| FrontPageMag.com | By Robert Spencer | By Hugh Fitzgerald | Books | Dhimmi Watch | Islam 101 | Qur'an Blog | Raymond Ibrahim | Robert Spencer |  |
|
|
|||||||||||
|
|
Flight 327 Update. Will all those who ridiculed Annie Jacobsen for "hysteria" over "musicians," and derided her for "racism," now apologize? What do you think?
And what about those who think the Flying Imams case is a legitimate one of racist profiling? Will they now acknowledge that there is a genuine threat to American air travel? Again, what do you think?
And why has DHS covered up all these probes and dry runs? Are they more concerned about a fictional "backlash" against Muslims than about preventing another jihad terror attack? Do they think that keeping the public ignorant, fat, and happy will help prevent another jihad terror attack? This goes hand-in-hand with the polite fictions about Islam and jihad that dominate the public discourse -- it's as if in both cases that the truth is just too terrifying to contemplate, and so we'd rather play pretend.
Well, if we wish to survive, maybe it's time to grow up.
By Audrey Hudson for the Washington Times, with thanks to Gnosis:
Download the inspector general report (PDF)A newly released inspector general report backs eyewitness accounts of suspicious behavior by 13 Middle Eastern men on a Northwest Airlines flight in 2004 and reveals several missteps by government officials, including failure to file an incident report until a month after the matter became public.
According to the Homeland Security report, the "suspicious passengers," 12 Syrians and their Lebanese-born promoter, were traveling on Flight 327 from Detroit to Los Angeles on expired visas. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services extended the visas one week after the June 29, 2004, incident.
The report also says that a background check in the FBI's National Crime Information Center database, which was performed June 18 as part of a visa-extension application, produced "positive hits" for past criminal records or suspicious behavior for eight of the 12 Syrians, who were traveling in the U.S. as a musical group.
In addition, the band's promoter was listed in a separate FBI database on case investigations for acting suspiciously aboard a flight months earlier. He was detained a third time in September on a return trip to the U.S. from Istanbul, the details of which were redacted.
The inspector general criticized the Homeland Security officials for not reporting the incident to the Homeland Security Operations Center (HSOC), which serves as the nation's nerve center for information sharing and domestic incident management.
The report comes three years after the incident, which was not officially acknowledged until a month later, after The Washington Times reported passenger and marshal complaints that the incident resembled a dry run for a terrorist attack. After reviewing the report, air marshals say it confirms their earlier suspicions.
Official denialAn air marshal who told The Times that he has been involved personally in terror probes that were ignored by federal security managers, called such behavior typical.
"Agency management was not only covering up numerous probes and dry-run encounters from Congress and other federal law-enforcement agencies, it was also hiding these incidents from their own flying air marshals," said P. Jeffrey Black, an air marshal stationed in Las Vegas.
Homeland Security officials initially denied the complaints and blamed passengers who reported the incident to the press as behaving hysterically. However, the inspector general report shows that air marshals had the group of men under surveillance before they boarded the plane.
"Prior to boarding, one of the air marshals noticed what he later characterized as 'unusual behavior' by about six Middle Eastern males, who arrived at the gate together, then separated, and acted as if they did not know each other," the report said.
"According to the air marshals, these men were sweaty, appeared nervous and arrived after the boarding announcement. The air marshals made eye contact with one another to ensure they were aware of this behavior," the report said.
The inspector general's two-year investigation was originally released in April 2006 but was then wholly redacted except for two sentences. The re-release stems from a Freedom of Information request by The Times on April 25, 2006, which was answered Friday.
Portions of the report remain redacted. However, current and former air marshals who reviewed a copy provided by The Times say the activities of the men details a dry run for a terrorist attack.
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at May 30, 2007 5:57 AM
Print this entry
| Email this entry
| Digg this
| del.icio.us
Our government is not representing the American people. They suppress anything that would increase awareness of the threat from Islam. They also suppress anything that threatens a vision of one big happy hemisphere.
Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago and has been in the spotlight for the last three years. But have you ever heard of Ernest James Thompson? He’s an Al Qaeda member from Denver. Bet you didn’t know that the Federal Government arrested him in Central America last year. What was he doing with a Mexican passport? Why would the Mexican government issue a passport to a guy from Denver?
You’re not supposed to ask these things.
http://www.amandala.com.bz/index.php?id=5251
![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 30, 2007 6:59 AM
all the above examples will show us that we cannot expect much of any help from governments. of all Western countries, l believe the US people to be the least dependant on their government as compared to Europe, ie the more liberal your government is and more liberals in general, the more dependant you become to government, nanny stateism.
Posted by: ZenaWarriorPrincess at May 30, 2007 7:01 AM
Robert, keep at this, encourage those who are doing the digging. There's plenty more to be found.
