Background: Kurt and Lori Haskell were passengers on board Flight 253, Christmas Day 2009. Kurt Haskell, a respected attorney, witnessed a well dressed man help the underwear bomber to board Flight 253 without a passport. There were other odd occurrences associated with this flight.
In September, Kurt stated: "...It seems as though the Underwear Bomber has now decided to fire his attorneys and represent himself. I am actually not too surprised by this event. Being an attorney myself, I can see his attorneys trying to stuff a settlement down his throat while he argues in opposition that he was set up...."
http://haskellfamily.blogspot.com/2010/09/why-underwear-bomber-trial-with.html
In late November, Kurt and another attorney attempted to visit the Underwear Bomber at Milan Prison. Here is Kurt's story...

Kurt Haskell witnessed a well dressed man help the underwear bomber to board Flight 253 without a passport.
Video Kurt created discussing the Underwear Bomber with Michael Chertoff.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/10/cleric-hit-list-attended-pentagon-lunch/

By Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

A US citizen linked to Al Qaeda who is being targeted for extra-judicial killing by the CIA lunched at the Pentagon several months after the 9/11 attacks, news sources confirmed Wednesday.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric born in New Mexico who is now believed to be in Yemen, was invited to have lunch at the Pentagon shortly after 9/11 as part of the military's outreach effort to Muslims, officials confirmed to NBC News.

NBC reports:

According to the officials, al-Awlaki was invited as part of a Pentagon outreach program to convince influential Muslims that the war in Afghanistan was aimed at al-Qaida, not Muslims.

The FBI obtained the information during its investigation into the Fort Hood shooting rampage last November and alleged gunman Nidal Hasan's contact with Awlaki.

Flight 253: Intelligence Agencies Nixed State Department Move to Revoke Bomber’s Visa
by Tom Burghardt / February 8th, 2010

Rightist demagogues, as they are wont to do, prattle-on how they, and they alone, can “keep America safe”–by shredding the Constitution.

Waging a decades-long psychological war against the American people, corporatist thugs embedded within the National Security State assure us that secrecy, deceit and imperial adventures that steal other peoples’ resources are the one true path to national prosperity and universal happiness.

But what happens when those charged with protecting us from attack, actually aid and abet those who would kill us, and then handsomely profit from our slaughter in the process?

During a January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Under Secretary of State for Management, Patrick F. Kennedy, testified that the visa of accused bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, wasn’t revoked at the specific request of secret state agencies.

http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20100204025852449
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/f253-f03.shtml

Amid media blackout - Congressional hearing reveals US intelligence agencies shielded Flight 253 bomber

By Alex Lantier
3 February 2010
wsws.org

A January 27 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security established that US intelligence agencies stopped the State Department from revoking the US visa of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The Nigerian student, whom US officials suspected of being affiliated with the Yemeni terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, attempted to set off a bomb on Northwest Flight 253 into Detroit on Christmas Day. Revocation of Abdulmutallab’s visa would have prevented him from boarding the airplane.

The hearing was reported in a brief article posted January 27 on the web site of the Detroit News, headlined, “Terror Suspect Kept Visa to Avoid Tipping Off Larger Investigation.”

Flight 253 Cover-Up: “No Smoking Gun” Claims Undercut by New Disclosures

by Tom Burghardt / January 25th, 2010

Nearly one month after passengers foiled an attempted suicide bomb attack aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day, new information reveals that the White House and U.S. security agencies had specific intelligence on accused terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, far earlier than previously acknowledged.

Along with new reports, evidence suggests that the administration’s cover-up of the affair has very little to do with a failure by the intelligence apparatus to “connect the dots” and may have far more serious political implications for the Obama administration, and what little remains of a functioning democracy in the United States, than a botched bombing.

What the White House and security officials have previously described only as “vague” intercepts regarding “a Nigerian” has now morphed into a clear picture of the suspect–and the plot.

Flight 253: Anatomy of a Cover-Up
by Tom Burghardt / January 11th, 2010

New revelations about the failed Christmas Day attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 continue to emerge as does evidence of a systematic cover-up.

With the White House in crisis mode since the attempted bombing, President Obama met for two hours January 5 with top security and intelligence officials. Obama said that secret state agencies “had sufficient information to uncover the terror plot … but that intelligence officials had ‘failed to connect those dots’,” The New York Times reports.

The latest iteration of the “dot theory” floated by the President, aided and abetted by a compliant media, claims “this was not a failure to collect intelligence” but rather, “a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

“Mr. Obama’s stark assessment that the government failed to properly analyze and integrate intelligence served as a sharp rebuke of the country’s intelligence agencies,” declared the Times uncritically.

The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint
By F. William Engdahl

Global Research, January 5, 2010

On December 25 US authorities arrested a Nigerian named Abdulmutallab aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on charges of having tried to blow up the plane with smuggled explosives. Since then reports have been broadcast from CNN, the New York Times and other sources that he was "suspected" of having been trained in Yemen for his terror mission. What the world has been subjected to since is the emergence of a new target for the US ‘War on Terror,’ namely a desolate state on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen. A closer look at the background suggests the Pentagon and US intelligence have a hidden agenda in Yemen.

U.S. learned intelligence on airline bomb suspect while he was en route
U.S. border enforcement officials came close to stopping the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines jet while the suspect was en route to Detroit on Christmas Day, new data show.
By Sebastian Rotella
5:36 PM PST, January 6, 2010

U.S. border security officials learned of intelligence about the alleged extremist links of the suspect in the Christmas Day airline bombing attempt as he was en route to Detroit and had decided to question him when he landed, officials said in new disclosures today.

The new information shows that border enforcement officials came close to uncovering the plot despite previous intelligence failures that were criticized by President Obama this week.

If the intelligence had been discovered sooner, it could have resulted in the interrogation and search of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab before he boarded the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight, senior law enforcement officials said.

January 6, 2010
Op-Ed Contributors
How 12/25 Was Like 9/11
By THOMAS H. KEAN and JOHN FARMER Jr.

IN the days since the attempted Christmas Day airplane bombing, many officials, including the White House’s counterterrorism director, John Brennan, have insisted that the Detroit incident was “not like 9/11.” In many respects, we agree. But the government’s handling of the intelligence leading up to the attack was eerily reminiscent of one of the most shocking — and relatively underreported — revelations to come out of the 9/11 commission’s hearings.

link to video in original:

http://rawstory.com/2009/01/countdown-detroit-bomber-intel-failure-conspiracy-cock-up/
Countdown: Detroit bomber intel failure: ‘Conspiracy or cock up?’

By Diana Sweet
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 -- 7:55 am

On Monday evening's edition of MSNBC's Countdown with host Keith Olbermann, guest Richard Wolffe discusses the nation's intelligence gathering associated with the Flight 253 'underpants bomber,' Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and serious questions that have risen about whether or not there was foul play, information intentionally withheld, or a conspiracy involved.

Wolffe is a journalist, MSNBC political analyst, and author of the Barack Obama book Renegade: The Making of a President.

The Strange Case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

by Tom Burghardt / January 4th, 2010

Despite some $40 billion dollars spent by the American people on airline security since 2001, allegedly to thwart attacks on the heimat, the botched attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day was foiled, not by a bloated counterterrorist bureaucracy, but by the passengers themselves.

Talk about validating that old Wobbly slogan: Direct action gets the goods!

And yet, the closer one looks at the available evidence surrounding the strange case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the more sinister alleged “intelligence failures” become. As this story unfolds it is becoming abundantly clear that U.S. security officials had far more information on the would-be lap bomber than we’ve been told.