The Northwest Flight 253 Intelligence Failure: Negligence or Conspiracy?


by Bill Van Auken
WSWS.org
2009-12-31


In the five days since the abortive attempt by the 23-year-old Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to detonate an explosive device onboard Northwest Flight 253, information has surfaced that indicates an ostensible breakdown in US intelligence and security that is extraordinary in both its character and scale.

Among the facts now known are the following:

• Abdulmutallab’s father, a prominent retired banker and ex-government minister, had visited the US Embassy in Abuja more than a month before the attempted bombing to warn CIA officials that his son had become involved with Al Qaeda elements in Yemen. He provided them with information with which the young man could have been located, and he followed up his visit with at least two phone calls.

• For at least four months, US intelligence had information from Yemen that Al Qaeda operatives there were preparing “a Nigerianâ€