Why the media silence on the Flight 253 bombing hearings?

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Why the media silence on the Flight 253 bombing hearings?
By Alex Lantier
10 February 2010

The media’s failure to report the January 27 Congressional hearings on
last Christmas’s Flight 253 bomb plot is both extraordinary and
ominous. The hearings made the explosive revelation that US
intelligence agencies acted to help the bomber, Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab, gain access to the plane.

Amid the press attention immediately after Abdulmutallab’s arrest, it
soon emerged that US agencies had had ample warning of the plot.
Abdulmutallab’s father—a banker who had held minister-level office in
Nigeria—told US officials in November that his son was influenced by
radical Islam, had traveled to Yemen, and might become a terrorist.
The same month, US spy agencies monitoring Al Qaeda operatives in
Yemen had learned that “Umar Farouk” had volunteered for terrorist acts.

Nonetheless, US authorities did not put Abdulmutallab on a no-fly list
or flag him for special searches—even after he paid for a one-way
ticket in cash and tried to board the plane without showing a
passport. President Obama, congressmen and the media absurdly claimed
that US intelligence had not stopped the attack because it failed to
“connect the dots” between such pieces of information and realize that
Abdulmutallab in fact could pose a threat.

The January 27 hearing went even further in exploding the official
explanation given by the government and media. (See “Congressional
hearing reveals US intelligence agencies shielded Flight 253 bomber” ).

Under questioning about US visa policy, State Department
Under-Secretary Patrick Kennedy said: “We will revoke the visa of any
individual who is a threat to the United States, but we do take one
preliminary step. We ask our law enforcement and intelligence
community partners, ‘Do you have eyes on this person and do you want
us to let this person proceed under your surveillance so that you may
potentially break a larger plot?’ ... And one of the members [of the
intelligence community]—and we’d be glad to give you that out of—in
private—said, ‘Please, do not revoke this visa. We have eyes on this
person.’”

This unnamed US agency endangered the lives of hundreds of passengers,
and more potential victims of flying debris on the ground. All three
officials testifying—Kennedy, National Counter-Terrorism Center
Director Michael Leiter, and Department of Homeland Security Deputy
Director Jane Lute—said their agencies would take no disciplinary
action over the Flight 253 events.

The hearing was reported in a brief January 27 article in the Detroit
News, headlined, “Terror Suspect Kept Visa to Avoid Tipping Off Larger
Investigation.” The News wrote: “The State Department didn’t revoke
the visa of foiled terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab because
federal counterterrorism officials had begged off revocation, a top
State Department official revealed Wednesday.”

This article, published by one of the leading newspapers covering the
aftermath of Flight 253, has not been challenged or retracted.
Instead, it has been ignored. While there have been Congressional
hearings involving leading figures in the US intelligence apparatus
since January 27, Kennedy’s statements have not been raised in
questioning.

Why is the media still saying nothing about the hearings?

Major press covered Congressional hearings on the Flight 253 attack
extensively as they began. The New York Times ran a sympathetic
January 16 article on Leiter—“For Antiterror Chief, a Rough Week Ahead
as Hearings Begin”—praising him as “extremely bright.” It suggested
Leiter’s agency struggled to keep track of different watch list systems.

On January 20, Washington news web site Talking Points Memo wrote: “As
three separate Senate committees today hold hearings on the failed
Christmas attack over Detroit, watch for Republicans to take the
opportunity to ramp up their criticism of the Obama Administration.”

In fact, the Republican Party has been conspicuously silent since.
Immediately after the bombing, former Vice President Dick Cheney
attacked the Obama administration and nearly accused it of treason:
“We are at war, and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes
us less safe.” However, after it became clear that US intelligence
agencies were involved, Cheney has made no public criticisms of the
White House’s handling of the issue.

The blackout is a devastating exposure of the state of US politics. If
events do not fit the concocted “connect-the-dots” script, the
political establishment treats them, in Orwellian style, as if they
had never happened. This, in turn, further strengthens the power of
the national-security apparatus inside the state, as it learns that it
can plan operations risking mass deaths with impunity.

Washington proceeds in this manner to advance fundamental state
interests: in protecting the “connect-the-dots” lie, it is trying to
shield the credibility of the entire so-called “war on terror.”

This “war” relied on the claim that the only defense against a new
September 11-type attack was giving the US national security apparatus
carte blanche for an unpopular policy of preemptive wars, domestic
spying, and other attacks on democratic rights. In earlier times,
intelligence agencies had been known as the “department of dirty
tricks.” However, US media treated their stunning lapses before
September 11 as simply the product of honest mistakes or technical
problems.

The Flight 253 hearings threatened to suggest the truth to masses of
people: giving intelligence agencies free rein is extremely dangerous,
both on the levels of personal security and of politics. This truth
was, moreover, implicit in the US government’s unclear role in the
September 11 events themselves.

In 2005, the New York Times published material on the Able Danger
military intelligence unit. These revelations included confirmation of
overseas reports that, as in Abdulmutallab’s case, the US had
identified 9/11 operational leader Mohammed Atta before he entered the
US on a visa in 2000. The World Socialist Web Site noted at the time:
“How Atta was able to enter and re-enter the country on multiple
occasions over the next year, enroll in flight school, and use credit
cards and bank accounts in his real name, despite being a known Al
Qaeda operative, has never been explained.”

Amid the toxic political atmosphere that swept the ruling class after
September 11, 2001 and the invasion of Iraq, General Tommy Franks
described in a November 2003 interview how he saw the security
establishment’s response to another attack leading to military rule.

Franks said: “[It is] a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event
somewhere in the Western world—it may be in the United States of
America—that causes our population to question our own Constitution
and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of
another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to
unravel the fabric of our Constitution. ... [T]he Western world, the
free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and
liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand
experiment that we call democracy.”

Just the year before, the Bush administration had set up the Northern
Command, to supervise military operations inside the US. In 2005, the
Washington Post revealed that the US military was running so-called
Vital Archer exercises involving US troops to “take charge” after a
large-scale terrorist attack in the US.

In the days after the Flight 253 bombing, the World Socialist Web Site
commented: “If this episode is to be examined seriously, the question
must be asked: What would have happened had Northwest Flight 253 been
destroyed? There is no question but that such a catastrophe would have
had immense repercussions both internationally and within the United
States. It would have seriously destabilized the Obama administration,
politically strengthened the most extreme right-wing sections of the
ruling class, and cleared the way for an even more massive expansion
of military-intelligence operations overseas and a drastic curtailing
of democratic rights at home.”

In keeping silent under such conditions, the mass media are helping to
facilitate more anti-democratic plots.

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/muta-f10.shtml

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