CIA Foils Underwear Bomb

[Albert Doyle]

I can only guess how much of this is true and how much is propaganda:



http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-5...bomb-plot/




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[Jan Klimkowski]

This hardly even needs a deep political analysis.

The timing - as military trials of tortured suspects begin

The suspect - a CIA agent

The subtext - even more Volkland Security no bid costs plus contracts needed for our "vulnerable" airports

The geopolitical giveaway - Saudi intelligence was a key partner of the CIA.

Saudi intelligence riding to the help of the Good Guys?

Who penned this lamentable script? A Bush crime famly ghost writer?

'Underwear bomber' was working for the CIA

Bomber involved in plot to attack US-bound jet was working as an informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged

Paul Harris and Ed Pilkington in New York

The Guardian, Wednesday 9 May 2012


A would-be "underwear bomber" involved in a plot to attack a US-based jet was in fact working as an undercover informer with Saudi intelligence and the CIA, it has emerged.

The revelation is the latest twist in an increasingly bizarre story about the disruption of an apparent attempt by al-Qaida to strike at a high-profile American target using a sophisticated device hidden in the clothing of an attacker.

The plot, which the White House said on Monday had involved the seizing of an underwear bomb by authorities in the Middle East sometime in the last 10 days, had caused alarm throughout the US.

It has also been linked to a suspected US drone strike in Yemen where two Yemeni members of al-Qaida were killed by a missile attack on their car on Sunday, one of them a senior militant, Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso.

But the news that the individual at the heart of the bomb plot was in fact an informer for US intelligence is likely to raise just as many questions as it answers.

Citing US and Yemeni officials, Associated Press reported that the unnamed informant was working under cover for the Saudis and the CIA when he was given the bomb, which was of a new non-metallic type aimed at getting past airport security.

The informant then turned the device over to his handlers and has left Yemen, the officials told the news agency. The LA Times, which first broke the news that the plot had been a "sting operation", said that the bomb plan had also provided the intelligence leads that allowed the strike on Quso.

Earlier John Brennan, Barack Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser and a former CIA official, told ABC's Good Morning America that authorities are "confident that neither the device nor the intended user of this device pose a threat to us".

US officials have said the plot was detected in its early stages and that no American airliner was ever at risk.

The FBI is conducting forensic tests on the bomb as a first step towards discovering whether it would have cleared existing airport scanning systems. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic senator for California who heads the Senate intelligence committee, gave an early hint when she said that she had been briefed about the device which she called "undetectable".

But AP quoted an unnamed US official as saying current detection methods probably would have spotted the shape of the explosive in the latest device.

Just how major an escalation in threat is posed by the bomb remains unclear. Security sources have told news agencies that it was a step up in levels of sophistication from the original underwear bomb that was used in a failed attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.

The device used a more refined detonation system, and Brennan said "it was a threat from a standpoint of the design".

When it comes to who made the device the focus is on an al-Qaida's offshoot, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Matthew Levitt, a counter-terrorism expert at the Washington Institute, said that the interception of the plot amounted to a significant achievement for US security agencies.

He said: "The FBI is holding the device, which suggests that this was done by having boots on the ground. This was a sophisticated operation that shows we are making in-roads in serious places."

Levitt, who was involved as a senior analyst in the FBI's investigation into 9/11, said that it was natural to be sceptical in a presidential election year about security announcements. "But this was not political, it didn't come from the White House and my sense was that it was a really unique success," he said.

Levitt said that the spotlight would now be even more intense on Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, AQAP's assumed bomb-making chief, who is thought to be hiding out in Yemen.

Asiri is believed to have been the creator of the Detroit underwear bomb as well as explosives that were packed into printer cartridges bound for Chicago in 2010.

[Peter Lemkin]

The bra bomber certainly comes next.... or the baby in diapers bomber..... Your analysis is right on the mark, Jan.

[Charles Drago]

It was only a matter of time before the literal-minded turned their attention to "undercover operation."