Posted by: longtime lurker at May 30, 2007 7:26 AM
Who was their booking agent? Where did they perform? What kind of music where they playing?
Easy to find out. Are they still in the US? Does the FBI know who they are and where they can be found?
Its not rocket science. This has to be followed up. Why are the authorities people not doing their jobs?
Posted by: sheik yer'mami at May 30, 2007 7:30 AM
What better way for those who wish to promptly stop, not "micro-manage" but stop, the fiasco (goals unattainable and, in any case, exactly the wrong goals) of Tarbaby Iraq, then to begin Congressional investigations of the Department of Homeland Security, and its policies, all the way from the FBI "outreach" to Muslims and naive use of CAIR, to the minimizing of events, and the suppression of information that might lead to a more sensible apprehension of, understanding of, the nature of the permanent threat that the ideology of Islam, if taken seriously, presents to all Infidels, everywhere.
That will shut at least some up about the so-called "surrendercrats." And failure to combine fury at the squandering of men, money, materiel, and morale, civilian and military, in Iraq, with fury at how inept has been the presentation of the real problem, the =inability of those for whonm the word "religion" entitles some belief-system to automatic, salaam-salaam respect, and the laziness about comprehending, and the fear of offending -- offending people who are quick to take offense, or pretend to, whenever the least home truth is uttered about the doctrine, or histoy, of Islam and Jihad-conquest and mistreatment of non-Muslims in Muslim-dominated lands.
Can't someone or some group of someones, both in domestic and in foreign policy connected to Islam, at long last cut the crap? What a sigh of relief, what an explosion of support, would ensure, despite the attempted accompaniment of Duranty-Times bien-pensant tut-tutting, a tut-tutting one can well imagine.
Posted by: Hugh at May 30, 2007 7:33 AM
Count me in, I find Muslims offensive and Muslims find me offensive, anyway....I really do not care for their dream of an all Islamic world...
Posted by: exsgtbrown at May 30, 2007 8:09 AM
Hugh,
We seem to be in a dire quandary. We almost need to vote for a Democrat in 2008 (painful to admit, I know) in order to get the hell out of Iraq and complete the first necessary goal that you stated above. I am not sure if any Republican candidate will do so initially. If they win, it will be because of the " global war on terror", to which nearly all erroneously tie to Iraq.
Unfortunately, by doing so, we will then put people in power who have no intention of securing our borders, reforming immigration or dealing with the illegals already here, those "moderate" American Muslims who support suicide bombings, included. It will be hate-crime prosecutions against Christians for offending the adherents to the "religion of peace". Dry-runs will evolve into soaking wet ones, I fear.
What on Earth are we going to do? We see the train wreck approaching but seem powerless to stop it.
Posted by: awake at May 30, 2007 8:42 AM
TSA Spokeswoman Howe was in full smile mode. Annie Jacobsen is not credible because she relied on only a ‘few TSA agents’ out of a population of thousands of agents. We can’t stereotype terrorists, we need to rely on behavior. When testimony of an Air Marshall was read to her point blank, her response was that the report did not reflect that opinion. Smile.
What is going on?
Ahmedinejad and his handlers are a wonderful contrast to the post-modern West. Somebody forgot to tell these guys that history ended in the 1990s.
at May 30, 2007 8:43 AM
Considering NCIC checks were positive AND Marshals had them pegged, I blame DHS HQ Management for this one...EXTENDING their visas???
This seems to be what I see all the time, regardless of industry. Those who actually DO the work spot the problems immediately, while those who make the money but do NOTHING but try to hide the problems.
So f*ing typical.
Hate to say this, but this IS a train wreck and it will bite anyone at HQ in the A$$...they can try & blame the workers all they want, but news like this ALWAYS comes out.
Thanks for revealing the TRUTH.
Posted by: Miss_Anthrope at May 30, 2007 9:28 AM
Just think of all the juicy tidbits of knowledge that this "band" has collected from the dry run, and the failure of our officials to release information, not just to the public, but to the Air Marshals!
This last seems to me to be a lot like telling the fire department that there's a fire, but they're going to have to drive around town to find it.
Posted by: Abscedere at May 30, 2007 9:53 AM
I was watching a short segment on this during FOX and Friends this morning. The TSA agent was in full denial mode. It was truly pathetic, the PC was leaching out of her.
We are in big trouble with bad things to come with people like her at the helms. With the overwhelming evidence in front her response was something to the tune of "we can't sterotype people, we have to look at abnormal patterns of behaviors".
just two quick comments I have on her pathetic explinations:
1. They don't seem to be showing any verbal support of the airlines and "john does" who took action during the flying imam case. They are very hands off, which by her explination is odd since that is a classic example of "abnormal patterns of behaviors".
