survey the area affected by the earthquake and a Navy aircraft carrier, USS Carl Vinson, is expected to arrive off the coast of Haiti Thursday, according to SOUTHCOM.

The Air Force is going to the international airport at Port au Prince to help with air traffic control and airfield operations. They are expected to arrive in Haiti this afternoon.

President Barack Obama said in a statement that he has directed the administration to "respond with a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives."

"The people of Haiti will have the full support of the United States in the urgent effort to rescue those trapped beneath the rubble, and to deliver the humanitarian relief, the food, water and medicine, that Haitians will need in the coming days," Obama said. "In that effort, our government, especially USAID and the Departments of State and Defense are working closely together and with our partners in Haiti, the region, and around the world."

Obama designated the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Dr. Rajiv Shah, to be the government's unified disaster coordinator.

2. Report:

The U.S. military has a long history of involvement in Haiti, including major interventions like Operation Uphold Democracy in 1994 and 1995. More recently, Haiti has been a destination for military-led humanitarian assistance missions like Continuing Promise 2009, pictured here. The Associated Press, quoting White House sources, says that less than 20 U.S. military personnel are currently in the country, and they are prepared to take part in humanitarian operations.

3. Report:

Thousands of Hampton Roads sailors received orders this morning to prepare to deploy to Haiti as part of a massive U.S. effort to deliver humanitarian assistance in the wake of Tuesday’s devastating earthquake.

At least four Norfolk-based ships are getting ready to leave for the impoverished country, said Ted Brown, a spokesman with Norfolk’s Fleet Forces Command. The amphibious assault ship Bataan, the guided missile cruiser Normandy and the dock landing ships Fort McHenry and Carter Hall will likely leave port by Friday, the Navy said.

Expeditionary forces based at the Little Creek campus of the Joint Expeditionary Base also are preparing to deploy, Brown said.

Additional Navy ships that will deliver humanitarian assistance include the frigate Underwood, based in Mayport, Fla., and the hospital ship Comfort, homeported in Baltimore.

The San Diego-based aircraft carrier Carl Vinson, which left Norfolk on Tuesday after finishing its midlife overhaul, has been redirected to load equipment and supplies to assist in the recovery, Brown said.

Several U.S. Coast Guard ships also have been deployed to the area, including the Portsmouth-based cutter Forward, which arrived in Haiti early this morning, said Senior Chief Petty Officer Steve Carleton. The Coast Guard’s first order of business will be to assess whether main ports near Port-au-Prince are clear to receive ships carrying aid, Carleton said.

UPDATE 3:00 PM

> CNN reported at 2:45 PM that "miraculously" Haitians are uploading images of the devastation and relief work to social media sites, notably YouTube and Facebook. "The images are flooding in." This is helping aid workers, government disaster planners get a handle on the situation.

Miraculous is right; last night reports were that cell phone towers were down -- obviously, not all of them, even though it's still extremely hard to get calls into and out of Haiti.

This is a history-making use of Web 2.0; the trend was obvious during the Iranian protests last year, when social media played the critical role in getting out news. But the use of social media in Haiti is providing unprecedented intel in a disaster of this kind, which will translate to many lives saved.

> Also, just now, from Fox Cable News:

"There is no clean water in Haiti." I think they must mean in Port au Prince and suburbs, but in any case the water situation for about two million people is dire.

Huge need for donated blood.

Main prison "out of commission." (General Foley was asked during his 12:40 PM for SOCOM whether the Pentagon was considering transferring prisoners frm the prison to Guantanamo. He said the situation was under review.)

(3:10 PM Fox) Military confirmed only one runway in operation. Ships from U.S. will play a major role in getting aid to Haiti

> CNN: Dr Sanjay Gupta is now on the ground in Port au Prince. I assume he's simply dived in and is giving medical assistance in any way he can and will report on a catch-can basis. CNN has seemingly marshaled every one of their bureaus around the world to work on this story. They've recognized the importance of this story and are giving it full attention.
**************************
UPDATE 12:45 PM

All these reports from CNN:

> Gen. Foley SOCOM press briefing on Haiti at 12:40 PM: Runway at international airport seems in good condition but control tower does not have communications and passenger terminal is damaged. Another source mentioned only one runway -- not clear on that, or whether it's just that only one runway is operable. SOCOM still assessing the situation there but Navy carrier, Coast Guard cutter and ships on the way.

> There are between 40-45,000 Americans in Haiti; many are unaccounted for.

> Anderson Cooper landed in Haiti around noon. He's already given a report from the streets of Port au Prince near the destroyed cathedral. Before he lost audio around 1:15 PM he mentioned he was heading for the hospital -- whether this means there's only one hospital functioning, unknown. Anderson or his camera person got a lot of footage of rescue efforts, devastation.

He reported seeing at least 25 bodies in the streets during his drive; people using their bare hands, shovels, pick axes to dig out survivors under the rubble.

He said electricity and water are out.

> Doctors without Borders reports that several of their people are unaccounted for and that all three of their aid stations are "inoperable" because of the quake.

> At least 15 UN peacekeeping troops in addition to at least 100 UN staff dead or missing.

> Red Cross reports that all local relief agencies are overwhelmed.

> Haitian PM reports to CNN that the aid agencies that usually can be depended on to help are in need in help. Either he or the President estimated "hundreds of thousands" dead. To my knowledge there is no footage yet of the huge shanty towns in the mountains around Port au Prince, where we can expect that many were killed during the quake.

> In 2008 Port au Prince mayor turned in a report saying that 60 per cent of the city's buildings were shoddy construction.

> At this point, from all the reports and the footage I've seen, there is calm in the streets and if there's looting, it doesn't seem to be widespread at this point. Clearly the residents of Port au Prince are pulling together in the rescue effort. However, many if not most of the residents are simply out in the streets, with nowhere to go. The water situation could approach crisis level if not fixed soon.

> RBO has added more videos, including two from CNN and a third on the UN building, to their crosspost of my latest update.
****************************
UPDATE 11:00 AM
Fox News, 8 minutes ago:

Haiti Archbishop Killed in Quake as Churches, Cathedral Reduced to Rubble[...] The body of Msgr. Joseph Serge Miot, 65, was found under the rubble of the archdiocese, and may be one of only hundreds of victims trapped in the ruins of the building.

The apostolic nuncio in Haiti, Msgr. Bernardito Auza, said that the cathedral and all the major churches and semiaries in Port-au-Prince were devastated and reduced to piles of rubble. Hundreds of seminarians and priests were trapped in the rubble, he told Vatican Radio.

See Fox for link to translation of Vatican announcement.

All right; I really am logging off now.
***************************************
UPDATE 8:40 AM Wednesday
> Just getting back online. This morning Brenda Elliot at RBO crossposted this post and added several videos.

> The timing of the Haiti quake is like the one in Indonesia last year -- it struck just around dinner time, a little before 5 PM; that means many people were in their homes.

> Reuters reports World Bank office in Haiti "destroyed" and "most bank employees were accounted for." The Bank announced last night that they're "ready to send a team to Haiti to assess the extent of damage caused by the earthquake and begin working on plans for rebuilding the country." Bank will "mobilize aid" but no specifics yet on the dollar amount.

> CNN reported that the U.S. Coast Guard cutter, Tahoma, will be heading for Haiti (or is already enroute).

> I don't know how much they have in Dominican Republic by way of earth-moving machines but probably not much more than in Haiti, which has practically none. So unless US, other countries, are airlifting in those machines, well, there won't be many survivors in places where they can't dig out trapped people with their bare hands and hand tools -- unless they can get the machines there fast by ships. U.S. also checking whether the international airport runway is in good enough shape to take large cargo planes.

> Freedom Fairy commented at RBO, "The rate of poverty and the general lack of ANYTHING will make this a decade-long recovery to get back to zero."

Right. Haiti doesn't have oil, natural gas, or any significant strategic resources that would make it an attractive candidate for nation building. And it's not in a strategic location for any world power. But maybe the scope of the earthquake disaster will galvanize the U.S., France, and other countries to redouble poverty-reduction measures there.

> I'm signing off for the rest of the day. It seems half the reporters on the planet are headed for Haiti. CNN's coverage is excellent, from what I saw last night. Uppity Woman has posted videos and photos (some graphic) and comment threads. And as I mentioned last night, social media are doing heavy lifting on reports out of Haiti, which are still hard to come by. See Twitter and Facebook.
****************************
UPDATE 1:30 AM Wednesday
Thoughts before I sign off:

Haiti trumps all other news tomorrow and maybe for rest of week

Dawn in Port au Prince will tell the scope of the damage but if it's as bad as feared -- major humanitarian disaster along the lines of 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. This could bring up an indictment of US policies: ranging far and wide but not paying enough attention to our part of Western Hemisphere.

The quake depth in Haiti was shallow (6 miles) and the 'run' was only 15 miles, even though the fault is much longer. Shallow and compact, which is what made it so deadly, according to the CNN meteorologist.
************************************
UPDATE 12:35 AM
CNN anchor: "Port au Prince is largely destroyed."

Contrary to earlier reports this wasn't the worst earthquake in recorded history to hit Haiti; there was one in the 1940s that was 8.0. (The New York times reports, however, that the quake is "the worst in the region in more than 200 years.")
*******************************
UPDATE 12:25 AM
> Some buildings in presidential palace have collapsed but CNN has received confirmation that Haiti's President is safe.

> One US official: "Expect large number of casualties."

> CNN reporter who's been in Port au Prince several times said that the horror of the situation is that the slums are built up the hillsides and that domiciles on the inclines are so densely packed, almost on top of each other, that a vehicle can't get through. In one slum alone there are about 230,00 people.
********************************
UPDATE 12:10 AM
> CNN - UN - Richard Roth on phone from New York: Re UN HQ collapse in Port au Prince; 5 story bldg., bldg. can hold about 230 people. UN reports that many staff (from countries around the world) unaccounted for; UN trying to learn how many trapped/dead. Other UN buildings around the city damaged; UN can't determine extent of damage or number of victims.

