On the day of the Flight 253 incident, reporter Michael Rosenfield of WXYZ in Detroit appeared live on CNN during the evening news and reported that, earlier that day, another passenger was arrested on a different flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Same route, same airline, same day. This report appears to have been corroborated by a woman who was apparently a passenger on that flight in an on-camera interview; an interview which was even played at least once on CNN on December 25. However, the media subsequently blended this separate incident with the widely-reported “failed bombing” incident. Hence, the many media reports of Mutallab “screaming about Afghanistan” despite the fact that the witnesses actually describe him as being amazingly calm and totally silent. The End Run deconstructs this apparent, suspicious, and convenient misreporting.

TheEndRun.com

January 4, 2010

On Christmas Day, the public was inundated with reports that a 23-year-old Nigerian had attempted to blow up Northwest/Delta Flight 253, which had departed from Amsterdam, as it neared its destination in Detroit. We are already seeing information coming out that indicates a deliberate cover-up on many fronts, to say the least.

One thing we have now learned is that a second man from Flight 253 was handcuffed and taken away by authorities on Christmas Day. According to witness Kurt Haskell and his wife Lori, bomb sniffing dogs had detected something in his bag, which led to an extended period of questioning in another room, followed by his (apparent) arrest.

Government officials initially denied that anyone other than Mutallab was detained; but, after other witnesses came forward to corroborate the Haskells, they had to admit that someone else was detained. However, they cited “immigration charges” as the reason, and have since changed their story at least three more times. As of now it seems they are trying to claim that this man was from a totally different flight, a claim that Kurt Haskell says is false and impossible because the passengers from his plane were “quarantined” and absolutely not permitted to comingle with passengers from any other planes. He facetiously suggests that the government official who made this claim “should become a comedian”.

Haskell also says that he witnessed a “nicely dressed” Indian-looking man around 50 years of age approach the ticket counter with Mutallab in Amsterdam. He says Mutallab “never said a word” as the Indian-looking man pressed the person behind the counter to allow Mutallab to fly, even though he did not, according to the Indian-looking man, have a passport. Eventually the two were sent down a hallway to talk to a manager, according to Haskell. So far neither U.S. nor Dutch authorities have acknowledge that this took place, instead opting to make what Haskell calls “self serving play[s] on semantics”.

Other passengers have reported that there was a mysterious man who video taped the entire flight with a camcorder, and when the “attempted bombing” occured, he “sat up and videotaped the entire thing, very calmly”. Passenger Patricia “Scotty” Keepman, who witnessed this along with her daughter Richelle, has said: “We do know that the FBI is looking for him intensely. Since then, we’ve heard nothing about it.”

The rest of this article will provide new information that further points to a cover-up.

THE REPORT FROM THE “UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE PASSENGER”

On the day of the event, numerous passengers from Flight 253 were interviewed on camera while they were still in the airport.

One woman reported the following:

He was — stood up. He was belligerent. Uh, he was yelling, swearing. He would put hats on. He was screaming about Afghanistan. Umm. He was fighting with the wonderful s– err, stewards that we had. There were five men — big men — and three women. I said to my husband I was so thankful that there were three — er, five men on the, um, flight.

The video recording of this short interview is not easy to find online, but as of this writing it can still be viewed here, on the website of The Daily Telegraph, sandwiched in between interviews with two other passengers.

For your convenience I have uploaded her interview by itself:

Unlike most if not all of the other passengers who have been interviewed and quoted by the media, this woman was not identified by name at the time, and still (to my knowledge) has never been identified. As far as I can tell she has never been interviewed again.

The other two interviewees in that Telegraph video, on the other hand, were both identified by name on Christmas day in many other places as Richelle Keepman and Melinda Dennis. Both have been quoted in myriad other articles, and have subsequently appeared on mainstream news stations (For example, Keepman was interviewed on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees and Dennis on NBC’s The Today Show.)

In this early BBC article she is quoted along with six other passengers. She is referred to as an “unidentified female passenger”, while all others are referred to by their full name.