The TNT BVD from the CIA.

I wouldn't want to be the guy to debrief the suspect.

Anyway ...

I have the perfect underwear bomb idea that will defeat all efforts at detection:

Wear a pair of too-tight jockey shorts for three weeks in the desert sun.

Never take them off -- not even when voiding.

Get on a plane.

Drop your trousers.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Even MSM security correspondents, briefed with all the pomp and secrecy of a spooky confessional booth, can't take this farce seriously.

It's about as meaningful as a fratboy stinkbomb prank.

I vote for the putrid corpse of John Belushi to be dug up by the WASP sons of Geronimo-hunting goons, transfused with military-grade liquid explosive, and presented as the next despicable chapter in the Evil Terrorist Plot, threatening our Way of Life, nay threatening the very nostrils of loyal Volkland Security functionaries.

Sting operation secures al-Qaida bomb, but questions persist

More details emerge of undercover operation, but success carries dangers

Richard Norton-Taylor and Nick Hopkins

Guardian
While serious questions remain about the origins and source of the Yemeni "bomb plot", a clearer picture is emerging of an audacious and, as far as the CIA is concerned, a successful sting operation.

Sources familiar with the operation suggest that a CIA informant and putative suicide-bomber originally recruited by Saudi intelligence infiltrated al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsular (AQAP) and said he wanted a bomb in order to explode an aircraft bound for the US.

The double agent was handed the latest bomb devised by AQAP and passed it on to his Saudi handlers and the CIA.

Western intelligence sources do not dispute it was a sting operation. But it seems it was more than that: the "suicide bomber"was an agent provocateur - that it is to say, there is no evidence that AQAP was already planning such a plot and that without his approach to the militant group, no such plot wouild have taken place, not yet at any rate.

"It seems the double agent was planted and offered himself up to AQAP, it was an opportunity for them to test new technology", said Tobias Feakin, director of national security and resilience at the London-based Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

He added that claims of an AQAP-inspired plot did not seem to quite fit as both core al-Qaida and AQAP were in the process of "regrouping", adopting more of a role in support of the local population rather than planning ambitious bomb plots.

Western intelligence officials have made it clear that the "underwear" bomb, now in the hands of the FBI, will prove extremely useful in testing airport security measures, specifically over whether a bomb such as this one with no metallic content could be detected by existing screens.

The sting operation may be a morale-boosting propaganda coup. The alleged plot also served to defend the Obama administration's decision last month to step up US drones on targets in Yemen. According to the New York Times reported, the double agent also provided intelligence that led the CIA to conduct a drone strike in Yemen on Sunday that killed the AQAP leader Fahd al-Quso.

But, it seems, he did not know of the whereabouts of the bombmaker himself, Hassan al-Asiri, who must now be the prime target of a US drone attack.

Judging by the responses of sources approached about the operation, it was set up by the CIA and the Saudis, and no other intelligence agency was involved.

It does, however, raise the spectre of crying wolf - will reports of the next plot refer to a sting, or a real terrorist operation?

[Carsten Wiethoff]

From http://www.asianage.com/international/br...ources-812

The undercover informant in the plot linked to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, was a British citizen, possibly of Saudi origin, the sources said on condition of anonymity. The informant was working in cooperation with Britain's two principal spy agencies.

[Peter Lemkin]

But on a more 'serious' note....[and likely the reason d'etre for this entire false-flag and agent provocateur combo op], all sorts of high-level types in the USA are using it as a call for GREATER restrictions and greater searches/surveillance/eavesdropping/preemptive countermeasures on everyone, everywhere!.....Achtung! [Oh, and lest I forget, there is a bill on such searches/surveillance/eavesdropping/preemptive countermeasures on everyone, everywhere that just happens to be up for renewal in Congress in the next few days.....coincidence, I'm sure:pinkelephant:

[Peter Lemkin]

May 11, 2012 Shakespeare: "Hell is Empty and all the Devils are Here"

The Political Uses of the Latest "Terror Plot"
by Bill Van Auken
Global Research, May 11, 2012
World Socialist Web Site - 2012-05-10

One day after publicly announcing that the CIA had foiled an Al Qaeda plot to bomb a commercial airliner, US officials revealed Tuesday that the would-be bomber was in fact an informant working for the CIA and Saudi intelligence.