> UN has had 9,000 peacekeepers stationed in Haiti for years, which has helped the country stabilize.

> From an earlier CNN report: one reason for extensive devastation is massive deforestation because of cutting down trees to use for household fuel; this means few tree roots to absorb the earthquake shocks/after-shocks.
***************************************
UPDATE 11:00 PM
Anderson Cooper just said at some point he's turning rest of tonight's show over to Tom Foreman or another CNN reporter; Anderson said he's going to try to get a flight to Dominican Republic or Haiti. He just reported that supposedly the border between Dominican Republic and Haiti is closed.

> Ministry of Commerce in Port au Prince and UN HQ have collapsed and presidential palace has been damaged although how much is unclear.

> Part of the problem is something called an "S Wave" -- which CNN weather reporter just explained -- the way the shocks travel from that particular kind of earthquake. The wave puts the top and bottom of buildings out of alignment, so it's not just shoddy construction that's causing so many collapses.

> The weather reporter also mentioned that an earthquake expert had warned in 2008 that Haiti would be struck by a major earthquake, which the expert pegged at 7.2. So he wasn't off by much.

> CNN reports that a big problem is that there are few earth-moving machines and other types of machines that can help dig people out of the rubble. Reportedly there are many cries for help, many trapped.
************************************
UPDATE - 10:43 PM
Anderson Cooper 360 at CNN doing wall-to-wall coverage of Haiti earthquake and it looks as if CNN will go all night or most of it on the story. After Greta Van Susteren's show on Fox New Cable(10-11 PM), that cable station will probably bed down for the night, if the Jakarta hotel bombings last year were any indication. CNN stayed with that story from the moment it broke, Fox got their beauty sleep. CNN reports just now 17 aftershocks above 4.0
************************************
UPDATE - 10:06 PM
John Batchelor reports on his radio show from news source in Dominican Republic with reporter in Port au Prince:
"cell towers down across Haiti"
"airport down" (This is seemingly contradicted by an eyewitness account, but that was from earlier in the night -- see below. 1:00 AM update -- airport is okay)
"hospital down, major school down, presidential palace down" (palace may only be badly damaged; again, reports are unclear.)
******************************
My emails to correspondent re quake; all times are Eastern Standard; I corrected some data as more information became available:
7:20 PM

"As of now the President of the Dominican Republic is unable to reach Haiti's President" -- he'd tried to call to offer help. This report to Shep Smith at Fox frm Wendell Goler, Fox political reporter, who happened to be in Dominican Republic when 7.0 earthquake hit epicenter 10 miles west of Haiti's capital city Port au Prince. Even though Wendell "as far away from epicenter as he could be on the island, quake still felt."

Other reports Campbell Brown at CNN/Shep Smith at Fox
> Quake hit about 3 hrs ago.

> Tsunami watch has just been called off (7:57 PM)

> Only 1,00 hospital beds in Haiti

> Lights out. Raining for days.

> hospitals, parliamentary buildings, schools have collapsed. "Only blessing is that there aren't any skyscrapers to collapse."

> Quote from someone on the ground in Haiti "There's no 911 here and even if there was 911 there are no fire engines and even if there were fire engines there are no roads on which they can travel."

> Aid worker in Port au Prince reported that from his apartment bldg. he saw large plane taking off from international airport after the quake so it seemed the airport was still functioning.

8:30 PM
Haiti updates frm AP, CNN: "Chaos, Disaster, Terror, Panic"

> Social media sites (e.g. Facebook) playing big role in getting out news, images. Communications down -- phone lines, radio, TV out; few cell phones -- most out.

25 minutes ago frm AP: "Haiti's ambassador to the U.S., Raymond Joseph, said from his Washington office that he spoke to President Rene Preval's chief of staff, Fritz Longchamp, just after the quake hit. He said Longchamp told him that "buildings were crumbling right and left" near the national palace. He said he had not been able to get through by phone to Haiti since."

Combined reports from USAID official in Port au Prince and Haiti relief expert . CNN getting a report just now from aid worker on site via Skype

> Only road to capital city Port au Prince impassable

> Largest earthquake in region's recorded history.

"The temblor appeared to have occurred along a strike-slip fault, where one side of a vertical fault slips horizontally past the other"

> at least 4 aftershocks; one registered at 5.9

> There are two functioning firehouses in Haiti

> 1 hospital collapse so far - cries for help heard

> Not total blackout but "most" electricity down (and all electricity seems to be down in capital "pitch black" -- massive traffic jams no one knows what to do, where to go)

> Large number of un-reinforced concrete structures -- no building codes. Both officials expressed fear that these structures would pancake.

> Doesn't seem to be raining right now; one official described large dust plume after quake -- one aid official said this suggests large number of concrete structures collapsed.

AP report
> [US] State Dept. has activated disaster relief plan, officials meeting now.

An Associated Press videographer saw the wrecked hospital in Petionville, a hillside Port-au-Prince district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians, as well as many poor people. Elsewhere in the capital, a U.S. government official reported seeing houses that had tumbled into a ravine.

8:40 PM
> Aid worker outside capital reporting via Skype to CNN that he felt small aftershock 2 min ago

> Check out Facebook for images, also Twitter; social media carrying only news aside from few cell, Skype calls.

> As of now (8:45PM ) 13 aftershocks in the past three hours, 7 of them above 5.0 - 5.0 a major earthquake in itself. Quake hit densely populated area; many living on cliffsides.

> 83% Haitians live below poverty line - $2 a day or less - poorest nation in Western Hempishere -- 53% illiteracy rate.

> U.S. Geological Survey said (according to AP report) that quake had a depth of 5 miles (1 report on CNN said it had depth of 6 miles)

> ? Capital city alone has 2-3 million Haitians - city built to house only 250K. Shanties built up hillsides -- US official tells CNN he fears they've all collapsed

> "Impact your world" website at CNN shows some aid organizations specifically helping Haiti

Some orgs frm CNN website:

"A major earthquake struck near Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, the USGS reported. Haiti's ambassador to the U.S. said one witness described it as a "catastrophe." Here are some organizations specifically helping Haiti. [...]

How you can help:
• International Medical Corps
• Direct Relief International
• World Vision
• International Relief Teams
• Yéle Haiti
• International Red Cross
• CARE
• Catholic Relief Services
• World Food Programme
• World Concern
• Save the Children
• UNICEF USA
• More ways to help victims of NATURAL DISASTERS"

Wednesday, January 6

Kurt Haskell - Umar Abdulmutallab case: Nothing to see here folks, move along (UPDATED 1:30 PM)

Update at the end of this post.

Yesterday morning I proposed a theory about the mystery man at the center of Kurt Haskell's account of what he saw at Schiphol airport before boarding the December 25 NWA Flight 253. That afternoon Reuters reported that the Dutch public prosecutor's office had announced that the mystery man didn't exist: Umar Abdulmutallab had been alone at Schiphol:

[...] Some of the passengers on the plane had said they saw him accompanied at the gate in Amsterdam by an older, well-dressed Indian or Pakistani man. But the review of more than 200 hours of [CCTV] video showed no one with him, the officials said.

Kurt Haskell stated that he saw the mystery man with Abdulmutallab at the NWA check-in counter, not the boarding gate. To my knowledge Kurt consistently spoke of the mystery man as an Indian and not a Pakistani. And this is the first time I've come across mention of multiple sightings of the mystery man. These anomalies are probably due to the Reuters reporter not being very familiar with Kurt Haskell's story -- unless this is how we're learning that the prosecutor's office was aware of similar claims from other passengers.

The report also mentioned that Abdulmutallab went through a profile interview and a security check before waiting at the gate for his flight and that according to the prosecutor he "probably smuggled the explosives from Nigeria."

Two hours after the Reuters report published, the Associated Press weighed in with the same story and added more details:

Investigators checking more than 200 hours of security camera footage from Schiphol's shopping mall in the transfer area and departure gate say Abdulmutallab underwent a security interview and check and did nothing unusual in his three-hour stopover. Earlier, authorities said the suspect went through a routine baggage check and scan by a metal detector before boarding.

"Investigations so far have uncovered no indication that the suspect contacted possible accomplices at Schiphol, left the transfer area or behaved suspiciously," the National Prosecutor's Office said.

[...]

As well as studying video footage, investigators have seized the airline seat Abdulmutallab occupied from Lagos to Amsterdam and sent it for forensic tests to check for traces of explosives.

They also are interviewing passengers and crew on the Lagos-Amsterdam flight and ground staff ranging from security officers to check-in staff and cleaners at Schiphol.[...]

This is the Netherlands we're talking about; Kurt can't dislodge that CCTV tape by filing a FOIA request. According to his version of events all he needs is three minutes of the tape: the time he was in front of the NWA check-in counter and witnessed the mystery man with a man he believes was Abdulmutallab, and who tried to talk Abdulmutallab onto the plane without a passport by presenting him as a Sudanese refugee.

Yesterday morning I suggested that Kurt stop waiting for the tape to be released and hire a police sketch artist, then publish the image of the mystery man on the internet. By the afternoon it was clear that getting a sketch of the mystery man was the only card he had left to play. The question is whether he should play the card in light of the Dutch public prosecutor's announcement.

Over a period of a few days the FBI changed their story four times about one part of Kurt's account, until U.S. Customs finally acknowledged that yes, his eyes had not deceived him; he (and other passengers who made the same claim) had indeed seen another passenger from the same flight handcuffed and led away. But to be generous, the different stories could be explained as a typical fog-of-war situation, which easily arises when different agencies are involved and there's a great deal of confusion in the early hours or days of an incident. It would be harder to be generous with the Dutch prosecutor's statement, if Kurt's eyes didn't deceive him that day at Schiphol airport. So is Kurt Haskell being gaslighted?