THE MUTE CONSENSUS

Given that a week has now passed and the dust has been able to settle a bit, many readers who have been following the Mutallab story will likely be able to see that there is something wrong with this witness account. Namely, all of the other passengers report Mutallab’s behavior as being the total opposite of what this woman describes.

For example, in a video-recorded interview in the airport shortly after the event (later aired and transcribed by CNN), passenger Melinda Dennis (mentioned above) told WXYZ news:

“He didn’t say anything. He was injured. He was burnt quite severely on his leg […] He was very calm. He didn’t show any reaction to pain or any feeling of shock or nervousness. He just looked like a normal individual.

Appearing on the Fox News show “On The Record” on December 28 (transcript), passenger Daniel Huisinga told guest host Shannon Breem:

…that’s one of the strangest things about this experience is he was burned very badly, he was in a situation where he was being put in a headlock, dragged into the aisle, handcuffed, but he wasn’t screaming, he wasn’t yelling, he wasn’t really struggling. And, the — the scariest part of the whole experience was looking into the eyes of the person who at that time I thought had just sealed my death warrant and seeing no emotion, not even anger, no fear, just a blank stare, blank expression in the face of this unbelievable evil that he was attempting to commit against all of these innocent people.

Syed Jafry, a passenger who was three rows away from Mutallab, was interviewed by CNN’s Ali Velshi on the day of the event. Here’s what he said:

VELSHI: …did he look like he was struggling? JAFRY: No, he — I don’t recall that he was struggling, more that he appeared to be more stunned and sort of surprised with the whole act. […] VELSHI: Did he seem to be yelling anything or saying anything, uttering any threats? JAFRY: No, nothing at all. I, at least, didn’t hear anything. Maybe some other people who were closer to him may have heard him, but I did not hear anything...

Jasper Schuringa, who the Herald Sun says “has been hailed as the hero of Northwest Airlines Flight 253″ for subduing Mutallab, agrees:

FREDRICKA WHITFELD (CNN ANCHOR): Now tell me about him. Was he fighting you? Was he struggling? Did he just seem to, uhh, upon discovery just kind of let it go, and — and you all were able to kind of manhandle him? JASPER SCHURINGA: No, he was — he was just very calm. Uhh, he was shaking though. But he didn’t resist anything. And uh, he was just sitting there. And, uh, he looked like a normal guy as well. But, you know, it was just, uh, just hard to — to believe that, you know, he was going to try — trying to blow up this plane. WHITFELD: Was there — was there anything about him prior to that incident that ever made you look at him? Did you suspect anything? Did anything catch your attention about him? SCHURINGA: No. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Absolutely nothing. So, it was a big, uh, surprise when we heard the first explosion people were just like looking around like, you know, “Okay, this is not good. What’s going on?” And then the first person shouted “Fire!” And then, uh, like I got to my sense and [I thought] okay this is wrong. […] WHITFELD : Were there any words?… was there any yelling, any screaming? SCHURINGA: No. Yeah, well the — like the — like, like whole plane was screaming. And uh, but the suspect, he, he, like he didn’t say a word. No nothing like that. WHITFELD: Never said a word. Not prior, not during, not even once you all had subdued him and you were holding him waiting for authorities. SCHURINGA: Well we were holding him, but he wasn’t, uh, struggling, he wasn’t saying a word, nothing. He was just [inaudible] I guess. [..] SCHURINGA: Well he was, uh, like, he was in trance.

By December 30, the uniformity of the witness accounts with regard to Mutallab’s behavior could not be denied, even by the major media. Writing for Time Magazine that day, Michael Duffy and Mark Thompson summarized the descriptions:

Passengers later said there was something curious about the spare young man who had tried to bring down their plane: he was silent throughout the attack. He didn’t panic. He didn’t yell any last-second religious slogans. He was calm and methodical as he set himself on fire. It was as though he had been trained.

THE ANOMALOUS REPORT EXPLAINED

I began researching the “failed bombing” incident in the very early morning on December 26. I watched and read dozens of news reports, paying careful attention to the accounts of the passengers (amongst other things). I did this because I know that when these kinds of “terrorist events” occur there are usually early witness reports that contradict what will eventually become the official (government-endorsed) storyline. Since I was looking critically at the witness accounts from the very beginning in this way, it did not take me long to recognize that the “unidentified female passenger” was an anomalous account.

