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LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — The Nigerian man accused of trying to bomb a U.S. airliner cut off all ties with his relatives until they awoke to news of the attempted Christmas Day attack, the family said Monday. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's father first reached out to Nigerian security agencies two months ago and a month later to foreign security agencies about his concerns that his son had disappeared and ceased contact with the family, the family said in a statement. U.S. authorities said that in November, Abdulmutallab's father visited the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, to discuss his concerns about his...

The man who allegedly tried to blow up a transatlantic passenger jet over Detroit has reportedly claimed that he is one from a production line of terrorists that has been trained in Yemen by al-Qaeda. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is charged with the attempted Christmas Day bombing of Northwest Airlines flight 253, told FBI agents others with similar training to him were now ready to launch their own attacks, according to the US network ABC. The claim came as al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released its first communication since the failed bombing. In a written statement it called on "the...

SNIPPET: "Discussion: I first observed discussion of binary explosives on the al-Firdaws forum in January of 2007. In light of recent events I will post here my archive:" SNIPPET: "Implementation: On Christmas Day, 2009, Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab boards a flight in Amsterdam, bound for Detroit, and on final descent he attempts to set off what was most likely a binary explosive. Thank goodness he either screwed up or had bad instructions, because the chemicals he was working with were evidently quite good."

WASHINGTON—A 23-year-old Nigerian man was charged in a federal criminal complaint today with attempting to destroy a Northwest Airlines aircraft on its final approach to Detroit Metropolitan Airport on Christmas Day and with placing a destructive device on the aircraft. According to an affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, a Nigerian national, boarded Northwest Flight 253 in Amsterdam, Netherlands on December 24, 2009 and had a device attached to his body. As the flight was approaching Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Abdulmutallab set off the device, which resulted in a fire and what appears to have...

Man on Flight to Detroit Claims Al Qaeda Ties; Obama Tightens Security DETROIT -- A passenger on a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight tried to detonate an explosive device that was strapped to his leg and later told investigators that he was trying to blow up the plane and had affiliations with al Qaeda, according to a senior U.S. official. The man, who has not been publicly identified by officials, told investigators that he was given the device by Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen, where he was also given instructions on how to detonate it, the official said. The Associated Press...

While most of us are trying to relax and enjoy Christmas Day, the hate stemming from Islam never rests. Thankfully the plot failed. Al-Qaida link in failed plane attack By LARRY MARGASAK and LARA JAKES

HOUSTON - A missile may have just barely miss hitting a Continental Airlines flight on Friday. Liberty County sheriff deputies are meeting with the FBI and FAA to discuss this incident. Sheriff deputies say on Friday a missile may have been launched near Interstate 10 and mount Belview. A continental flight which had just taken off from Bush Intercontinental Airport may have been the target.

Bloggers have taken to calling Jamie Gorelick “The Mistress of Disaster” and with good reason. As Deputy Attorney General under President Clinton, she penned the infamous “wall” memo that prevented intelligence agencies from sharing information in the run-up to September 11. After leaving the Justice Department, she headed over to Fannie Mae, where as vice-chair she helped wreck the American economy. From Fannie Mae, Gorelick careened back to the less than useless 9-11 Commission, whose mission she did her best to subvert. Few bloggers, however, have asked why Fannie Mae handed a middling bureaucrat with no financial or housing experience...

Nearly thirteen years after the destruction of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island, I had begun to think that the case was a dead issue, but then two unexpected and unrelated events caused me to think otherwise. The first was a phone call from one of the three most important eyewitnesses to the case.  The second, two weeks later, was the still-mysterious crash of Air France Flight 447 off the coast of Brazil.  This eyewitness put a further dent in the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) claim that a fuel tank explosion brought down TWA Flight 800. ...

For The Sake Of Us All It cannot be refuted or denied, but it can be ignored. For whatever the reason, there have been times in American history where the U.S. government participated in the spreading of disinformation or lies. For example, until this day, many believe both Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew the Japanese were about to attack Pearl Harbor. Indeed, the conventional wisdom at the time was either Midway Island or Pearl Harbor, Hawaii would be targeted by the Japanese war machine. It is important to remember most Americans believed ...

The trial of eight British men accused of plotting to blow up seven airliners using liquid explosives began yesterday at Woolwich Crown Court, where prosecutor Peter Wright QC laid out details of their alleged plan. Using a home made liquid explosive mixture concealed in soft drinks containers the accused intended to set off the explosions when all the aircraft were at high altitude, he said, causing thousands of casualties. The prosecution claimed that the explosive was planned to consist of hydrogen peroxide mixed with a powdered version of the fruit drink Tang. The addition of Tang, "which is an energetic...

