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Man Tries To Blow Up Plane: Stopped By Passengers

HankT

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Here's an interesting failure in airport security.

It may very well be that the incendiary/explosive that Abdulmutallab tried to deploy was insufficient to do any significantdamage to theaircraft and occupants. But thepassengers near himdidn't know that. I heard a radioreport that one alertman quicklyjumped over several passengers to get at oleAbdulto stop doing whatever he was doing.

Good work by that guy and any others that assisted.

I know some folks think that airline security would be better if we could all carry guns (OC or CC) aboard. But here is one live example where that's not the case.

A gun would not helped matters in the instant case. Wouldn't have deterred anything. Wrong tool.

There are probably other situations where a gun could be theright tool.





U.S. says al Qaeda-linked man tries to blow up plane


December 26, 2009

6:29am EST
By Kevin Krolicki and Ben Berkowitz

DETROIT/AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Nigerian man believed to be linked to al Qaeda militants was in custody on Saturday after he tried to ignite an explosive device on a U.S. passenger plane as it approached Detroit, U.S. officials said.

The suspect, who suffered extensive burns, was overpowered by passengers and crew on the Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam. The passengers, two of whom suffered minor injuries, disembarked safely from the Delta Air Lines plane.

"We believe this was an attempted act of terrorism," a White House official told Reuters.

The flight had left Amsterdam on Friday and Dutch counter-terrorism authorities said they were trying to figure out where the suspect had come from, how he had been screened and how he had managed to board the flight.

Representative Peter King of New York, the senior Republican on the House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, said the explosive device was "fairly sophisticated," and the suspect was a 23-year-old Nigerian.

Federal officials identified him as Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, according to The New York Times and the Washington Post. ABC News and NBC News reported that he attends University College London, where he studied engineering.

Abdulmutallab tried to ignite the device or mixture as the aircraft was approaching Detroit, officials said.

King told CNN the suspect was listed in a database as having a connection to militants.

"My understanding is...that he does have al Qaeda connections, certainly extremist terrorist connections, and his name popped up pretty quickly" in a search.

King said the suspect started his journey in Nigeria.

"How sophisticated he was, I don't know," he said. "But again, it was a fairly sophisticated device. I would say we dropped the ball on this one."

Security at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport has been tightened, in line with increased measures around the world for U.S.-bound flights requested by American authorities.

Judith Sluiter, a spokeswoman for Dutch counter-terrorism agency NCTb, said it had started a probe into the incident, trying to determine where the suspect originated from.

"He did not go through passport control," a Dutch military police spokesman said.

The spokesman confirmed he transferred from another flight of uncertain origin.

An Air France-KLM spokeswoman said passenger lists were confidential and she could not confirm Abdulmutallab started his journey with a KLM flight to Amsterdam from Lagos.

Officials from Nigeria's Civil Aviation Authority and its Federal Ports Authority met on Saturday to discuss the incident.

The aircraft, Northwest Airlines flight 253, was an Airbus 330 carrying 278 passengers. Delta Air Lines has taken over Northwest.

Passenger Richelle Keepman said the incident was terrifying.

"I thought -- I think we all thought we weren't going to land, we weren't going to make it," Keepman told NBC News.

Another passenger, Melinda Dennis, said the man was severely burned.

"His entire leg was burned. They required a fire extinguisher as well as water to put it out," she told NBC.

"You could smell the smoke when we landed. You could smell the scent of something being burned when we landed."

Once on the ground, the aircraft was moved to a remote area at Detroit's airport where all baggage was being rescreened, the Transportation Security Administration said.

Citing U.S. officials, the Wall Street Journal said the Nigerian had told investigators that al Qaeda operatives in Yemen had given him the device and instructions on how to detonate it.

But NBC, citing anti-terrorism officials, said he claimed to have been acting on his own."

PART OF A LARGER PLOT?

King said investigators were looking into whether the incident was part of a larger plot. There is a "world-wide alert to make sure this is not part of a larger overall scheme," he said.