Later that day, while discussing the incident with a family member, I mentioned the report of this unidentified woman. She replied, “Oh, she was probably on that other flight.”

I, of course, had no idea what she was talking about. She proceeded to tell me (nonchalantly) that it was reported on television the previous day that there was another man arrested on another flight from Amsterdam to Detroit whose behavior fit the description of this unidentified female passenger. Having just spent hours reading dozens of media reports, I informed her that none of them said a word about such a thing, and asked if she could be mistaken. She insisted that she was not.

I went online and searched, but could not find any reports of this. Not one. Then, finally, I found a single blog post which stated: “CNN is also reporting a weird coincidence: Another guy was arrested today on the same route, same airline, (different flight) for shouting “pro-Afghanistan, anti-American” statements and generally being rowdy. Law enforcement say the two incidents aren’t related—the guy was just drunk”.

The post included a link to the CNN video clip from Christmas Day — the same one my family member saw, which was, as far as I can tell, the only broadcast in which this story was ever reported on live. (Part of it re-aired at least once, see below).

Here it is:

Here is a transcript:

MICHAEL ROSENFIELD: We have also learned about another incident, also on board a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit this afternoon. Another passenger was arrested on that flight as well. Federal officials and local law enforcement here don’t think the two incidents were connected, but it also did happen on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. A passenger was yelling pro-Afghanistan statements, anti-American statements as well. He was throwing food on passengers in the back part of the plane. He was taken into custody, but law enforcement officials here on the ground tell us they think that it was just a drunk passenger. They do not think these two incidents were connected. Live in Detroit, I’m Michael Rosenfield. Back to you. ALI VELSHI (CNN ANCHOR): Mike, was that a — was that a Northwest flight as well coming in from Amsterdam, or was that a different flight? ROSENFIELD: Yeah, that was also a Northwest Delta flight also coming in from Amsterdam to Detroit. Another incident on that case. But again, law enforcement officials think that they were not connected. But, uh, pretty coincidental that both happened on the same route on the same day.

Now does the unidentified woman — who, in diametric opposition to all of the other witnesses, reported that “he” (who?) “stood up”, was “beligerent”, “yelling”, “swearing”, “screaming about Afghanistan”, “fighting with the stewards”, and “would put hats on” — make sense? If you go back and watch her interview (or read the transcript), you’ll notice that she gives no indication that she was on the plane with Mutallab whatsoever. She does not say one word about the “failed bombing”. She simply describes someone’s unruly behavior (clearly not Mutallab), and even seems somewhat amused by it. Can there be any doubt that she corroborates Rosenfield’s report and was in fact on that other flight that the media, for some reason, has failed to speak of ever again?

THE SUNDAY INCIDENT

If you answered “no, there can be no doubt” to that question, then this information ought to raises a lot of new questions. For instance, are we to believe that CNN and WXYZ did not see Rosenfield’s report as worthy of following up on? Or even mentioning ever again (save one partial re-airing the following morning as described below)? Are we to believe that every other news station simply missed this story, or else saw it and found it equally uninteresting?

These kinds of considerations are particularly implausible in light of the fact that (”coincidentally”, I guess) an extremely similar “coincidence” occurred on Sunday, and became a top news story of the day, if not the top story. It was covered in detail by most if not all major media outlets, including CNN. Here are a few of the countless headlines with links to the articles.

Another Delta Flight Scare in Detroit CBS/AP Dec 27Detroit terror attack: second Nigerian arrested on Amsterdam flight The Daily Telegraph Dec 27

Food Poisoning Blamed In Second Northwest Flight 253 Bomb Scare ABC News ABC News Dec 27

Northwest Airlines Passenger Taken Into Custody in Detroit Bloomberg Dec 27

New Detroit scare declared ‘nonserious’ CNN Dec 27

Unruly Passenger Disrupts Another Amsterdam-to-Detroit Flight Politics Daily Dec 27

Déjà vu on Flight 253 in Detroit Free Press Dec 28

Not one of these articles about the Sunday incident makes any mention of the extremely similar incident reported by Rosenfield on Friday; not even the one published by CNN! Did CNN have amnesia?

