MI 5 Knew of the Bomber Three Years Ago
by Allahpundit
HotAir.com
January 2, 2010
Not just underwear bombers generally, either, but underwear bombers trained in Yemen. I feel about this the way I felt about Napolitano’s “the system worked” comment: It’s almost a shame that it didn’t happen under Bush, just because the fireworks from the media’s outrageous outrage afterwards would have been so spectacular.
As it is, don’t expect more than a few sparklers this time.
The briefing to Brennan was delivered at the White House by Muhammad bin Nayef, Saudi Arabia’s chief counterterrorism official. In late August, Nayef had survived an assassination attempt by an operative dispatched by the Yemeni branch of Al Qaeda who was pretending to turn himself in. The operative had tried to kill the Saudi prince by detonating a bomb on his body, but stumbled on his way into the prince’s palace and blew himself up.
Saudi officials initially thought the bomb had been secreted in the operative’s anal cavity. But after investigating the matter more thoroughly, they concluded it had likely been sewn into his underwear, thereby allowing the operative to bypass security checks before his meeting with the prince. A main purpose of Nayef’s briefing for Brennan was to alert U.S. officials to the use of the underwear technique.
U.S. officials now suspect that Nayef’s attempted assassin and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian suspect aboard the Northwest flight, had the same bomb maker in Yemen, intelligence experts tell NEWSWEEK. At the briefing for Brennan, Nayef was concerned because “he didn’t think [U.S. officials] were paying enough attention” to the growing threat from Al Qaeda in Yemen, said a former U.S. intelligence official familiar with the briefing.…
…Update: And the missed red flags just keep on coming. The Brits had a file on this turd three years ago thanks to his jihadist activities while at university in the UK. Only now are we getting a copy…
There is much more at HotAir.com