The New York Times, citing a senior Homeland Security official, said the device was made from a mixture of powder and liquid and was more incendiary than explosive.

The official said Abdulmutallab told law enforcement authorities he had explosive powder taped to his leg and used a syringe filled with chemicals to mix with the powder in an attempt to cause an explosion."

The Department of Homeland Security said security measures had been stepped up.

The attempt appeared similar to one eight years ago when a British-born man, Richard Reid, tried but failed to blow up a transatlantic jumbo jet by lighting explosives stuffed into his shoes. Reid, a follower of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison.

It also is the latest in a string of terrorism-related plots in the United States over the past few months. Al Qaeda militants carried out the September11, 2001, attacks in the United States in which three passenger planes were hijacked.

(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria in Hawaii, Todd Eastham, Jeremy Pelofsky, Mohammad Zargham and Jim Wolf in Washington and Peter Bohan in Chicago; Editing by Angus MacSwan)


http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE5BP03M20091226
 

r6-rider

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against a bomb on a plane... its debatable whether a gun could of helped or not but in this case they all got lucky it didnt explode so yea it wasnt needed

but really what could they have done to prevent something like this from happening? i havent seen pictures or anything yet but they tend to wear long robes that can easily conceal anything and you cant train dogs to sniff out every type of chemical out there. its not hard to get by airport security with basic knowledge of what your up against. so what now? pat down every person who wants to travel by plane?
 

buster81

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"Abdulmutallab told law enforcement authorities he had explosive powder taped to his leg and used a syringe filled with chemicals to mix with the powder in an attempt to cause an explosion."


I guess we can expect to ban powder from airplanes now in the name of fake safety.
 

khicks

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i do not know what kind of powder it was, that being mixed with hydrogen peroxide would explode? i am glad that it did not work.
 

gogodawgs

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Actually no cavity search needed.

I am sure some of you have flown and been through the 'puff' machine like I have. However, sending a 40yo white male through it is a waste of time.

If we sent every 20-50yo male with the correct country of origin.....wait for it..........................PROFILE......through it......this would not happen. That is of certanty.
 

tekshogun

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gogodawgs wrote:
Actually no cavity search needed.

I am sure some of you have flown and been through the 'puff' machine like I have.  However, sending a 40yo white male through it is a waste of time.

If we sent every 20-50yo male with the correct country of origin.....wait for it..........................PROFILE......through it......this would not happen.  That is of certanty.

The only problem with that logic is that some of our enemies are 40 year old white-male converts from the United States of America.

No profiling. It will work at first and then the terrorist will catch on. They are not stupid. They will find someone that defeats any profile and they will get through.

I am a 20-something black male and I fly occasionally but have never been through ANY machine other than the usual medal detector and the occasional wand. I flew out of Miami a couple of months ago and never got called into any of those X-ray machines at the Miami airport.

If you want a catch-all solution, someone needs to (if they have not already) develop the X-ray hallway from Total Recall. Accept of course it needs to be able to detect more than typical weapons but also explosives. They don't need to have the big huge display wall for the whole world to see either.

total+recall+xray+scene1205189098.jpg
 

gogodawgs

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tekshogun wrote:
The only problem with that logic is that some of our enemies are 40 year old white-male converts from the United States of America.

please cite?

As far as I know there is no example of this.

Look at Israel, they profile their air passengers. Profiling is ok.

I love the idea of the Total Recall Scanner!!!!!!
 

tekshogun

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gogodawgs wrote:
tekshogun wrote:
The only problem with that logic is that some of our enemies are 40 year old white-male converts from the United States of America.

please cite?

As far as I know there is no example of this.

Look at Israel, they profile their air passengers. Profiling is ok.

I love the idea of the Total Recall Scanner!!!!!!
I used 40 as a example, but if you want me to cite something, I'll do one that hits very close to my home (just a county away).