This turn of events is in line with so many domestic terror plots "disrupted" by federal authorities, whichin the overwhelming majority of caseshave featured confidential informants acting as agent provocateurs, instigating stage-managed plots and providing targeted patsies with money, dummy bombs and fake weapons before they are rounded up.

The account given for this latest operation is decidedly murky. Officials have claimed that the plot originated with the infiltration of a group affiliated to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula by the CIA-Saudi double agent. Why the US government would choose to expose such a seemingly valuable mole by making the supposed plot public is unclear to say the least.

It is impossible to sort fact from fiction in the versions being reported by the media. A highly skeptical attitude toward the most basic claims about this episode is more than warranted. However, the saturation news coverage is itself an unmistakable indication that, with less than six months to go before the US presidential election, elements within the Obama administration and the state apparatus want to move the "war on terror" to the front burner of American politics.

A key motivation for this was made clear Wednesday by the Washington Post, which published an editorial entitled "The US is right to strike hard at terrorists in Yemen." The Post cites the alleged bomb plot to retroactively justify the Obama administration's sharp escalation in US drone strikes against Yemen, with more missiles fired from the pilotless aircraft at targets in the country in the first four months of this year than in all of 2010 and 2011 combined.

The editorial went on to praise White House counterterrorism advisor John Brennan for delivering a speech last week defending drone attacks as both legal and "ethical." Brennan argued that the strikes were sanctioned by the Authorization of the Use of Military Force passed by Congress in September 2001 and used to justify both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

As the media provided wall-to-wall coverage of the alleged terror plot, virtually no attention was given to the announcement Tuesday by the Pentagon that US special forces "trainers" have been sent back into Yemen to aid troops of the country's US-backed dictatorship in an ongoing civil war. They had been withdrawn during the mass uprisings that toppled dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, who ruled Yemen for 33 years, only to see him replaced by his deputy. The Pentagon also revealed that an amphibious assault battle group, including some 2,000 Marines, has been deployed off Yemen's coast in the Gulf of Aden.

Thus, the "war on terror", in the form of the reported bomb plot, is being utilized to justify yet another US war, this time in Yemen. The country is of great strategic concern to the US, as it commands the choke point between the Red and Arabian Seas, a key oil shipping route, and borders Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer.

There are doubtless political calculations in making the bomb plot public as well. Obama launched his re-election campaign by glorifying his role as the man who ordered the assassination of Osama bin Laden. He appears determined to make it impossible for the Republicans to attack him from the right on the "national security issue" by touting his record as the most militarist president in the country's history.

Finally, aside from immediate foreign policy and political objectives, publicizing the purported bomb plot serves an institutional purpose, providing a justification for the perpetuation of a massive apparatus of military aggression and domestic repression.

In Congressional testimony on Wednesday, FBI chief Robert Mueller cited the plot to call for swift renewal of provisions granting the US government sweeping authority to spy on electronic communications. The provisions are set to expire at the end of the year.

CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria pointed to this side of the issue in an online column posted this week, noting that Washington remains "firmly committed to the war on terror at home" and to the "expansion of federal bureaucracies to tackle this war."

"Since September 11, 2001, the US government has created or reconfigured at least 263 organizations to tackle some aspect of the war on terror," he writes. "Thirty-three new building complexes have been built for the intelligence bureaucracies alone, occupying 17 million square feetthe equivalent of 22 US Capitols or three Pentagons. The largest bureaucracy after the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs is now the Department of Homeland Security, which has a workforce of 230,000 people."