THE RE-AIRING

The full, live Rosenfield report aired shortly before 8:45pm EST on Christmas day. The Christmas Day part is made clear by his statements. That it’s nighttime is obvious in the video. I originally derived the timeframe based on two posts found on message boards from Christmas Day.

Post #1: On the Professional Pilots Rumor Network (PPRuNe.org) the user “AASLF” in “DFW, Tx” said:

“CNN News here reporting a SECOND – separate NWA flt ex-AMS/DET today had a pax arrested on landing for shouting anti-American/pro-AQ speech in cabin and throwing food at pax. It is believed this pax was “merely” drunk. Coincidence???”

This post was dated December 25, 2009, at 2:45. After browsing the PPRuNe.org site it seems that their clock is set six hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time, meaning that it was posted at 8:45pm EST.

Post #2: Another post made by a user on the DetroitLuv.com message board, stamped 8:54pm on Dec 25 (that forum’s clock appears to be on set to EST) reads:

“…and to add more strangeness, a second man, on a separate Amsterdam to Detroit flight, was taken off a plane upon landing shouting anti-American slogans (and pro-Afghani ones) and throwing food on the other passengers. Weirdness.”

CNN has now released a transcript of that Dec 25 broadcast, which begins at “20:00 ET” (8:00pm EST). Rosenfield’s report comes roughly two-thirds of the way through the broadcast, confirming the time frame implied by those message board posts.

The CNN transcript reveals a few things:

1) Rosenfield’s entire report was considerably longer than that video clip. Before giving the “second flight” report, he first reported on the main Mutallab incident for what must have been at least two or three minutes, playing clips from witnesses.

2) A few minutes after Rosenfield’s report, Velshi did summarized it in his own words:

“We did hear from a reporter in Detroit a few minutes ago, Michael Rosenfield, about another passenger on a different flight also a Delta Northwest flight coming in from Amsterdam to Detroit. This passenger was arrested earlier today. Now have word from Delta Airlines that that passenger was intoxicated, caused a disturbance and was subdued. That flight was also met by authorities at the request of the crew. Delta at least for now does not believe that that incident was in any way related to the incident on Northwest 253 that we’re discussing now. That is the Northwest flight that came in from Amsterdam to Detroit and moments before landing, a passenger attempted to ignite something on the plane.

3) Remember that, after Rosenfield finished his report, Velshi asked him if the second incident was on the same airline, to which Rosenfield said yes, it was the same airline and route on the same day. That is where the video I found cuts off, but in the transcript we can see that, before moving on, Velshi replied “Michael, thanks very much for all this information. We appreciate it. We’ll be checking in with you again.”

I see no indication that they ever did check in with him again.

I see zero articles written about this story by CNN or a single other news outlet.

I see no indication that Rosenfield’s report was ever re-aired except for one time the following morning (Dec 26) on CNN Saturday Morning News. The transcript begins around 7:00am EST, and the re-airing of Rosenfield’s report is found about two-third of the way down the page, so it probably aired sometime between 7:30 and 8:00am EST.

Calling it a re-airing isn’t exactly accurate, though. It was a partial re-airing. What’s interesting is that they play his entire report (starting just after his original three-sentence introduction of general background information about the Mutallab incident), but the clip is cut off just before Velshi asks about which airline the flight was from. Rosenfield’s response that it was the same airline as the “failed bombing”, and his comment about the whole thing being “pretty coincidental”, were therefore not re-aired.

This is from transcript of this Dec 26 re-airing:

We have also learned about another incident also aboard a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit this afternoon. Another passenger was arrested on that flight, as well. Federal officials and local law enforcement here don’t think the two incidents were connected. But it also did happen on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. A passenger was yelling pro-Afghanistan statement, anti-American statements, as well. He was throwing food on passengers in the back part of the plane. He was taken into custody. But law enforcement officials here on the ground tell us they think it was just a drunk passenger. They did not think these two incidents were connected. (END VIDEOTAPE) HOLMES: Well, a little scary there from our reporter from WXYZ, Rosenfield. But everybody a little on edge and they will be for some time, especially during this holiday season. BALDWIN: Yes, for good reason. HOLMES: Yes. BALDWIN: So that’s the situation on the ground at Detroit.