A British terror gang plotted to use liquid explosives to blow up transatlantic passenger jets in mid-flight, a court heard today. Eight men planned to smuggle bombs disguised as soft drinks on to flights from Heathrow to the United States and Canada and detonate them on board, Woolwich crown court was told. It would have caused a civilian death toll on an "almost unprecedented scale" and a "global impact". The gang allegedly targeted seven flights operated by Air Canada, United Airlines and American Airlines. They were arrested in August 2006 after a surveillance operation — as they were "almost ready"...

On the Sunday morning of July 3, 1988, at the tail end of the Iran-Iraq War, an Aegis cruiser, the USS Vincennes, fired two Standard Missiles at a commercial Iranian Airbus, IR655. The first missile struck the tail and right wing and broke the aircraft in half. All 290 people aboard were killed. Misunderstanding America, the Iranians claimed that our Navy had intentionally destroyed the plane. The Navy did no such thing.

More than six years after retired United Airline captain Ray Lahr launched his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition into the fate of TWA Flight 800, the FBI has shown him—likely by accident—one seriously smoking gun. The Boeing 747 blew up off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996. One of the FBI documents received recently by Lahr and his attorney, John Clarke of Washington DC, details a communication that took place six days after the crash: "On Tuesday, July 23, 1996, a representative from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) advised [the FBI] that after a visual analysis...

What we concluded, in fact, is that this extraordinary video has the potential to break the TWA Flight 800 case wide open. The video had been shot from a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion that had been flying almost directly above TWA Flight 800 when it exploded off the coast of Long Island on the night of July 17, 1996. For the record, the P-3 is a long-range, antisubmarine warfare patrol aircraft with advanced submarine detection and avionics equipment. According to the P-3 crew, all of whom remained stubbornly evasive about their mission when questioned, the plane was flying at 22,000...

FBI suppressed video of TWA explosion Posted: August 30, 20071:00 a.m. Eastern Recovered debris from TWA 800 More than six years after retired United Airline captain Ray Lahr launched his Freedom of Information Act petition into the fate of TWA Flight 800, the FBI has shown him –likely by accident – one seriously smoking gun. The Boeing 747 blew up off the coast of Long Island on July 17, 1996. One of the FBI documents received recently by Lahr and his attorney details a communication that took place six days after the crash: "On Tuesday, July 23, 1996, a...

Jim Hurd II crouched among the petunias and wispy pennisetum grasses at the TWA Flight 800 memorial Monday, trying to fix broken lights for Tuesday night's prayer service. Since his son, Jamie Hurd III, died on the flight on July 17, 1996, Hurd, 62, travels to Smith Point Beach each July on the anniversary of the crash from his home in Severn, Md. During much of the rest of the year, he urges airline industry groups to outfit airplanes with a device that would have prevented the explosion that killed his son. Yet 11 years after the center fuel tank...

James Sanders is stirring again. Two items have put the veteran investigative reporter – and my partner on the documentary "Silenced" and the book "First Strike" – on his own personal Code Orange. One is the news out of JFK that Islamic terrorists are up to their old tricks again. At JFK? My, who da thunk it? The second, and more personally galvanizing, is that Sanders has just gotten a big batch of new TWA Flight 800-related documents from the FBI through the Freedom of Information Act. These documents stem from Sanders' stillborn civil suit against a government that convicted...

On the night of July 17, 1996, while George Tenet was deputy director of Central Intelligence, TWA Flight 800 took off from JFK headed for Paris only to disappear into a black hole off the coast of Long Island 12 minutes later. So powerful was the gravitational field of that hole that not even a single proton of information about the doomed flight has escaped it, at least not in Tenet's new book, "At the Center of the Storm." There is much to overlook here, and Tenet has no excuse for doing so. A presumed terrorist attack on an airliner...

What prompts this column is an e-mail I received last week from a retired USNR commander and former TWA pilot, with whom I had had no prior contact. He recounted a conversation that he had shortly after the mid-air destruction of TWA Flight 800 on July 17, 1996, off the coast of Long Island. He had a particular interest in the plane's demise for two reasons. One is that he was a qualified accident investigator. The second is that he had flown that very same flight a week earlier. "It had to be a bloody missile, probably an un-armed Tomahawk,...