Zakaria notes that the vast powers of this intelligence apparatus "now touch every aspect of American life", with "some 30,000 people, for example … now employed exclusively to listen in on phone conversations and other communications within the United States."

After more than a decade of first the Bush administration and then that of Obama attempting to terrorize the American people with the supposedly ubiquitous threat of terrorism, the breathless announcement of new "bomb plots" appears to be producing diminished returns.

The overwhelming majority of the American people are opposed to war and have seen again and again how the "war on terror" has been used to justify military aggression abroad. Moreover, millions of working people in the United States and around the world are confronting far more immediate threats in the form of mass unemployment, declining living standards, the lack of a future for the youth and the destruction of public education and basic social services.

The 2012 election contest between the Democratic and Republican parties will offer no opportunity to vote for or against the continued buildup of the US military and intelligence apparatus and the threat it poses to the democratic rights and very lives of working people on a world scale. Nor will it allow the people to vote for or against the assault on jobs, wages and social conditions in the interest of the banks and the financial elite. Both parties are fully committed to these policies.

None of this can be opposed within the framework of the capitalist two-party system. Such a struggle can be waged only by means of the independent political mobilization of the working class on the basis of a socialist program to put an end to the profit system.

[Peter Lemkin]

But on a more 'serious' note....[and likely the reason d'etre for this entire false-flag and agent provocateur combo op], all sorts of high-level types in the USA are using it as a call for GREATER restrictions and greater searches/surveillance/eavesdropping/preemptive countermeasures on everyone, everywhere!.....Achtung! [Oh, and lest I forget, there is a bill on such searches/surveillance/eavesdropping/preemptive countermeasures on everyone, everywhere that just happens to be up for renewal in Congress in the next few days.....coincidence, I'm sure:pinkelephant:

I stand corrected....

"According to CIA Officer Nelson Brickham, "false flag" recruitments are when CIA case officers pose as (say) Soviet intelligence officers and, using legitimate Soviet cipher systems and methodology, recruit (say) Chinese diplomats, who believe they are working for the Russians, although they are actually working for the CIA. The CIA case officers then use the unsuspecting Chinese agents to create all manner of mischief. (The Phoenix Program, p 102)

The Wikipedia definition is incorrect, as many Wikipedia definitions are: false flags are not necessarily designed to fool the public, they are designed to fool a foreign intelligence service or its agents.

And not all operations designed to fool the public, or a foreign intelligence service or its agents, are false flag operations.

The underwear bomber could only have been part of a false flag operation if he thought he was working for an intelligence service other than the CIA. But he knew he was working for the CIA.

The underwear bomber was a penetration agent. It was not a false flag operation.

If the 19 9-11 bombers had been hired by MOSSAD agents pretending to be Al Qaeda agents, 9-11 would have been a false flag operation designed to fool the public. Of course, bin Laden would have to have been a CIA agent as well, as would any other Al Qaeda official who claimed credit for 9-11." -Douglas Valentine

[Jan Klimkowski]

According to CIA Officer Nelson Brickham

Peter - why would we allow the CIA to define the meaning of false flag?

Why would we limit the meaning of false flag to operations "not necessarily designed to fool the public, they are designed to fool a foreign intelligence service or its agents"?

The Gleiwitz incident was a classic false flag.

In that thread I wrote about Gleiwitz:

A classic psyop to create a false casus belli. Your Propaganda Ministry, in this case led by the Gestapo, then makes sure the people's "outrage" at this heathen and barbarous act is magnified, and off your armies go to slaughter the enemy.

Given this was a Nazi propaganda scam, it's a wonder that it's not better known.

To be a cynic, perhaps it has to do with the fact that such tricks are played by any country which wants to persuade its population to back an otherwise unpopular war.

There are plenty of examples. However, one of my favourites is the "Saddam bayoneted my baby" scam, run by the Bush I regime's propagandists during the Kuwaiti prelude to the first Iraq War.

I stand by every word.