Again, in the original live report from Rosenfield, just after the “(END VIDEOTAPE)” mark on the re-airing, Velshi asked Rosenfield, “Mike, was that a — was that a Northwest flight as well coming in from Amsterdam, or was that a different flight?”, to which Rosenfield responded, “Yeah, that was also a Northwest Delta flight also coming in from Amsterdam to Detroit. Another incident on that case. But again, law enforcement officials think that they were not connected. But, uh, pretty coincidental that both happened on the same route on the same day.”

It’s a bit odd that Rosenfield didn’t include this very interesting and “coincidental” information in his original report until prompted, and it’s also interesting that CNN left this key point out of the single re-airing of the clip, especially since the incident was apparently “dropped down the memory hole” after that entirely.

BLENDING THE UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE’S ACCOUNT WITH THE MUTALLAB INCIDENT

What did the major media do with the odd, extremely anomalous report given by the unidentified female “passenger”? Did they connect the dots to the second incident reported by Rosenfield? If not, did they investigate why on earth someone would be reporting Mutallab’s behavior as being the total opposite of what all of the other witness reported?

No. What happened was the woman was rarely quoted at length after the first 24-48 hours. Even during that initial period, her account was already significantly edited.

Here is an article from WITN, an NBC affiliate in North Carolina, published on Dec 25, the day of the incident. Like everywhere else, the unidentified female is presented as having been on the Mutallab plane. Notice, however, that she is quoted in full, except for the part where she says that “he would put hats on”, which is possibly the most blatantly eyebrow raising part. They simply omitted it.

The White House is now calling the frightening incident on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit an attempted terrorist attack. Passengers on that Northwest flight are talking about the experience. Administration officials say a passenger ignited a small explosive device at the end of the flight. Three people were injured, one of them the suspect. A federal bulletin lists the suspect as a Nigerian national who claims to have extremist affiliations. One passenger describes what she saw: “He stood up, he was belligerent, he was yelling… swearing. He… screaming about Afghanistan. Um, he was fighting with the stewardesses. There were five men on the flight. I said to my husband I was thankful that there were five men on the flight and I kept tapping him because I was nervous and he kept telling me relax, relax.” The suspect has been taken into custody and is being treated for burns from the explosion.

In an article on Dec 26 entitled “‘Smoke and screams’ on board plane“, BBC News quoted her this way. (”The “man” she is describing, at least according to BBC News, is Mutallab):

Another unidentified female passenger described the man’s behavior during the incident. “He stood up. He was belligerent. He was yelling, swearing,” she said. “He was screaming about Afghanistan. He was fighting with the wonderful stewards that we had.”

Just like in the WITN report, the bizarre “he would put hats on” line (bizarre if you are trying to make this work as a description of Mutallab’s behavior) is omitted. Also, again, note that she is the only unidentified passenger mentioned in the article. There are six other witnesses quoted in the article, and full names are given for all of them.

On Dec 27, Express.co.uk quoted her the exact same way as BBC News word-for-word, while also implying that she was talking about Mutallab. The one difference is that Express.co.uk presents it all as one continuous quote. Remember, in between the “yelling, swearing” part and the “screaming about Afghanistan” part, the unidentified female said that the person she was describing “would put hats on”. WITN at least included an ellipsis (dot-dot-dot) to indicate that some words had been omitted. BBC broke theirs up into two pieces with a “she said” in the middle, which is a little more ambiguous. Express.co.uk gives us no ellipsis or anything else to that effect. The “hats” comment has simply disappeared. (Note: this could have just been a result of copying it from BBC News or elsewhere and not watching the primary source video.)

Another passenger described the man’s behavior during the incident. She said: “He stood up. He was belligerent. He was yelling, swearing. He was screaming about Afghanistan. He was fighting with the wonderful stewards that we had.”

