As ugly and conspiratorial as it sounds, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was permitted to board flight 253 with explosives despite being identified as a terrorist.
You need not take our word for it, however. Undersecretary of Management at the U.S. (Read more…) State Department, Patrick F. Kennedy, disclosed this tidbit during a January 27, 2010 hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Appearing uncomfortable throughout the questioning, Kennedy testified that Abdulmutallab appeared on a terrorist watch list before and on the day of the attempted bombing. Kennedy’s testimony seemed stained and contradictory at times, but he made it clear that Abdulmutallab was permitted to proceed on board the flight at the direction of a person and agency that he would reveal only in camera, or privately to the committee.
The reason Abdulmutallab and the bomb were permitted aboard an airliner carrying 290 people has strained the credulity of even the most hardened skeptics; he was under surveillance and our intelligence agencies were attempting to identify the members of a larger plot by having “eyes on him.” It certainly does not take an investigator to refute the logic of that account, considering the lives of 290 men, women and children aboard flight 253 and others on the ground were placed in jeopardy. Even if that were remotely the case, how would you feel if your wife, husband, son or daughter were aboard that aircraft?
Abdulmutallab assisted at Amsterdam airport
[VIA WHAT REALLY HAPPENED]