Daniel Patrick Boyd, 39.


http://news.aol.com/article/north-carolina-terror-suspect-daniel/590419

http://www.examiner.com/x-12837-US-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m7d28-Daniel-Patrick-Boyd-Saifullah-Sword-of-God-planned-violent-jihad-in-Tel-Aviv-Israel

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32182241/

All it takes is one person to slip through the cracks or at least, walk by the cracks which is what profiling for airport security will allow. Target all and your chances of catching all will be higher.
 

gogodawgs

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tekshogun wrote:
gogodawgs wrote:
tekshogun wrote:
The only problem with that logic is that some of our enemies are 40 year old white-male converts from the United States of America.
While this is interesting it is an annomally and he is not 'our enemy', according to the prosecutors and the Israeli's to commit the acts abroad. And notice that it was the Israeli's who caught him (they profile their air passengers).
 

tekshogun

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gogodawgs wrote:
tekshogun wrote:
gogodawgs wrote:
tekshogun wrote:
The only problem with that logic is that some of our enemies are 40 year old white-male converts from the United States of America.
While this is interesting it is an annomally and he is not 'our enemy', according to the prosecutors and the Israeli's to commit the acts abroad. And notice that it was the Israeli's who caught him (they profile their air passengers).
Some people do not become enemies until they commit some atrocity against us. All it takes is one American death in one of their abroad attacks. Why do you think Americans are such easier targets abroad? Because security in those places are lacking. Americans and Israelis are prime targets for extremist organizations.

The Israelis din't really catch him, they just denied him entry. He was still able to get around. The Israelis didn't exactly elaborate on how they came to the conclusion to deny him entry. Perhaps the got intelligence frm the U.S. about him and they (the Israelis) made a decision that perhaps kept their country safe. And perhaps they too knew he was going abroad and getting training. The Israelis perhaps have some of the best intelligence of any country in the world and I am sure they feed some to us.

He is our enemy, he is practicing and advocating the very thing our country is fighting for in Afghanistan, and our people are dying. It is likely that it would have taken only a matter of time before he turned his guns and detonators on us, and he lived only a hop, skip, and a jump away.

John Walker Lindh was not an enemy of the state until he helped kill Americans. He is lucky he didn't get the death penalty for being a traitor. He may not have even pulled a trigger, but in our country, being an accessory to murder is almost the same as committing murder.

As for profiling, it should remain and perhaps even be expanded but it should not be used along with random checks as our only defense at airports. A total system sweep of all passengers. It can be made better and faster. I implore the government or some enterprising company to work on it and figure it out.
 

simmonsjoe

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tekshogun wrote:
gogodawgs wrote:
tekshogun wrote:
gogodawgs wrote:
tekshogun wrote:
The only problem with that logic is that some of our enemies are 40 year old white-male converts from the United States of America.
While this is interesting it is an annomally and he is not 'our enemy', according to the prosecutors and the Israeli's to commit the acts abroad. And notice that it was the Israeli's who caught him (they profile their air passengers).
Some people do not become enemies until they commit some atrocity against us. All it takes is one American death in one of their abroad attacks. Why do you think Americans are such easier targets abroad? Because security in those places are lacking. Americans and Israelis are prime targets for extremist organizations.

The Israelis din't really catch him, they just denied him entry. He was still able to get around. The Israelis didn't exactly elaborate on how they came to the conclusion to deny him entry. Perhaps the got intelligence frm the U.S. about him and they (the Israelis) made a decision that perhaps kept their country safe. And perhaps they too knew he was going abroad and getting training. The Israelis perhaps have some of the best intelligence of any country in the world and I am sure they feed some to us.

He is our enemy, he is practicing and advocating the very thing our country is fighting for in Afghanistan, and our people are dying. It is likely that it would have taken only a matter of time before he turned his guns and detonators on us, and he lived only a hop, skip, and a jump away.

John Walker Lindh was not an enemy of the state until he helped kill Americans. He is lucky he didn't get the death penalty for being a traitor. He may not have even pulled a trigger, but in our country, being an accessory to murder is almost the same as committing murder.

