Posted on 05/30/2007 3:21:49 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Report confirms terror dry run
By Audrey Hudson THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published May 30, 2007
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
This was a dry run. It was obvious at the time. Why these twelve “musicians” are not entertaining their bretheren at Gitmo, I will never understand.
Nah.
/sarcasm
All joking aside.... they are coming again....
BTTT
It couldn’t be reported because they had already checked two muslims on the flight. If they questioned this many more, it would have been viewed as “profiling”, and we can’t have that /sarc off
I've had this theory it will take another plane being driven into a building for the FEDS to admit an event was terror related...this sort of makes my point viable..
I understand.
And on another point...
The feds do put out a lot of detailed press releases, generally speaking; what the lame stream media does with the info is another story altogether, in my opinion.
Cindy this was a classic coverup...I won’t blame the press for this one.
Or the guy with XDR TB, either.
Could be this is part of the reason Bassem Youssef and the FBI are involved in a lawsuit over the way he, as an employee, has been treated.
~snip~
“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.
... “This report is evidence of Homeland Security executives attempting to downplay and cover up an unmistakable dry run that forced flight attendants to reveal the air marshals and compel the pilots to open the flight deck door,” said Robert MacLean, a former air marshal who was fired last year for revealing that the service planned to cut back on protection for long-distance flights to save money.
....The men were briefly detained, but only two were questioned.
“The Federal Air Marshal supervisor examined the visas, but did not notice the visas had expired on June 10, 2004,” the report said. One of the air marshals assigned to the flight noticed the expiration, but “erroneously believed he was not legally entitled” to run a background check.
According to the report, the marshal’s “primary concern, at that time, was not whether the visas expired, but to copy the visa pages so that Customs and Border Patrol could later run a database check on these individuals.”
~snip~
And THESE are the folks who are going to be responsible for carrying out the comprehensive border control???
God help us.
I understand what you are saying Dog.
I wanted to include that point, GENERALLY SPEAKING, regarding the wot/gwot.
As the Pit Yorkie said "You can't professionalize unless you Federalize"....
Our officials may turn a blind eye but I a single American will not. And I will act if neccessary.
Women’s Wall Street did an extensive series on it called “Terror in the Skies.”
Also I recall having posted about a flight I had taken on a Northwest from Orlando to ...Detroit and having had my suspicions aroused to the point of trying to figure out what could be used as a weapon to bring down the suspects.
There were a lot of reports coming out around that time for about 6-9 months of folks being suspicious.
“Immigration can’t keep tabs on 12 terrorists; while trying to convince us they can manage 12 million illegals.”
Outstanding point!
Glad to see you guys back around these parts.
Squantos, how is your brother doing?
"...including failure to file an incident report until a month after the matter became public."
Our overseer's will do nothing until the heat is applied, so keep up the heat.
I remember a lady writing extensively about this incident (she was onboard). Happy to see she is vindicated but disturbed that everything played out like this!
June 2004?
Why are we receiving stale news?
I hear ya, and so do they -- and they will jail, bury and ruin you.
There is no such rule, and was no such rule at the time.
Women’s Wall Street did an extensive series on it called “Terror in the Skies.”
That was this same incident, not United.
Yes I agree but at least I will send a message like the passengers on flight 93.
Just incredible. Our elected representatives and appointed officials spend their time posturing and bickering over nonsense while ignoring these critical issues. It's at times like this when one has to fear for the future of this nation.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services extended the visas one week after the June 29, 2004, incident.
They ACTUALLY extended their visas. Remember these are the same idiots who mailed Mohamed ATTA a renewed visa 6 months after 9/11.
God help us on terrorism AND on the new immigration fiasco.
The members of that band are some of the most popular wedding singers in Syria. Granted, wedding singers don’t get much respect in the mainstream American culture, but in an Islamic country where weddings and social gatherings are some of the most prominent venues for live musicians, they are pretty popular. TV appearances, live performances at some of the poshest weddings in Syria and Syrian/Lebanese diaspora weddings, and decent record sales in Syria.
Even back during the Women’s Wall Street expose on this story, it just doesn’t sound plausible these idiots were terrorists. They’re real musicians, you expect them to be fighters? They’re real musicians, acted eccentric and were probably hung over.
It really doesn’t make any sense. They never made the news immediately after the incident cause even the people who detained them couldn’t find any way to consider them suspects.
The fear mongers are waving them about though, trying to scare us into further budget increases for the department.
Good point - I know every time I'm hung over I always pretend I don't know my friends, walk down the aisle counting other passengers, get that blue toilet liquid all over me, etc. < /sarcasm >
I've been hung over on a plane; it was all I could do to slump into my seat and wait out the misery. Your theory seems totally implausible to me.
Stop all travelers from the middle east. Subject them to intense scrutiny. Limit the number who may enter the USA. Track their movements while they are in the USA.
It appears that you have more information about the people involved than most of us at Freerepublic. Something does not seem quite right about this article. I find it difficult to believe that it occurred just as described, because our security officials are generally competent, IMHO. Some of the characterizations in the story seem totally tilted toward one side, as if this were an editorial.
Any more information that you could post would be appreciated.
I am not saying that this was not a “dry run”, but I do not trust the way this article portrays things.
It does seem unlikely to me that successful singers would be suicide jihadists, but could they be recruited to do a “dry run”, just because they would be more likely to “get a pass” on suspicious behavior?
save
Is Syrian music more like German Oompa Polka or Country and Western?
Excellent point
Flash: TSA spokeswoman on Fox now (8:26AM ET) says the report did NOT find it was a terrorist dry run. Is the TSA on our side or on the side of politically correct America haters?
Fortunetly, we can read the report ourselves:
If they were covering up probes and concealing the incidents from their own flying air marshals they will soon be promoted. But hey, that's the way the Government is run. Undoubtedly, once amnesty is passed, these people will be put in charge of border security.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1390369/posts And this
Part I: Terror in the Skies, Again?
Part II: Terror in the Skies, Again?
I kept thinking what a smugly arrogant smile the TSA woman kept on her face...
..this, right after the woman who made the initial report to authorities...(she was a passenger on the plane)--had also been interviewed on Fox this AM.
I found the TSA agent disingenuous....
..and the woman passenger completely believable.
This is scary when you think that the marshals are not getting their reports heard or the equipment they need.
I recently had to make to make a business trip. (If work didn't make me fly on rare occasions, I'd never set foot in the Constitution-free zones known as airports)
You can be damned sure that I took a close look at everyone who was getting on the plane with me, and noted their behavior before we boarded.
And those guys on 9-11 were just students.. Just trying to learn to fly planes..
I’m a newbie....what does BTTT mean?
And the damndest part is that this time we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.
L
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