Readers who've closely followed GWOT -- er, WFNVH -- could think of legitimate reasons why the public prosecutor's dog ate those three minutes of tape. But such legitimacy belongs to a very different world than the one attorney Kurt Haskell inhabits; it belongs to the shadowy, complex world of spies, counter-spies, 'assets' and moles that characterized the Cold War, which is what WFNVH has morphed into (unless you want to say that WFNVH is itself an outgrowth of the Cold War) and which just a few days ago got seven or so CIA agents blown to bits in Afghanistan.

Kurt Haskell's wife, Lori, also an attorney, writes on her blog that her favorite movie is "Legally Blonde" and that she greatly admires Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Everything I've seen about the Haskells marks them as intelligent, fair-minded, good citizens. Then, on Christmas Day, the Haskells crossed paths with unspeakable evil and Kurt saw something about it while his wife's attention was fixed on trying to beat him at a game of cards.

Then he tried to tell the world what he'd seen.

That's my way of working up to the point that if Kurt was wrong about what he saw, it's human to err and I don't think anyone who's followed the story would question his integrity; however, if he did see the mystery man then I'd say he's best advised not to pursue the matter further.

He might not agree with me. He notes in his blog post yesterday:

Over the past week, Lori and I have been expecting an announcement by authorities that they have reviewed the Amsterdam airport security footage and found nothing. Well, today we got that announcement.

[...]

We never once thought that we would see an accurate unedited version of the 2-3 minute clip of the terrorist with the "sharp dressed man".

[...]

Over and over again the American public is being spoon fed conclusions by the Federal government and then spoon fed "The Fix to the Problem". At what point is the government going to give the American citizens proof that supports their ultimate conclusion(s)? I am beginning to think never. Please don't forget that the authorities work for the American people, not the other way around. The American public is getting pretty tired of hearing conclusions without proof. This sort of behavior by the federal government breeds a very strong distrust from the American people. I fear a storm is brewing unless we see substantial change in the near future.[...]

Of course he's right but he's speaking about civilization not the Seventh Ring of Hell.

In my last post about Pakistan (December 19 -- Alden Pyle in Pakistan, Part 2: Once upon a time in Saigon and Mumbai), I mentioned that the next one would be to explain something about the country's feudalism. I also mentioned it's really not so much feudal, in the West European sense, as remnants of an imperial system on the Indian subcontinent that should have been in history's dustbin by now. But the system was propped up: first by the British colonialists, then by the U.S. Cold War containment strategists, who, with no idea of what Pakistan's society was like, hit on the idea of turning the newly-independent county into a 'client state.'

Americans did not cause the horror that is today's Pakistan. However, Americans have to learn that you don't spend a generation blindly throwing billions in aid money at a very ruthless ruling class, then be shocked when they turn on you because you shut off the aid spigot.

Yet even if every American of voting age suddenly woke up and marched on Washington over the matter of exactly how and where the U.S. spends its aid money, that won't change the fact that right now we have the Seventh Ring of Hell at our heels.

We're at war, and whether you call it by the name President Bush gave it -- Global War on Terror -- or the name President Obama gave it -- War on a Far-Reaching Network of Violence and Hatred -- war has its own rules, none of which are fair-minded.

As to that "sharp dressed man," if he exists -- I'll turn to the irrepressible Rajeev Srinivasan for closing thoughts:

Given that almost all terrorism ops around the world have the Pakistani spy agency ISI's fingerprints all over them, it is likely that the so-described 'Indian' was in fact a Pakistani. Besides, Pakistani army types (yes, from those 22 feudal families you talk about often, Pundita) are known to be a little vain and prone to dressing rather sharply -- they want to be seen as 'people like us' by Westerners.

Indians, on the other hand, tend to wear ill-cut suits. :-) Since Haskell describes a nattily-dressed middle-aged guy, that is most likely an ISI fellow in an Armani.

It could of course have been an Indian Mohammedan. There is, for instance, crime boss Dawood Ibrahim, a 50-ish Indian, who lives in Dubai and regularly sponsors mayhem in India and wears expensive suits.

UPDATE 1:30 PM ET
Beethovenqueen posted the following comment at RBO, where this entry is crossposted:

"[Glenn] Beck had Haskell on his radio show yesterday and offered to pay for a professional sketch artist. Haskell turned it down, thinking it couldn’t possibly lead to anything. Haskell did wonder why the tape wasn’t simply released to the public immediately, with or without the second man.

So much time has gone by we can’t believe a tape that wouldn’t show a second man anymore – he could have been digitally removed by now."

Case closed.

Tuesday, January 5

(With apologies to Buckaroo Banzai) It's the Indian, stupid: More on the Kurt Haskell - Umar Abdulmutallab story

More on Kurt Haskell's account, and Pundita's theory about what really happened at Schiphol airport prior to takeoff of NWA Flight 253 on December 25.

I'm sorry to report that the anti-Semitic branch of conspiracy theorists, which is determined to pin every terrorist attack going back to the Sack of Rome on Jews, has seized on Kurt Haskell's account of what he witnessed at Schiphol airport before boarding the fateful out of Amsterdam on Christmas. They've stuffed his account into a theory that with the unerring logic of bigotry finds an Israeli airport security firm hitting on the novel method of drumming up business by knowingly allowing a terrorist to board Flight 253.

What I would like to know is when these theorists will admit they're Earth-slumming, dimension-hopping shape-shifting lizards, who've been after the Jews since they discovered the Old Testament contains a warning about their existence among humans and explains how to see through their disguise.

Never mind; it's a rhetorical question, which admittedly I hope becomes the basis for a new branch of conspiracy theory. Although come to think of it, the theory might throw light on the odd secret greeting among certain Iranian Republican Guard officers, which roughly translated from the Farsi means, "When are we going home?" *

With that off my chest I turn to Kurt Haskell's odyssey to have his account of what he witnessed at Schiphol airport taken seriously by authorities. Of course even the most credible witness can be mistaken in his recollection of faces and events. But although it's not a guarantee that Kurt correctly identified Abdulmutallab as the younger man at the Schiphol ticket counter, another part of his account, which was initially rejected by the FBI, was vindicated by U.S. Customs and Border Control on January 1.

That part relates to Kurt's assertion that after disembarking from Flight 253 he saw a second passenger from the same flight handcuffed and led away. At least as it stands now, according to Customs the passenger turned out to be false alarm and he was later released.

The latest is that on January 2 Bo Taylor, who was also a passenger on the December 25 NWA Flight 253, phoned Kurt and told him:

"After we landed in Detroit I saw an older looking teenager who was African and looked NEARLY IDENTICAL to the terrorist bomber. Since he was a minor, and travelling alone, he was accompanied by an airport employee at all times. Kurt, this could have been the guy you saw in Amsterdam before we boarded."

Kurt immediately posted Bo's account to his wife's blog with his response and alerted Michigan news website, MLive, which has stuck with (Michigan resident) Kurt's story, and where Kurt first posted his eyewitness account.

Kurt's response to Bo Taylor's statement was appropriately tactful. He wrote in part:

"I have no reason whatsoever to dispute the veracity of Bo's statement. I also have no reason to not believe what I saw. Two different people can see two different things. [...]"

I do have reason to dispute Bo Taylor's account fut first to review exactly what Kurt Haskell wrote in his original post at MLive, in the early hours of December 26, about what he witnessed at Schiphol airport prior to boarding Flight 253:

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".

[...] 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.[...]

As I've mentioned before, it's clear Kurt was making an assumption that the older man was an Indian based on his type of accented English and how his looks struck Kurt. But in all other respects he gave a straightforward eyewitness account.

When I first learned of Kurt's account I noted that the older man wasn't necessarily an accomplice if the younger man was indeed Abdulmutallab. I speculated that he could have been a legitimate representative of an NGO that helps refugees, or even an embassy employee who'd been duped by AM (Abdulmutallab) or his AQ handlers. The speculation collapsed when I learned the details of the hoops that anyone has to jump through to enter the United States without a passport. From a December 30 Detroit Free Press report:

Only U.S. citizens can board international flights to the United States without passports -- but only after the air carrier otherwise confirms their identity and citizenship, said Chief Ron Smith, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in Detroit.

Smith added that a refugee trying to fly to the United States from another country would also have to have proof of an application for asylum or refugee status, proof of citizenship and identifying documents before the plane could take off.[...]

The hoops pretty much rule out that the older Indian man was a dupe. Any employee of a refugee assistance organization or embassy would have known it was useless to walk up to a NWA counter at virtually the last minute and ask to get a refugee on board a US-bound flight without showing proper documentation, which the Indian didn't do.

So I'm weighted to assume the older Indian man who approached the ticket counter was not on the level. And there was no way he could get the younger man on board the flight without proper documentation unless he thought he could bribe the younger man onto the flight -- a possibility that Kurt Haskell raised in his December 26 statement.

From all that, I can't see how Bo Taylor's account squares with Kurt Haskell's.

There might have been an underage "African" on the flight who looked "nearly identical" to Abdulmutallab, and who was duly escorted by an airline employee, as Taylor claims. But I can't see how that boy was the black male Kurt Haskell says he saw at the ticket counter with an older Indian man.

And the underage "African" boy, if there was one, was not necessarily a refugee; he was being escorted by the airline on the basis of age, according to Taylor. In any event we can assume the boy's papers were all in order if he was being escorted. We can also assume that al Qaeda wouldn't have wanted to risk an airline employee sitting next to Abdulmutallab on the flight by passing him off as underage.

I don't like to cross-examine Bo Taylor. Parts of his account, the ones that list his complaints about how passengers were treated after they disembarked from the flight (see Kurt's January 2 post at his wife's blog), jibe with complaints from Kurt and other passengers who've spoken out about the same issue.