2. I guess if the TSA were trying to track members of the IRA, they wouldn't pick out people coming from Ireland of Irish nationality???? Then again maybe they would, because that has no PC implications....
Posted by: adobe at May 30, 2007 10:21 AM
Was the band's name a Syrian Arabic version of The Grateful Dead by any chance?
(While our security officials seem to be dead from the neck up.)
And didn't ohammad forbid music, anyway?
(Or is this another "war is deceit" orchestration?)
Posted by: profitsbeard at May 30, 2007 10:22 AM
One thing that drives me nutts is all these people we hear about who are here in the US on EXPIRED visas.
When they enter the country, isn't the date of entry logged someplace?
When the length of visa expires, does that not send up a red flag somewhere?
Can this system not be automated so that the person in violation of immigration law can be indentified and apprehended when they try to board a d-----d airplane!!??
Several years ago, we adopted a child from Russia. I cannot count how many documents we had to complete, notarize, certify, and apostille. If ANY LITTLE THING was out of order the process stopped. We also had a very narrow date range to get our daughter into the country. All that was for a four-year old handicapped child to enter American territory.
Is it too much to ask that the same attention be given to everyone else, in particular likely terrorists?
We've dropped our guard- and we'll all pay a high price for our political correctness.
Posted by: livefreeordie!
at May 30, 2007 10:29 AM
Profiling is ok with me...
Posted by: exsgtbrown at May 30, 2007 10:30 AM
I don't have TV, so I'm just hearing here about this TSA agent. We need to look at behavior? You fool, lady, we _are_ looking at behavior! _Look_ at these guy's behavior! So what it comes to is that if they are Middle Eastern they can behave like they're about to take over the plane and we'll be told we're "stereotyping" if we happen to notice this BEHAVIOR and say there's something wrong.
We are so not serious. This is bad, bad, bad.
What I want to know is, why is the government doing this? Is it really pure PC-ism or do they think they are being "deep" in pretending to be unsuspicious? Putting the bad guys off guard or something? If so, it's a stupid plan and is getting normal people (like Annie Jacobsen) spoken ill of when they are being rational and getting the rest of us very ticked off.
Posted by: Lydia at May 30, 2007 11:24 AM
From article: "Agency management was not only covering up numerous probes and dry-run encounters from Congress and other federal law-enforcement agencies, it was also hiding these incidents from their own flying air marshals," said P. Jeffrey Black, an air marshal stationed in Las Vegas.
This is absolutely outrageous. 'The Agency Management', should not only be fired, they should be brought up on charges of aiding the enemy...
Where does, 'the agency' get its marching orders? I bet the buck stops at the top or near it...
at May 30, 2007 11:24 AM
State apparently is a huge problem here...
State just issues visas to anyone who walks in the door, and doesn't have a decent system to inform other agencies of their information??? That's assuming some EU country, with visa waivers from us, didn't give these morons residency first.
TSA is the other problem...
They don't want to 'profile' (load of PC crap), so let the few and far-between Marshalls be on the lookout. Then they don't require EVERYONE to give their life story as to why they're in the US.
Then catching all these freaks is up to Marshalls, FBI, ICE, BCP, et al. I doubt they can keep up with the MILLIONS cycling through every day!!!
And if I'm stating anything revealing to us, don't you think THEY ALREADY KNOW IT???
Posted by: Miss_Anthrope at May 30, 2007 11:41 AM
And word on the street is that this isn't the only "dry run" that's happened since 9-11. Many Islamic terrorist activities are being covered up in the USA.
Excuse me if I don't feel any safer not knowing the details.
Posted by: Foehammer at May 30, 2007 12:10 PM
"Many Islamic terrorist activities are being covered up in the USA"
Posted by: Foehammer
....by the US government, no less......are they afraid they might anger the Muslims sensitivity....
Posted by: exsgtbrown at May 30, 2007 1:41 PM
I've never seen anything more sickening in my life. Thank God there were air marshalls aboard this flight; nobody would ever know about it otherwise. But how are you going to tell Americans to be watchful and vigilant (Pres Bush), and then have DHS tell us we're hysterical when we report suspicious activity? This was beyond suspicious from the sounds of it. This was obvious.
Reading this was like getting punched in the gut. Depressing.
Posted by: Gnosis at May 30, 2007 3:08 PM
Hugh nailed it. We're fighting them over there so we can let them run amok over here. It's not wonder they say it's not a matter of if but when. It's not a testament to how well trained or financed the jihadists are, it's a testament to our complete and utter incompetence. WILLFULLY and BLATANTLY incompetent.
Posted by: Gnosis at May 30, 2007 3:32 PM
The US is failing to protect the safety of American airline passengers! Well, isn't that one hell of a shock! (I am being sarcastic).