Ironically, they quote Jasper Schuringa in the very same article saying that Mutallab was “out of it” and “staring into nothing”.

While the dropping of the odd “hats” line was significant, the media went on to make almost the entire rest of the quote disappear after December 26. All but one little part, that is. If you’ve followed the Mutallab story, you probably know which one I am referring to: the “screaming about Afghanistan” line.

Here are a some examples of the many articles in which the major news outlets used this one little snippet from the unidentified female’s account and ascribed the behavior to Mutallab, even though it was not corroborated by any other passenger, and in fact was contradicted by them (as was the rest of her account):

“Detroit terror attack: ‘He was screaming about Afghanistan’”– Telegraph.co.uk (headline) Dec 26 “A woman passenger from the plane described the man as standing up and shouting and “screaming about Afghanistan”. Investigators were examining the residue of the device, which was thought to contain powder and liquid.”Financial Times, Dec 26 – ”The suspected terrorist was said to have been yelling and swearing and “screaming about Afghanistan”. – The Guardian, Dec 27 ”As the bomber was being manhandled away one woman passenger said he was yelling, swearing and “screaming about Afghanistan”. – News of the World, subisidiary of News International Ltd., which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, Dec 27 Abdulmutallab, described as a devout Muslim, attempted to ignite an explosive device on a plane from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day after shouting about Afghanistan. – Times Online Dec 27 ”When he was overpowered, Abdulmutallab was said by witnesses to be “screaming about Afghanistan” – The Guardian Dec 28 ”Although Abdulmutallab was screaming about Afghanistan when he was overpowered, it is to Africa we should look for the source of his fanaticism.” – Mail Online, Dec 28 “Abdulmutallab, described as a devout Muslim, was charged on Saturday with trying to destroy the plane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day and placing a destructive device in the plane. He had attempted to ignite explosives after shouting about Afghanistan.”Times Online Dec 27 – ” Although it has been reported that he shouted slogans about Afghanistan as he tried to trigger the device, 23-year-old Abdulmutallab does not fit the stereotype of a poverty-stricken jihadi…” – The Independent, Dec 28

CNN APPARENTLY REMOVES THE UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN FROM AN ARTICLE ON THEIR WEBSITE

Notice that CNN is not one of the networks who makes mention of the “reports” that Mutallab was “screaming about Afghanistan”.

At least not anymore.

On Google, if you preface your search terms with “site:”, it allows you to search just within a specified domain (like CNN.com) or even subdomain (like TRANSCRIPTS.CNN.com). For example, the following search terms…

site:transcripts.cnn.com “Richard Gage”

…will search the “transcripts” subdomain of CNN.com for any references to “Richard Gage”. (Incidentally, Richard Gage is never mentioned in any of CNN’s thousands of transcripts.) If a subdomain is not specified, then it simply searches the entire domain (all of CNN.com in this case).

If one searches CNN.com for the “he would put hats on” quote, they will discover that CNN played the full clip of the unidentified woman on Dec 25.

However, viewing the full transcript that this search turns up reveals that they misattribute her words to Melinda Dennis. Dennis herself is mislabeled as an “unidentified female”, the title that should have gone to the first woman.

MELINDA DENNIS, PASSENGER: He was — stood up. He was belligerent. He was yelling, swearing. He would put hats on. He was screaming about Afghanistan. He was fighting with the wonderful stewards that we had. There were five men, big men. and three women. I said to my husband, I was so thankful there were three — five men on the flight, because I kept tapping him that I was nervous. And he kept telling me, “Relax, relax.” UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He didn’t say anything. He was injured. I — he was burnt quite severely on his leg. They were very careful in trying to make sure that he had nothing else on him so it was easy to see that — from the exposure that he had gotten significantly burned.

If we search CNN.com for just the phrase “screaming about Afghanistan” we get four results. One is the aforementioned transcript. The other three are all for the article entitled “Passenger: Terrorist suspect seemed ’stunned’”:

We can see from the Google snippets that she is quoted just before Elias Fawaz in the article. However, if one clicks any of the three links to the article, they are met with a message saying “The content item you requested is not available at this moment.”