However, at least three passengers other than Kurt have gone on record to state that a passenger was handcuffed and led away after the plane landed. Yet to date none of those other witnesses, nor Kurt, have reported seeing a black African youth who looked "nearly identical" to Abdulmutallab in the holding area after they disembarked and in the company of an airline employee.

That doesn't mean Bo Taylor is lying. It does open the door to the question of whether the African youth Bo described actually looked enough like Abdulmutallab to have drawn attention. To be fair to Bo, it also raises the question of whether many passengers got a good look at Abdulmutallab, before he was tackled and dragged to the front of the plane, to note a striking similarity between his appearance and that of another passenger.

Another problem for me with Bo's account, as Kurt described it, is that it doesn't explain how he knew the youth was an African and underage and that a person accompanying him was an airline employee. Note that Kurt did not peg the man he saw at the airline counter with the older man as an "African." There was no way to tell his nationality; he simply looked like a black youth -- granted, of African descent -- who could have been from any country where such descendents reside, including the USA.

So it would be helpful to know how Bo was able to identify the youth as African and as underage. Did he question the youth or the person he identified as an airline employee or overhear them speaking?

It's still early days since the attack, and I understand the FBI and Customs have a great deal on their plate at this time. Yet I'd think they should pay attention to Bo Taylor's account, in order to assess his claim against Kurt Haskell's account of what he saw at Schiphol. There's always a chance I'm wrong -- that Bo's account does indeed provide an explanation for what Kurt saw at Schiphol. If not -- if his account can be eliminated -- that leaves what could be a very important piece of intelligence inadequately examined.

Is it possible that authorities in Amsterdam and/or the USA are actually giving Kurt's account of the older Indian man the attention it deserves, and just not announcing this? If that were the case I've yet to read that a police sketch artist worked with Kurt to develop a likeness of the older Indian man at Schiphol.

Yet during their interview with him, which took up more than an hour at his law office, the FBI knew that he was a good witness: Kurt recounts that FBI agents showed him a photograph and asked whether this was the man he claimed was the passenger who was handcuffed and led away. Kurt replied that this was indeed the man they said didn't exist. (At that time the FBI was denying his claim that the event had occurred.)

The photograph was of the very same passenger Kurt had seen in handcuffs. So that should have been the agents' cue to ask him to immediately accompany them to their office and work with a police sketch artist/computer sketch specialist to develop a likeness of the older Indian man he claimed to have seen at Schiphol.

Kurt has repeatedly asked that authorities release the two or three minutes of CCTV footage at Schiphol that he refers to. And because Kurt and his wife were prominently placed -- sitting on the floor in front of the check-in counter while playing cards -- they would be an easy reference for the relevant part of the tape.

According to a December 28 Reuters report, the Dutch military police and the Dutch counterterrorism agency were reviewing the CCTV footage in response to Kurt's claim of seeing an Indian man with Abdulmutallab. So far they have not made a follow-up announcement regarding the tape, and it has not been released.

There might be a good explanation for the foot-dragging: maybe the monitor nearest that particular check-in counter wasn't working or wasn't placed in such fashion as to clearly pick up activity to and from that point.

In any event, to the best of my knowledge Kurt has not been asked to work with a police sketch artist and nail down his recollection of the Indian man. Yet that would be important to do, even if the CCTV tape does show the Indian man; the camera can distort and so it's a help to have another reference for the image.

And I wonder if it's occurred to the authorities that they assume too much, if they assume Abdulmutallab donned his bomb prior to arriving at Schiphol. The Indian man could have been an accomplice who handed AM the underwear bomb contraption once he landed at Schiphol.

In summary: if there was an older, wealthy-looking, sharply dressed man who tried to talk Abdulmutallab onto NWA Flight 253 without a passport, it might be crucial that his likeness gets plastered all over the news all over the world. Immediately. But which should have been done a week ago.

Yet instead of taking a routine police action and turning a sketch artist loose, the Amsterdam authorities focused on a red herring, to Kurt's exasperation: the question of whether Abdulmutallab had a valid passport and visa. Yes of course he had both and he showed both in Lagos, Nigeria, before he boarded the flight to Amsterdam. Nigerian authorities have already verified this. And he also had the same valid passport and visa when he was on the NWA Flight 253. The US authorities have verified this.

All that plus 50 cents says nothing about an older man who was accompanying him while he was at Schiphol, according to Kurt Haskell's account.

Thanks to ABC News (and Dan Riehl's sharp eyes), I am no longer thrashing around in the dark about why al Qaeda might have tried to get Abdulmutallab on Flight 253 without having him show his passport. The ABC News investigative team reported on December 31 that contrary to earlier reports, AM's father did not contact the U.S. embassy or the CIA; instead, he contacted officials at Nigeria's intelligence agency. This was after his son phoned him to say that he was calling him for the last time because his SIM card was being destroyed by the people he was with the Yemen.

That was almost certainly a 'tell' that AM was part of a shahid operation that was moving to the launch pad. So the intelligence officials didn't clown around with phone calls or emails. They put the father in a car and drove him to the nearest CIA station, then made sure the station chief heard the father's story.

I think we can assume AM's handlers either heard him make the call to his father, or checked his phone records. Either way, they would have assumed from the call that the authorities were onto him. But the ball was already in play, and they were determined to try for a spectacular terrorist attack on an airplane on Christmas Day.

So it was worth a shot to go ahead with the plan and attempt to get AM on Flight 253. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain by attempting to get him onto the plane without a passport. If that failed they would still go ahead with the plan and trust to luck and the holiday crush at Schiphol that AM wouldn't be flagged.

As to how AM would explain his valid passport and visa at the NWA check-in counter after just posing there as a Sudanese refugee -- why did he need to return to the counter? He had proper documentation and an airline ticket that showed him as a connecting passenger.

All he had to do was rush to the boarding gate at the last minute, haul out his British boarding school accent, and say he lost his boarding pass. After showing his passport and visa he would be on the plane.

As to that other red herring -- that airport security didn't zero in on him -- why would they do that, unless he was on a no-fly list?

There was a funny moment on the Glenn Beck show several week ago when John Bolton and Lord Christopher Monckton were on to discuss the climate change issue. After Chris delivered a little speech debunking the climate change science, Glenn turned to John and asked in amusement, "Why does it always sound so much more convincing when it's said with a British accent?" John burst into laughter and said that was true.

It is indeed true. It's amazing how far an upper-class British accent can carry one in this world. If Haskell's account is correct, Abdulmutallab hammed it up as a dumb Sudanese refugee while his companion tried to talk him onto the plane without a passport. But AM is a very sophisticated, well-traveled, wealthy young man who is more upper-class British than anything else.

As to his clothing, my first thought was that I didn't understand why he didn't dress better. On second thought he was wearing not only clothing that would pass him off as a refugee, but also the uniform of thousands of other young long-distance air travelers: jeans and T-shirt. And all he had to do was speak a few words to make it clear he wasn't from a village in the Terrorist Belt.

That he only had a backpack -- that too is part of the standard uniform for countless travelers. That the ticket was paid for in cash -- a red flag -- was offset by the fact that it was a round trip.

In short there was nothing about Umar Abdulmutallab to make him stand out in the holiday crowd at Amsterdam's international airport. He fit in, and would have passed a routine security check with flying colors.

There's another reason the older Indian man could have been an accomplice. AM had a long way to travel before he reached the final leg of his journey and he'd only had a few months of training with al Qaeda operatives, who are skilled at managing shahid operations. They know that the martyr candidates can have second thoughts as the time draws near. So it's likely that al Qaeda didn't allow AM to make the journey without supplying a handler at the crucial stage, to talk him onto the plane. If Kurt Haskell's account is correct it's a good guess that the older Indian man was the handler.

All this reminds me of a famous motto used by Bill Clinton's presidential election campaign: "It's the economy, stupid." Attention has been fixed on Abdulmutallab ever since he failed to down Flight 253 and on the security issues surrounding his attempt. But I fear that Kurt Haskell's account of the Indian man is getting lost in the shuffle while investigators look high, low, here, there, and everywhere for more clues.

So if I were Kurt I wouldn't wait any longer for the CCTV tape to be released. I'd say, "In for a penny, in for a pound," then I'd hire a sketch artist, or turn to a friend on the police force for help in getting access to a sketch program or artist. Then I'd post on the internet the likeness of the Indian man I remembered. Money says that within 24 hours of the posting the picture would be picked up by blogs all over the internet, and from there it would have a chance to make it onto the nightly news.

At the least, the likeness of the Indian man might jog some memories at intelligence agencies in various parts of the world -- or at an airline facility at Schiphol. For all anyone knows the "wealthy-looking" Indian man could have worked as a baggage handler at the airport, and he might not hold Indian citizenship.

* The classic line from the 1984 cult film, "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension." If not for a Writer's Guild strike and futzing around by the producers and the screenwriter, the film's Red Lectroids -- the shape-shifting, dimension-hopping alien reptiles -- would have beaten out the "V" versions by at least three years, and at least as early as 1980 the plot was all around Hollywood.

So yes, "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai ..." was the granddaddy of all the shape-shifting lizard movies and TV series, although that doesn't come close to describing it. After they made "Buckaroo" they broke the mold.

Devotees of David Icke shouldn't be crestfallen; after all, one never knows if Buckaroo's creator wasn't himself a shape-shifting alien reptile. But as to whether Mr Icke has ever mentioned "Buckaroo" to his devotees, many of whom are too young to remember the film, somehow I don't think so.

What is certain is that John Lithgow didn't receive the Academy Award for his performance -- perhaps the funniest on film -- as Italian physicist Dr. Emilio Lizardo, who is actually the demented leader of the Red Lectroids.

At one point, in an effort to rally the rest of the space lizards, Dr Lizardo yells in the manner of a cheerleader, "When are we going home?"

They yell back, "Real soon!"