It is absolutely urgent that all of us ratchet up the pressure on the US government to keep us safe (which it NOT doing presently all too obviously). That is a fundamental right we all share. Our safety is vastly more important than 'racial profiling' concerns. The PC crowd would have us believe that first degree murder is a smaller crime than racism! And the idiots we have elected to office are eating it up!!!!!
In fact, what the US government is doing is dereliction of its duty. It is criminal. But we must find a way to put a muzzle on this evil PC propaganda that endangers our lives in so many ways and ties our hands to the great benefit of the Islamic mass murderers that have wrought havoc on the globe.
God save us from global warming (and Al Gore)!!!
And God help those who would protect us from Islamic terror!
The red flag came to my attention recently when I learned of the presence of islamic terrorism training camps in the US in at least seven states (and had been in operation since BEFORE 9-11). One of the terrorist organizations is of course ul-Fuqra and is an offshoot of al-Qaeda. These terrorism training camps could set off a nuclear attack on US soil and the government is doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT THEM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Utterly mind-boggling. And they have the nerve to draw a paycheck from US taxpayer monies.
Seeing that the US government is ignoring Taliban-type terrorism training camps in the US I can imagine how safe it is to fly in, through, or from the US (not very).
Posted by: pythagoras at May 30, 2007 4:10 PM
how many billions of dollars wasted on "national defense" and "intelligence efforts" - and 4 years to declare that what smelled, looked, sounded like an islamonazi hijacking attempt - was indeed just that?! PC? - hell - this is national slow-motion suicide (or may yet turn into fratracide)
"And why has DHS covered up all these probes and dry runs? ..." Unfortunately - as our world operates - it is more likely a case of those business interests involved in air travel, tourism, etc. Same reason shark attacks (which occur all the time at the most popular beach/resort areas in the USA) go un-and under reported... And of course - our elites cannot upsett their elites i.e. our politicians/government/business concersn and the saudis - who control the oil flow and prices (which also more likely the reason why the US is in Iraq: saudis saw the "handwriting on the wall" and as they/it is incapable of fielding a military force - called on its 'partners in deviousness' to secure their buffer zone (internal and external -i.e. saudi's border against -until IraqWar part 2 - threats from Iran and Iraq - and internally from its own populace that has strong desire to topple the elites).
anyone else figure out -by now- that our government of, by, for the people via representation is not working as advertised - i.e. we now do not have "representative government" ... that leaves us - The People - We are own our collective own. This global mess -in part due to islamofascism will not be resolved by our "representative government" as it has no interest in doing so. It is up to us. Remain passive or passively active - and the situation will never change except for the worse.
at May 30, 2007 6:45 PM
Well, "heckuva-job Chertoff" is following in the footsteps of "heckuva-job Brownie" and "heckuva-job Rumsfeld" and "heckuva-job/ absolute-confidence Gonzales". Apparently all Bush's appointees have the same job description:
1) Sit in chair
2) Say "Yes, Sir, we've got it covered" at briefings
3) Collect paycheck
4) Prevent subordinates from making any decisions or doing anything useful
5) Announce "It's a difficult job but we're making great progress" in weekly press releases
6) Repeat until you have to slink off in disgrace
This Republican administration stinks; and yet, dammit, the Dhimmicrats would be worse. Speaker Pelosi has already been overseas, kissing up to a terrorist-supporting dictator, with no apparent disapproval from either party.
What's a concerned citizen to do? Vote for the right guy, of course, but - how do you know from the pre-election rhetoric which of the candidates have not only the WILL to ACT, but the WISDOM to judge potential consequences? Which ones won't mind playing war, because their God tells them He's got a wonderful plan, never mind the details. Which ones will say anything, just to be the most powerful man in the most powerful nation on earth?
Who's got the biggest war chest and the best handlers & spin-meisters money can buy - and owes his allegiance to big oil, big pharma, big trans-national business?
at May 30, 2007 7:42 PM
It's outrageous that a group of Arab men with expired visas can easily board a plane in the US while American citizens who want to do the same have to present valid photo IDs and undergo various security checks.
Posted by: lakeside at May 30, 2007 9:08 PM
We can only hope that the govermnent wants these islamofascists to think they are not onto them so that they can continue ongoing investigations. The scary thing is that Americans themselves know how ineffectual the government truly is regarding immigration, etc.
God help us!
Posted by: lafn at May 31, 2007 11:56 AM
Comments are turned off and archived for this entry.
(Note: The Comments section is provided in the interests of free speech only. It is mostly unmoderated, but comments that are off-topic, offensive, slanderous, or otherwise annoying stand a chance of being deleted. The fact that any comment remains on the site IN NO WAY constitutes an endorsement by Jihad Watch or Dhimmi Watch, or by Robert Spencer or any other Jihad Watch or Dhimmi Watch writer, of any view expressed, fact alleged, or link provided in that comment.)