Here is a working link to the current incarnation of the article on the CNN page (it works at the time of this writing, at least). This article still contains the part about Fawaz seen in the Google snippets in the image above; however, the unidentified female’s quote, which immediately preceded it, has been removed.

If we go back to our original search results and click the “Cached” link for each of the three “Terror suspect ’seemed stunned’” listings, copies of the article do come up, but they also do not contain the unidentified female’s quote. What we can see by looking at these, however, is that the article was edited at least twice: once at 10:15pm EST on Dec 25 and once the following morning at 10:24am EST.

A search within the CNN domain for the article title, plus “12.25″, reveals that one more edit took place at 9:27pm EST on Dec 25, before the other two (although this could have just been the time that the article was first posted).

Another Google search reveals that the section about the unidentified female immediately followed the section about Syed Jafry — a section which still remains in the article. Further advanced Google searching yields the entire section where the unidentified female was quoted. Here is the deleted passage from the CNN report, which was previously appeared between Jafry and Fawaz, but was subsequently removed by CNN:

At one point the suspect grew agitated, a female passenger who didn’t want to identify herself, told WDIV-TV in Detroit, Michigan. “He stood up, he was belligerent, he was yelling swearing,” she said. “He was screaming about Afghanistan.”

The current version on the CNN website gives no notice of there ever having been edited or updated, even though this passage is now gone. It just says “December 26, 2009 10:24 a.m. EST”.

SOME MORE QUESTIONS

Why did someone at CNN apparently make a conscious decision to quietly remove this quote? Was it because they realized that she was not on Flight 253? If so, why didn’t they notify the public of the initial error? Even if they didn’t originally think it was a big deal, it certainly became one once the media began quoting the same tiny snippet from her interview ad nauseam, painting a false picture of Mutallab’s behavior. Did they really not connect the dots and realize that she was apparently talking about the same man Rosenfield reported on? Did no one in the media make this connection? Did no one in the media remember anything about the story that CNN’s Holmes called “a little scary”and Mike Rosenfield himself called “pretty coincidental”, even as it became increasingly significant, especially Sunday?

CONVENIENT MISREPORTING

The introduction to this article makes reference to how all of this was “convenient misreporting”. It was convenient because more and more information is coming out that makes this event look like a set up, and Mutallab a patsy/dupe manipulated by U.S. intelligence assets and other interested parties to play a role in this “failed bombing”, which will now serve as a pretext for further military action and probably an invasion of Yemen, virtual-strip-search body scanners at airports, renewal of the Patriot Act, and much, much more.

If you think this is a “conspiracy theory”, and that our wise and benevolent leaders would never consider doing such a thing (guess again), let alone actually go through with it, you had better read some real history. False flag terrorism is nothing new. In fact, if this was an actual (failed) surprise attack, it would be an exception to the rule.

In the critical first days after the “failed bombing”, when the public was most actively seeking out information about the event and people were still forming their opinions about what had transpired, the widespread reports that Mutallab was “screaming about Afghanistan” at the time of the attack surely helped sell the claims being made by usually-anonymous “official sources” that Mutallab was a monster; a true radical, linked to a larger “al Qaeda”-affiliated network which is planning to launch more attacks. “The Man, The Menace”, as reporter Andrea Isom called him on Dec 25. Not a dull, quiet, “poor”-looking, “surprised”-looking patsy “in a trance”.

The mainstream press seems to have essentially quietly dropped the “screaming about Afghanistan” meme. However, people who do not usually follow current events have largely tuned out already. Most people who are still following the story, and who have noticed all of the passenger reports about how calm and quiet Mutallab was, will not have the information contained in this article and therefore will not realize that the reports to the contrary were apparently bogus all along. Many will simply reconcile the supposedly “conflicting reports” in their minds as meaning that he must have been calm and quiet at one point, and “screaming about Afghanistan” at another. This means that this convenient mythical image will live on in the minds of many.

Further Reading:

False Flag Event in Detroit a Pretext to Invade Yemen

Obama Blames al-Qaeda for Christmas False Flag, Sets Stage for Yemen Attack

This article was posted: Monday, January 4, 2010 at 5:35 am

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