If they haven't left yet I hope they take Wayne Madsen with them, and real soon; this so I don't have to suffer through more of his latest conspiracy theory, which weaves Kurt Haskell's account into a tale that Abdulmutallab's attack on Flight 253 was actually a false flag operation launched by intelligence agencies in the U.S., India, and Israel in a plot to destabilize Pakistan, and which recasts hero Jasper Schuringa in the role of patsy for the Emir of Dubai.

Wayne has taken on airs since he became a high-ranking member of the Illuminati; I liked him better when he was just a simple, blood-drinking giant lizard from outer space.

Sunday, January 3

Whaddya mean there was no smoking gun, Mr Brennan? More nonsense from Abdulmutallab terror case

Market Watch reports that Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan, who made the rounds on TV talk shows this morning, told ABC's "This Week" that there was no "smoking gun" or single piece of intelligence that indicated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was going to try to mount an attack.

Actually, the CIA had very specific information that pointed directly to an imminent terrorist attack. Before reviewing the information I'll let Mr Brennan continue talking himself out on a limb. From the Market Watch report:

"We had the information that came from his father where he was concerned about his son going to Yemen, consorting with extremists, and that he was not going to go back. We also though had other streams of information coming from intelligence channels that were little snippets," Brennan said [...] "We may have had a partial name, we might have had an indication of a Nigerian, but there was nothing that brought it all together."

He added that the government needs to do a better job of bringing that sort of information together, "so when a father comes in with information and we have intelligence, we can map that up so that we stop individuals like Abdulmutallab from getting on a plane."

You lie, sir, or maybe someone lied to you, or your assistants need to keep you better informed. Kudos to blogger Dan Riehl at Riehl World View for rescuing an important ABC News investigative report, dated December 31, from year-end news cycle oblivion.

ABC ferreted out the truth behind news reports that Umar Abdulmutallab's father alerted the U.S. Embassy about his concern that his son had gotten involved with radicals. The way such reports were worded conveyed the idea that the CIA didn't have a smoking gun to work with. Actually, the CIA had a smoking cannon handed to them.

ABC learned that what really happened is that Umar phoned his father to say he was calling for the last time because the people he was with in Yemen were going to destroy his SIM card. That would make his phone unusable. And that was as much telling his father he was entering the final phase of training for a terrorist suicide mission.

His father immediately alerted Nigerian intelligence officials that he was afraid his son was preparing for a terrorist mission in Yemen. The officials then brought him directly into the presence of the CIA station chief in Abuja on November 19.

So it's not as if some worried father wandered in off the street to unburden himself to a clerk at a U.S. embassy. And note that the Nigerian intelligence officials didn't run the risk of getting trapped in voice mail hell or hearing, 'I'm sorry your email got lost in the shuffle.' They made Double Dutch sure the station chief heard the father's statement and understood its import and urgency.

What happened after the station chief took in the father's account? Report, file, and forget:

The next day the embassy sent out a thin report to U.S. embassies around the world warning Adbulmutallab may be associating with extremists in Yemen. The CIA official compiled two more robust reports following the meeting with the suspect's father. One was sent back to CIA's Langley, VA [headquarters]; the other remained in draft form in Nigeria and was not circulated until after the attempted attack on Christmas Day, according to a U.S. official.[...]

The ABC report also mentions that according to the Yemen government, the CIA station chief did not share the information with Yemeni intelligence officials. So unless Mr Brennan wants to dispute the Yemen government's statement, he also mis-spoke when he told ABC:

"All of the information was shared, except that there are millions upon millions of bits of data that come in on a regular basis," he said. "What we need to do is make sure the system is robust enough that we can bring that information to the surface that really is a threat concern."

No, the information was not properly shared. Now I'm not sure this incident represents a system failure; it could be gross negligence or incompetence on the part of the CIA station chief, which then poisoned the entire communication chain. However, I'm hearing language creeping into intelligence work that properly belongs in science; I find that alarming. Intelligence work is not a scientific field; it's an art that depends on common sense and playing hunches derived from experience.

Common sense shouts to anyone familiar with shahid operations that Umar Abdulmutallab was having second thoughts about being a human bomb but by that time it was too late to back out. He told his father as much as he could with an al Qaeda handler standing there listening, waiting to destroy his SIM card. And Nigerian intelligence officials made damn sure the CIA knew how serious that phone call was, and they got in-person verification that the station chief heard every word of the father's account.

Wednesday, December 30

How many Dutch military police does it take to change a light bulb? The vexing case of terrorist Umar Abdulmutallab and attorney Kurt Haskell

UPDATE January 5
See today's Pundita post for more on Kurt Haskell's account and Pundita's theory about what really happened at Schiphol airport.
**************************
On Monday, December 28 at 11:23 GMT, the U.K. Guardian reported that a Dutch military police spokesman said they were checking out Kurt Haskell's story about seeing "a tall, well-dressed man aged about 50 with Abdulmutallab at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport before he boarded the plane.":

"At this moment we have no information on whether there was another guy. We are checking all clues and information we get."

The spokesman added that the military police and the Dutch counter-terrorism agency NCTb were reviewing CCTV recordings to check out the accomplice story.[...]

Today -- that would be Wednesday, December 30, which I emphasize is two days after the Guardian published the Dutch military police spokesperson's announcement -- the Detroit Free Press reported:

U.S. federal agents and Dutch counter-terrorism officials are investigating whether a second man helped the Nigerian bombing suspect get on the flight to Detroit on Friday without a passport, as a man from Newport, Mich., [Kurt Haskell] said he saw before he boarded the flight.

The Haskells were surely in full view of the CCTV monitor -- they were sitting on the floor of Schipol airport, right in front of the check-in counter at Northwest Airlines. They were playing cards when Kurt claimed to have seen the man he believes is Umar Abdulmutallab ("AM") accompanied by another man. The approximate time this little tableau occurred was surely reported by Kurt to authorities when he was first interviewed by the FBI, which was right after the plane landed.

So why is it taking so long to review the time- and date-stamped footage from the closed TV monitor in Schipol airport? It should have taken the Dutch military police 15 minutes, tops, to locate the appropriate place in the monitor tape and zero in on the Haskells to determine whether they were indeed within earshot and eyeball range of conversations at the check-in counter.

The same thought has clearly occurred to Kurt Haskell, who is getting irritated with what he considers to be stonewalling. Haskell is a lawyer and you know what lawyers are like; they get bent out of shape if they think they're getting the dodge from authorities -- particularly in the course of the kind of law Haskell specializes in, which is family law.

He appeared on the Alex Jones show yesterday to give listeners an earful about his second interview with the FBI. (Yes yes I know Jones is controversial but Haskell had already been interviewed or quoted by a number of mainstream media sources, including the Guardian.)

From Prison Planet's admittedly operatic summary of the interview ("Bombshell Eyewitness Revelations: Confirmed FBI Cover-Up Of Flight 253 Attack"), Haskell can't understand why Dutch authorities don't simply release the CCTV footage to back up or refute his story. That's not all he can't understand.

In Haskell's mind it's all very simple: He is a credible courtroom witness who has a story to tell that could have great bearing on the Christmas Day terrorist attack on NWA Flight 253. Ascertaining whether one part of his story -- what he claims he saw at Schipol -- should have been the work of minutes to verify or refute. As I noted, he has told his story many times by now to credible news outlets and twice to the FBI. And yet still he waits for verification from Amsterdam.

Could his story be wrong? Sure. It's possible the poorly dressed boyish-looking African male Kurt Haskell claims he saw at the check-in counter was not AM. It's also possible Kurt had one too many beers earlier at an airport restaurant. There are other reasons he could have been sincere in his recollection of events, but still wrong.

If he's right, then authorities need to move with blinding speed to investigate the other part of his story: what he claims he heard said to the check-in counter clerk by the tall, well-dressed man, who looked to Kurt like an Indian, and what Kurt claims the clerk said in response.

As to whether Kurt could be a hoaxer, that his wife told authorities she couldn't back up his story, which was brought out by today's Freep report, suggests we're probably not dealing with a version of the Hot Air Balloon husband and wife team:

[...] Lori Haskell said she was questioned for about 10 minutes and recognized a photo of the suspect from several that agents showed her. She said her husband was interviewed for at least an hour.

She said they were interviewed separately at their law offices in Taylor [Michigan].

By phone Saturday, Kurt Haskell, 38, told the Free Press he first noticed Abdulmutallab at the airline ticket counter in Amsterdam.

He and his wife, both lawyers returning from a two-week safari in Uganda, were sitting near the counter playing cards.

Haskell said he saw the suspect, "who looked like he was 16 or 17, short, really thin, looked like he was poor," wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

"He caught my eye because of who he was traveling with": a wealthy looking well-dressed Indian man in his 50s.

The Indian man, Haskell said, told the ticket agent that the younger man "needs to board the plane, but he doesn't have a passport. ... He's from Sudan. We do this all the time."

Abdulmutallab is actually from Nigeria and was traveling on a visa, American authorities confirmed Tuesday.

According to Kurt Haskell, the ticket agent told the older man he would have to speak with a manager, and was directed to another area to speak to one.

Lori Haskell said she did not witness the alleged exchange or see the people involved because she was too busy trying to beat her husband at the card game.[...]

So for a few moments I'm going to assume that Kurt's recollection was accurate and look at things from the angle of the story he told:

1. B. Raman stated at his blog that AM had a valid passport and U.S. tourist visa, and that according to a British news report a return ticket had been purchased in cash in AM's name in Accra, the capital of Ghana. So while a cash payment is a red flag for airports on the lookout for terrorists, this was offset by the other details about his travel papers.

2. Why, then, would al Qaeda arrange the kind of subterfuge that Kurt Haskell alludes to, which meant that AM did not give his real name at the Schipol check-in counter, or show his passport or the return ticket purchased in Ghana?

