Editor's Note: The following report is excerpted from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium online newsletter published by the founder of WND. Subscriptions are $99 a year or, for monthly trials, just $9.95 per month for credit card users, and provide instant access for the complete reports.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (U.S. Marshal's photo) |
LONDON – The apparent failure of Western intelligence agencies to identify and stop the man suspected of trying to bomb a Detroit-bound jetliner out of the sky is creating issues over the sharing of information about such suspects, according to a report from Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin.
Osama bin Laden's top strategist in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki, for example, regularly has addressed Muslim students in British mosques, urging them to travel to Yemen to train as suicide bombers.
It was al-Awlaki's persuasion that led Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to try to destroy the Christmas Day flight. And it was Abdulmutallab's name that was in a file MI5 passed to the CIA two years ago as part of what Security Service Chief Jonathan Evans called a "special relationship between London and Washington."
However, the lack of details about the 23-year-old Nigerian now accused of trying to explode the Amsterdam-originating flight is creating a major row in which Washington is suspicious that other information about Abdulmutallab perhaps was not included in the file.
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The possibility flared when Prime Minister Gordon Brown's official spokesman commented on the matter. Sources say Brown was furious that senior U.S. intelligence figures had told Evans, "Britain is still nurturing Islamic extremism."
Brown's spokesman said: "Clearly there was security information about this individual's activities and that was information we shared with the U.S. authorities. That is the key point."
The spokesman added: "One of the lessons that clearly comes out of what could have been a terrible tragedy is the whole question about how we continue to share intelligence about individuals who may have planned these nefarious activities."
A senior MI5 source has confirmed that the words referred to al-Awlaki.
"A decision had been taken to see how far his activities would lead MI5 officers in their hunt for other radicalized Muslims," said an intelligence source.
He confirmed that MI5 had learned that after Abdulmutallab had been radicalized by al-Awlaki, hundreds of other British-born Muslim students listened to his calls for them to become jihadists.
"The information on how he did this remains on the MI5 highly classified list – and has not been shared yet with U.S. intelligence," said the intelligence source.
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