As for profiling, it should remain and perhaps even be expanded but it should not be used along with random checks as our only defense at airports. A total system sweep of all passengers. It can be made better and faster. I implore the government or some enterprising company to work on it and figure it out.
Yea, **** that 4th amendment thingy.
 

tekshogun

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simmonsjoe wrote:
Yea, @#$% that 4th amendment thingy.

Damn, I guess you're right. I guess we can just strip away all the security or just make what we've already considered reasonable search and seizure better and more efficient. Or keep what we have...

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

They got us right there with that word... "unreasonable"
All that has to happen is have public opinion sway in favor of something and you can push the line back further on unreasonable. Interesting...

I still like the Total Recall Wall
 

gogodawgs

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Along with the 'reasonable' searches (re: unobtrusive; i.e. metal detector, 'puffer' machines,bomb sniffing dogs)

There is profilling....if we don't like you and your reasons for flying......you don't fly with us.... no constitutional right to fly...
 

simmonsjoe

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gogodawgs wrote:
Along with the 'reasonable' searches (re: unobtrusive; i.e. metal detector, 'puffer' machines,bomb sniffing dogs)

There is profilling....if we don't like you and your reasons for flying......you don't fly with us.... no constitutional right to fly...
You have a right to go wherever you please in any manner you please as long as it doesn't "..Pick my pocket or break my bone."

One reason President Washington was against the bill of rights inception, is because he feared that it could later be construed that only those rights would be witnessed, (hence the 9th amendment) The Federal Gov't has a narrowly defined job in the constitution, and anything outside of that is none of their business.

However, when the private airliners boardings are policed by gov't agencies, what you lose is the right to tell people you don't want their business.

Basically it is the fact that a gov't regulates this stuff is some ways that makes most of these measures infringements of our rights and liberties. Purchase of an airline ticket, a completely legal thing to do, is not reasonable suspicion for a search. Random searches are really really whack because you are treating some people different than others. Just because it is a random violation of your rights doesn't mean it is less offensive than a targeted violation of your rights. It just plain(no pun intended) wrong.

NONE OF THE MEASURES ANYONE HAS LISTED AFFECT CRIMINALS, THEY AFFECT ALL LAW ABIDING CITIZENS. CRIMINALS WILL FIND A WAY AROUND THEM. Odd that the same argument I use against most gun laws applies to most of the TSAs measures.

The solution, obviously(right?), Is to make the method for screening/boarding passengers the owner of the plane's responsibility. Because it requires a ticket to get in, the plane is not a general access area and they can require all the searching they want. Hell they can institute a dress code limiting what color your socks are. They still couldn't profile people. Random searches would be ok too.

It is just another aspect of the gov't putting it's nose where it doesn't belong. It is hard to see the truth because of the sensitivity of airline security.

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-Benjamin Franklin
 

GLOCK21GB

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gogodawgs wrote:
Along with the 'reasonable' searches (re: unobtrusive; i.e. metal detector, 'puffer' machines,bomb sniffing dogs)

There is profilling....if we don't like you and your reasons for flying......you don't fly with us.... no constitutional right to fly...
profiling is Politically incorrect ( I HATE THIS TERM what ever happen to freedom of speech ?? ) racist & illegal ..but it sure could save alot of lives.

what color & place of origin were the high jackers on 9/11 from ?

what color & place of origin was this guy that just tried to blow up the plane ?

Answer = none were white & none were from America

now this new guy that just tried to blow the plane up, was a Black guy & this is where the screening & security checks need to begin, NO I AM NOT BEING RACIST
just a realist. the High MAJORITY ( 98 % ) of Muslims are not white Americans, they are, of Middle eastern desent, Asian, Malaysian, Indonesian & African...sorry:?

We have a no fly list that contains the names of what a million people , they could make that list manageable just by taking the names of white Americans off of it. The white guys are on it because they are Patriots, Militia members & people that have not paid taxes in a few years..
 
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