(If AM was posing as a refugee the actual ticket he used to get on the plane could have been bought for him at the airport, and he could have asked for the seat he knew would be unfilled -- the one booked under his real name.)

3. The answer is simple if AM's passport carried a Yemen stamp from his recent visit to that country, which is a big red flag: The return ticket was purchased in Ghana on December 16 -- four days before news broke that the City of London had gone on high alert in response to credible intelligence that a Mumbai-style terrorist attack was near. That would have led AQ to realize Schipol airport, already known as one of the toughest airports for security measures, would have been on elevated alert for even a hint of a red-flagged passport.

4. Another simple answer presents itself, if AM's prestigious and very worried father, in an effort to discourage his son from falling off the grid, had gotten a message to him that he had reported him to the U.S. embassy.

Alternate scenario: If AM had learned that his father was very worried and had spoken to the authorities or might do so. Either situation would have led al Qaeda planners to the concern that AM had gotten onto a no-fly watch list. Of course that turned out not to be the case, but AQ is a little more thorough in their precautions than Homeland Security.

5. I explored in my first post about Haskell's story why it's possible AM's passport didn't carry a Yemen stamp: there could have been an accomplice at Yemen customs who didn't stamp the passport.

But if there was a Yemen stamp and AQ was considering the worst-case scenario -- AM from a red-flag country (Nigeria), with a red-flag country stamp (Yemen), with a ticket paid for in cash (another red flag), who was on a no-fly watch list, trying to get past a notoriously 'tough' passport check, with an elevated terrorist alert for Europe -- I can see why they might have come up with a Plan B for getting AM onto NWA Flight 253.

6. AM posing as a Sudanese refugee would solve all the problems -- he wouldn't need to give his own name or show a passport -- provided AQ had knowledge that Schipol allowed such refugees onto flights. Then all they'd need do was prepare counterfeit refugee papers and hope he made it past a full body scan and a thorough pat down.

And here we arrive at the sticky part of the story. To return to the Freep report:

"Every passenger on that flight [NWA 235] was interviewed by authorities," U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg said Tuesday. "Certainly the statements of all the passengers are taken seriously." He declined to make further comment.

Susan Chana Elliott, a spokeswoman for Delta, would not comment on Kurt Haskell's account. Northwest is a subsidiary of Delta.

Elliott said Delta Air Lines staff followed procedure in fully reporting passenger information before the plane took off, and "Delta is in full compliance with all government regulations regarding passenger information transmission."

Elliott added that she could not confirm that a male Sudanese refugee was on Flight 253 on Friday.

Michael Wildes, a Manhattan-based immigration attorney and a former federal prosecutor out of Brooklyn, said the allegations of Abdulmutallab boarding without a passport are disturbing.

"The truth is that post 9/11, we are still shocked at some of the practices that flights and airlines permit," he said. "Clearly, if the airline wanted to bring him in without a passport, they would be accountable to the government."

Only U.S. citizens can board international flights to the United States without passports -- but only after the air carrier otherwise confirms their identity and citizenship, said Chief Ron Smith, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol in Detroit.

Smith added that a refugee trying to fly to the United States from another country would also have to have proof of an application for asylum or refugee status, proof of citizenship and identifying documents before the plane could take off.

Smith said that, had there been a Sudanese refugee on the plane, "We would be aware of it."

Here it is, five days out from Haskell's first public mention of what he saw and heard at Schipol, and we're still waiting for confirmation or denial of his story from Dutch authorities. However, it's now known that the second time the FBI interviewed Haskell, they questioned him for at least an hour. Might this indicate that the Dutch military police are actually very quick at reviewing CCTV tapes?

I should add that Kurt is also miffed that another part of his story is getting no attention from the mainstream media and hasn't received official comment. To return to Prison Planet's report on his interview with Alex Jones:

In addition to a detailed retelling of the story he gave the corporate media, Mr. Haskell addressed the unprofessional and lackadaisical behavior of the FBI and airport security after the plane landed at the Detroit Metro airport in Romulus, Michigan. He characterized their behavior as a “complete embarrassment. They actually put us in more jeopardy than we were already in.”

Passengers were told to remain seated in the aircraft for 20 minutes after landing despite the fact security did not know at that point if there was an explosive on the plane or if the fire started by the suspect Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab while on descent to the airport had spread under the floor in the cabin or to the fuel tanks in the wings.

After being allowed to disembark from the plane by officials, passengers were detained in customs with their carry-on luggage for six hours while they waited to be interrogated by the FBI, according to Haskell.

At this point a bomb-sniffing dog pointed at carry-on luggage in the possession of a man Haskell described as Indian around 30 years old. Officials led the man away to an interrogation room. Haskell said he was concerned because the bomb-sniffing dog had flagged the man, indicating he may have had explosives in his carry-on luggage. The Indian man was subsequently led away in handcuffs.

Following this incident the FBI moved the passengers to another location. “You’re being moved,” the FBI told them, “it is not safe here. I’m sure you all saw what happened and can read between the lines and why you’re being moved.”

Haskell said the corporate media refuses to cover this aspect of his story. He has repeated it to “countless” news agencies and they uniformly have not included it to his knowledge.

Kurt also told of his confrontation with FBI interrogators during the second interview:

The agents showed Haskell a photograph of the man flagged by the bomb-sniffing dog and taken into custody in customs. “Isn’t this the man who had the bomb in his carry-on bag that you arrested in customs who you refuse to admit exists?” Haskell asked the agents. “They really didn’t like that comment from me and had no comment back to me but I said it sure looks like the man you refuse to admit exists.”

And Kurt gave the interrogator an earful about his account of what he saw at Schipol; you can read all about it at Prison Planet or listen to the video they provide of the interview. One thing we can assume about Kurt Haskell: given the kind of law he practices, he wouldn't be intimidated by FBI questions.

Another point, which I mentioned in the earlier post on Haskell. How could he be certain that either man he tagged as Indian was indeed an Indian citizen? I say he couldn't be certain. So I'd say in his best estimation both men looked Indian, even though they could have been from a large geographic area covering several countries.
But one thing struck me today while I was mulling over Haskell's account and looking at his law firm's website. Haskell is a Crusader type -- protecting the downtrodden from predatory practices of all kinds. And given the speciality of his law practice, he would probably have some awareness of human trafficking issues. India is a major hub for international human trafficking. From a 2009 report:

[M]ore than 1.2 million children in India are caught up in human trafficking as child prostitutes. Worse, as many as 100 million people in India — soon to be the world’s most populous country — are involved in trafficking-related activities.

The shocking statistics confirm what many human rights activists long have contended: that if there’s a “ground zero” for contemporary slavery, it is the Indian subcontinent. Grinding poverty, ancient tradition, and a religious caste system that divides society into “haves” and “have nots,” are all contributing factors.[...]

That might be why Kurt Haskell immediately thought of an Indian when saw the older man with someone who looked like Umar Abdulmutallab. AM has 'pretty boy' looks and he's a very boyish-looking young man. He can easily pass for a 16-year old. And Haskell stressed that AM looked like a 'poor Black' -- he noted Mutallab's clothing and physical condition ("really skinny") and that AM was acting in passive fashion -- not speaking.

The USA is Amber Alert and "Most Wanted" Nation. An American doesn't have to be in family law to have an eye out for behavior that could indicate a kidnapping of a child, a pedophile preying on a child, or a runaway child caught up in the sex slave trade.

So while Kurt Haskell was idly waiting for his wife to make her move at poker or whatever, I can see how someone who looked like Abdulmutallab in the company of an older, well-dressed man, who didn't seem to be a relative, would have caused Kurt to zero in on the conversation at the check-in counter. It would have caused me to zero in, as I think would be the case for many Americans.

Once reasonably assured there was a legitimate story (Sudanese refugee), Kurt could turn his attention back to the card game. But I think the incident he claims to have witnessed would have stuck in his mind, and so would the faces of the two males.

If Haskell really did see AM at the check-in counter, AM sure fooled him. AM is rich. And that leads to the question of why he would dress down, way down, during a heightened terrorist alert while trying to get on an international flight. One would think he was wrongly dressed, if he wanted to present himself at the airline check-in counter as a well-off, upstanding traveler. But then he would have been perfectly dressed for the role of a refugee.

Monday, December 28

Did terrorist Abdulmutallab get past airport security by pretending to be a Sudanese refugee? And planning for the attack was done in Pakistan

UPDATE Dec 30
See my December 30 post, How many Dutch military police does it take to change a light bulb? The vexing case of terrorist Umar Abdulmutallab and attorney Kurt Haskell for additional news on Kurt Haskell.
UPDATE Jan 1
There's yet more news re Haskell's claims. One part of his eyewitness account has been verified, and that could mean there was a second terrorist on board NWA Flight 253. I'll be posting on that part of the story this evening.
UPDATE Jan 2, 5:00 AM ET
I haven't had time yet to finish work on the next post about the Haskell matter but here's the link to a Detroit News report, dated Jan 1, on latest developments, which fills in some of the blanks.
UPDATE Jan 5
More on Kurt Haskell's account, and Pundita's theory about what really happened at Schiphol airport prior to takeoff of NWA Flight 253 on December 25.
*********************************
The source for this report is a website called MLive "METRO DETROIT LOCAL NEWS & TALK: The Latest Community, Education, Crime & Government News" (H/T "Freedom Fairy").

Kurt Haskell's strange tale

A commenter at the MLive site with the screen name "Pug," who was on NWA Flight 235 with his wife, first posted his eyewitness account at the site sometime before 6:49 AM on December 26. He was interviewed later in the day by MLive reporter Sheena Harrison, who published the interview at 2:22 PM at MLive.

Pug turned out to be Michigan, USA resident Kurt Haskell. He and his wife Lori are attorneys with the Haskell Law Firm in Taylor, Michigan. "Their expertise includes bankruptcy, family law and estate planning," according to the Haskell law firm's website.

(See the MLive website for links.) From the MLive report:

A Michigan man who was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 says he witnessed Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab [now known by the last name "Abdulmutallab"] 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.

Haskell said he and his wife were sitting on the ground near their boarding gate in Amsterdam, which is when they saw Mutallab approach the gate with an unidentified man.

[...]

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.'”

Mutallab is Nigerian. Haskell believes the man may have been trying to garner sympathy for Mutallab's lack of documents by portraying him as a Sudanese refugee.

The ticket agent referred Mutallab and his companion to her manager down the hall, and Haskell didn't see Mutallab again until after he allegedly tried to detonate an explosive on the plane.

[...]

As Mutallab was being led out of the plane in handcuffs, Haskell said he realized that was the same man he saw trying to board the plane in Amsterdam.

Passengers had to wait about 20 minutes before they were allowed to exit the plane. Haskell said he and other passengers waited about six hours to be interviewed by the FBI.

About an hour after landing, Haskell said he saw another man being taken into custody. But a spokeswoman from the FBI in Detroit said Mutallab was the only person taken into custody.

[...]

Haskell's account is very interesting in one respect so I'm going to take some time with it.

There are a few slight discrepancies between the wording and facts presented in the MLive report and the original account posted by Kurt Haskell as Pug, although this doesn't necessarily negate his account. For example, in the Pug account, Haskell doesn't refer to the man who accompanied Abdulmutallab as a "friend" and of course Haskell had no way of knowing the relationship between the men -- even though he leaps to the conclusion that the man is a "terrorist." That is also presuming too much. If Haskell's account of what he observed is correct, the other man could have been a legitimate representative of a refugee aid organization or even an embassy, and who was duped by false papers that Abdulmutallab showed him.

And Haskell could easily have drawn the wrong conclusion about the other man's nationality unless he has a very good ear for accented English. Describing someone as an Indian on the basis of his looks is much like describing someone as a European. The man could have been from anywhere on the Indian subcontinent or even Iran or other parts of the Middle East.

Haskell's tale of a second bomber

Another question mark about Haskell's account, in the Pug version, is that he provides considerable detail about what he claims was a second terrorist taken into custody. And yet, from the MLive report, the FBI office in Detroit flatly contradicted the claim, which in Pug's version is strange indeed:

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.

Now here Haskell was outright lying, or the second man was quickly let go and it was all a mistake and no Milk Bones for the bomb-sniffing doggie, or the FBI representative in Detroit was lying or misinformed.

But if we set aside all these caveats I think Haskell would have to be a pretty sophisticated hoaxer to have thought up a tall tale that happens to answer a key question about the terror attack, and which only intelligence/ security professionals knew enough about to be asking in the wee hours of the 26th, when he first posted his story at MLive.

The question: How did the terrorist's trip to Yemen escape notice by Amsterdam airport authorities?

John Batchelor and B. Raman on the case

A Yemen stamp on a passport going through an international airport is a huge red flag and would call for extra scrutiny of a passenger, including a thorough pat down. Yet somehow Abdulmutallab got around the extra scrutiny. The question of how he managed the feat was the subject of much discussion between news talk radio host John Batchelor and ace intelligence analyst B. Raman during John's show on Sunday.

Ram also brought up the question in his latest post at his blog about the terror incident:

[...] 8. An intriguing question is whether his passport contained the immigration stamp of Yemen, which might have raised eyebrows at Schiphol [airport in Amsterdam]. If not, did he travel from Yemen to Ethiopia by a different passport to conceal the fact that his travel started from Yemen?

Ram mentioned other possibilities during his talk with John; e.g., an al Qaeda accomplice at Yemen customs simply didn't stamp the passport. But Kurt Haskell's account of what he witnessed at the Schipol airport check-in counter offers one solution to the mystery: Abdulmutallab posed as a Sudanese refugee without a passport and was walked through!

No passport, no worries about a Yemen stamp. Neat. And if Kurt's account pans out, it seems the man accompanying AM was aware that Schipol had made other concessions for Sudanese refugees.

AM passing himself off as a refugee would also explain for airport authorities the cash payment for the ticket and no return ticket: two other red flags. It would also solve the problem of another red flag: a Nigerian stamp on his passport. Indeed, the Sudanese refugee ploy might have avoided all the red flags.

The Pakistan Connection

Below I've republished Kurt's account in the original "Pug" version, which to my mind is clearer in some respects than the MLive report. But first, a few more words about John's discussion with Ram last night:

Their periodic conversations on John's show about terrorism-related issues are always important, but Sunday's stands out for me; it underscored that all the seemingly different highways and byways of international terrorist incidents converge in Pakistan. This would include AM's terrorist attack on the passengers of NWA Flight 235; this is very clear from Ram's discussion with John during the Sunday show.

From all I've learned since 9/11, I'd say there's no question in the mind of any intelligence professional who's specialized in al Qaeda-type attacks that the al Qaeda masterminds are in Pakistan. And I think few in the intelligence community would dispute that at least some elements of Pakistan's military/ISI:

have been directly involved in planning major terrorist attacks,

have had knowledge of planned attacks that they didn't share in timely manner with other governments,

and that they work closely with al Qaeda as well as elements of the Taliban who are attacking NATO troops in Afghanistan.

So it's past time for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Janet Napolitano to grow up and for the FBI, CIA, Pentagon, Obama Administration, and the U.S. Congress to stop playing ostrich about Pakistan.

This morning ABC News reported:

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, charged with the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253, told FBI agents there were more just like him in Yemen who would strike soon.

And in a tape released four days before the attempted destruction of the Detroit-bound Northwest plane, the leader of al Qaeda in Yemen boasted of what was planned for Americans, saying, "We are carrying a bomb to hit the enemies of God."

Yemen has become a principal al Qaeda training ground and the accused suicide bomber told the FBI he was trained for more than a month in Yemen, given 80 grams of a high explosive cleverly sewn into his underpants, undetected by standard security screening.[...]

And yet John Batchelor's recent discussions with B. Raman and other experts on terrorism underscore that Yemen is just the training camp; the terrorist operations are run from Pakistan. So I'm strongly recommending that you listen to the Sunday discussion between John and Ram, which packs a great deal of information into the ten-minute segment. (It's the first interview in the 12 -1 AM hour of the show).

The podcast for the Sunday show is not yet posted at the 77 WABC-AM website but here's the link to the show archives; the podcast should be available later today or tomorrow at latest.

For readers outside the USA who're picky about clicking on links: 77 WABC-AM, which carries John's show and broadcasts from New York City, is one of the biggest radio stations in the USA if not the biggest. Its website is secure, so the link to the archives is perfectly respectable. (The same for the link to B. Raman's blog, which is posted at Google Blogger.) And you can choose to simply 'listen' to segments of John's four-hour nightly show or download them.

The Milk Bone Brigade

Before I turn the floor over to Pug, one point about his description of the incident involving what he claimed was a second terrorist. I've been seeing reports that only a full body scan could have caught the explosives AM had taped to his body, and that those scanners cost $250,000 each. This news has been accompanied by hand-wringing on the part of officials about the expense of installing the hi-tech scanners. But Kurt's mention of a bomb-sniffing dog is a reminder that there's a low tech full-body scanner on four paws that doesn't cost much in room, board, and flea powder. So maybe as a stopgap solution airports should make greater use of bomb-sniffing dogs.

All right; here's Pug:

Commenter says he was aboard NWA Flight 253, saw suspected terrorist board the plane
By Sheena Harrison
MLive.com
December 26, 2009, 6:49 AM

Update: MLive.com talked exclusively with Pug (a.k.a. Kurt Haskell), who confirmed he was aboard Flight 253.

MLive.com commenter, Pug, says he was aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 and saw suspected terrorist Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab board the plane in Amsterdam.

It's unknown whether this story is true -- you're welcome to decide for yourself. But if Pug's story checks out, then it's certainly understandable he had trouble sleeping last night after returning home from the ordeal.

"I was on this flight today and am thankful to be alive. My wife and I were returning from an African safari [in Uganda -- see the interview] 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.

See the MLive report on Haskell for a chilling detail he provided about the fire on Flight 235: other accounts portray it as a small fire that was quickly put out; from Kurt's account the fire spread very quickly before it was extinguished.

Sunday, December 27

How much more information did Homeland want, Ms Napolitano, before bumping Mutallab from U.S. flights? (UPDATED)

UPDATE 1:25 AM ET
Re the statement from the following Telegraph report: "Embassy officials in Nigeria, who had been warned of Mutallab’s behaviour by his father, were accused of not wording their warning more strongly."

From B. Raman's latest analysis at his blog about Mutallab's terror attack on Detroit-bound NWA Flight 235, the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria had also been warned about Mutallab:

[...] 5. The first person to sound a wake-up call about Abdulmutallab was his father, who is a reputed banker of Nigeria. He reportedly came to know of his son going to Yemen from Dubai and unsuccessfully tried to persuade him to go back to Dubai and resume his studies. When he did not succeed, he is reported to have shared his concerns over his son with the US Embassy in Nigeria and with the Nigerian authorities. The suspicions or concerns of the father were conveyed by the US Embassy to the appropriate authorities in Washington DC, who rightly included his name in a data base of about 550000 names of persons, who have come to adverse notice, but the evidence against whom was not strong enough to deny them a visa or to prevent them from flying to the US.[...]

Also, a few minutes ago "Freedom Fairy" sent me an interesting report on the Mutallab case, which I'll be posting later this morning.
*****************************************
The (U.K.) Telegraph has additional details on the inexplicable behavior of security officials in the USA and the United Kingdom:

Security sources believe that Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, 23, may have developed links with other extremists during the three years he spent studying at University College London.

The Security Service is concerned that the son of a respected Nigerian banker was "off the radar" while living in Britain from 2005 to 2008 on a student visa.

Little more than a year later he went on to attempt a terrorist attack after being trained by al-Qaeda. Officers are trying to track his movements and activities while in the country amid suspicions that he may not have acted alone.

[...]

They suspect that he had planned to launch the attack from Britain but was stopped after being refused a student visa earlier this year to study at a college that was judged to have been bogus.

[...]

Concerns were raised about the student visa system that allowed Mutallab to stay in Britain for three years. Whitehall officials have expressed fears previously that extremists were exploiting lax rules.

MI5 and the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command have drafted in extra staff to search for any links Mutallab may have to radicals. Sources said it was not Britain that supplied the information that led to Mutallab being put on the US "watch list".

"We have not come up with anything but we are now going back through our work to see if he may have been on the periphery of another group or trying to contact radicals in this country," said one.

"We need to know what he was doing in the UK and whether he was just a student. There may be some fragment that we come across that sheds some light on that."

Mutallab’s attack raises questions about the operations of intelligence agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. British security officers will need to explain why they remained unaware of a would-be terrorist living in London for three years.

Earlier this year, Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, suggested that al-Qaeda cells in Britain were being forced to "keep their heads down" due to the success of the service’s operations.

The attempted atrocity will also prompt concerns in the US that Britain is increasingly being used as a base by Islamic extremists planning attacks overseas.

In Washington, US officials are already under pressure to explain why the threat posed by Mutallab was not taken more seriously and why alarm bells did not ring when he paid for his ticket in cash and did not check in any luggage.

Embassy officials in Nigeria, who had been warned of Mutallab’s behaviour by his father, were accused of not wording their warning more strongly. Janet Napolitano, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, said "there had never been any additional information supplied that would move him to a secondary list" [Mutallab was put on the U.S. list of terror suspects in November.]

[...]

[Mutallab] has told the FBI that al-Qaeda provided the bomb materials and training after he made contact with a cell in Yemen. He bought a ticket for almost $3,000 and, carrying a US visa issued in London last year, returned to Nigeria on Dec 24.

He flew to Schipol airport in Amsterdam and transferred to the flight to Detroit.

Mr Obama asked for a review of security and screening procedures after it emerged that Mutallab used explosive materials similar to those used in December, 2001, by Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber.

His device included PETN, one of the ingredients of the plastic explosive Semtex, but got through security in Nigeria and Holland. He had allegedly hidden the powder in a condom strapped to his inner thigh along with a syringe of liquid to mix with it.

It is thought that he assembled the device in the lavatory after complaining to fellow passengers about a stomach upset. It ignited but did not explode, merely causing a small fire that was extinguished by the crew as other passengers leapt on Mutallab.

Mutallab lived with relatives in a West End apartment while studying at UCL but cut off ties with his family after he graduated. He moved to the Middle East and then to Yemen, sending a text message last August warning them that they may not see him for a number of years.

There was another alert last night after a second plane was forced to make an emergency landing at Detroit. The pilot raised the alarm after a Nigerian on the flight from Amsterdam locked himself in the lavatory for up to an hour. He was eventually dragged out after crew broke down the door, but no explosives were found.

Is it something in the water in the U.K. and U.S. that puts sleepwalkers in charge of internal security? Perhaps the most upsetting mealy-mouthed excuse is Homeland's complaint that the warning to the U.S. from the Nigerian embassy officials was not worded strongly enough. What did Homeland want from the embassy before they would place Mutallab on a no-fly list? Forensic evidence that he was planning a terrorist attack -- er, "man disaster attack?" The date and the flight plan?

The mosque being built next door to 9/11 Ground Zero

I just received the following from Uppity Woman. I don't how I missed the story when it broke. Uppity advised me to have a barf bag handy before I started reading; I pass on the advice if the story is also news to you.

I should think the City of New York, if it can't scare up other options, could turn to the federal government for help in getting the property in question designated a national park; this, so that terrorists and their sympathizers don't have a place to congregate and gloat next door to Ground Zero.

Yet from a quick check of the blogosphere, I see World Net Daily reported on December 17th that the mayor's office is fine with the idea of building a large mosque just steps from the World Trade Center. Maybe a century or so down the road it would be fine but today it's rubbing salt in an open wound and a desecration of a national shrine.

This is particularly the case given the quotes from the mosque's iman that the WND report turned up; clearly he rationalizes the 9/11 attack and finds its greatest significance an opportunity to lecture about U.S. actions in World War Two.

Mosque At the World Trade Center: Muslim Renewal Or Insult Near Ground Zero

by Youssef M. Ibrahim
for Hudson New York
December 16, 2009

An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased building steps away from where the World Trade Center once stood -- to turn it into potentially one of the largest New York City mosques.

At the moment the building, the old Burlington Coat Factory, already serves as a mini-mosque: an iron grill lifts every Friday afternoon for a little known Imam leading prayers a few yards away from where Osama Bin Laden’s airborne Islamist bombers killed nearly 3000 people back in 2001.

The Imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf, told the New York Times -- which put the story on its front page Wednesday -- that he has assembled several million dollars to turn it into "an Islamic center near the city’s most hallowed piece of land that would stand as one of ground zero’s more unexpected and striking neighbors."

The 61-year-old Imam said he paid $4.85 million for it -- in cash, records show. With 50,000 square feet of air rights and enough financing, he plans an ambitious project of $150 million, he said, akin to the Chautauqua Institution, the 92 Street Y or the Jewish Community Center.

The origins of such monies are unexplained; neither are the countries or entity advancing such huge donations. Most US mosques, including many in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx are funded directly or indirectly by Saudi Arabia -- the country to which 15 of the 19 hijackers who bombed the World Trade Center belonged. The UAE, Qatar and Iran are other major sponsors across the USA.

The money trail is an important question that must be answered by the Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg with more than a bland comment by one of his spokesmen, Andrew Brent, who quipped to the Times, “If it’s legal, the building owners have a right to do what they want.”

At the moment, the location is not designated a mosque, but rather an overflow prayer space for another mosque, Al Farah, at 245 West Broadway in TriBeCa, where Imam Feisal is the spiritual leader. Call this creeping annexation. On 9/11, the Burlington building, with 80 employees in its basement, is where a piece of a plane plunged through the roof, from either Flight 11 or Flight 175 crashing into the south tower at 9:03 a.m..

One of the investors for future oncoming funds is listed as the Cordoba Initiative, defined as an "interfaith group" - and founded by Imam Feisal. Cordoba is the name militant Muslims often invoke when they recall the glory of Muslim empire in the centuries they occupied Spain.

As a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal correspondent, and as a New York Sun columnist who covered Islamic Fundamentalism extensively overseas and in the USA, I find the facts oddly lacking. The story as reported fails to answer, and avoid asking, so many pertinent questions.

The source of money matters as a significant part of the hundreds of mosques being built and already erected in this country double up as cultural Islamic centers for distributing literature -- Islamist propaganda in fact -- from Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to Detroit, and for schooling growing Muslim minorities. They house Imams of unknown origin and education, many of whom do not speak a word of English but preach in Arabic and Urdu -- radical messages, it often turns out.

As a reporter familiar with the Arab communities of the USA, I doubt the faithful fork out all that money for mega mosques, and if they did, the mayor’s office should prove it, not merely accept someone’s say so.

It is an established fact that a significant percentage of the mosques built in the USA in the past two decades are receiving a disproportionate amount of their funds not only from the Saudis, but also the UAE, Qatar and Iran -- all problematic Islamist activist nations.

The government just discontinued work on a major Iranian-funded mosque and center in New York City, which had operated under the radar since the days of the good old Shah of Iran under the auspices of the Pahlavi Foundation, and has been owned since 1979 by the Mullahs of Iran.

The context here is that 15 of the 19 perpetrators of the attacks -- on the very site where this new mosque shall rise -- came from Saudi Arabia.

We saw how, in the case of Major Nidal Hasan of Ft. Hood, it turned out that three of the original participants in 9/11 had listened to the same preacher Major Hasan listened to: a man with a radical violent Islamic website now operating out of Yemen to radicalize American Muslims.

In such a context, knowing more about the Imam overseeing a potential multimillion dollar mosque at the World Trade Center site is essential to the story. Nearly 3,000 people were deliberately killed there – and the New York Times is papering over what is about to be built on the site in a nice, beatific pseudo-profile of the Imam overseeing the mosque? Limiting access to this Imam to some nice quotes, showing him nattily dressed in a suit, and describing him merely as a Sufi, is vacuous, crafted and couched in public relations spin to obscure rather than explain.

"What happened that day was not Islam" is all that the Times quotes the Imam saying -- a rather lame comment given the enormity of his ambition and the iconic status of where he wants to put his mosque.

The mayor’s office should tell us more.

Just as importantly, who Is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf? And what is his background? Given that much Islamist radicalism originated in mosques at the hands of imams in virtually all the terrorist attacks in America and Europe -- as we found over and over again -– the omission of this information is a glaring mishap.

All we get learn about the Imam in the Times story about him is some anodyne, rather anemic, focus on a man of peace. No real searching. Mayor Bloomberg’s folks need to tell us what are the Imam’s origins, where he was schooled, whether he is an immigrant, a visitor, of which country is he a citizen, and what is his philosophy, among other relevant questions.

Merely describing the man as a Sufi "who follows a path of Islam focused more on spiritual wisdom than on strict ritual," is far too little.

After every terrorist atrocity, any number of Sufi and Muslim savants ritually come out with the hackneyed saying: "Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood."

Accumulated as they are, these statements are added to a heap of nothing for those tens of thousands of Muslims killed by other Muslims in suicide and other bombings from Pakistan to Iraq every day.

One would hope for a follow-up story or stories, and that New York City and its residents at least ask harder questions, rather than submit to being misled in the interest of political correctness.

Thursday, December 24

Joy to the World

Blogger colleague Brenda J. Elliot, the author of the indispensable RBO blog, has created a beautiful Christmas gift for her readers. Go there now and enjoy!