From coverage of classified State Department documents exposed by WikiLeaks: “Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT]–but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money, according to [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton. ‘More needs to be done since […]
12/30/2009
“In 2009 a Jordanian using the nom de guerre Abu Dujannah al Khorasani…persuaded the Jordanian General Intelligence Department (GID) to take him on as a double agent against al Qaeda. Under his real name, Human Khalil Abu Mulal al Balawi, he had previously been a propaganda specialist for al Qaeda’s franchise in Iraq and its […]
12/30/2009
“The extent of the cooperation between the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda could be seen in the suicide bombing that killed seven CIA officers and contractors in the American base at Khost in eastern Afghanistan on December 30, 2009. The suicide bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a Jordanian doctor, was a double agent: information he had […]
12/27/2009
“In December [27, 2009], Mary Matalin–a former senior adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney–made comments that seemed to place the 9/11 attacks under President Clinton’s watch. ‘We inherited a recession from President Clinton and we inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation’s history,’ Matalin, a CNN analyst, told [journalist] John […]
12/25/2009
“The Yemeni government has been fighting a growing al Qaeda element in Yemen called al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The militant offshoot group grabbed the attention of the West with the attempted bombing of a Northwest Airlines trans-Atlantic flight as it landed in Detroit, Michigan, on December 25 [2009]. The suspect, Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, […]
12/25/2009
“AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] was responsible for the attempt to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009. The Nigerian suicide bomber [Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] failed to detonate his bomb as the plane was descending over southern Ontario and a Dutch tourist alertly raised […]
12/25/2009
On December 25, 2009, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab "boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam, which was bound for Detroit with some three hundred passengers and crew on board. Secreted in his underwear was a bomb made with eighty grams of PETN, a plastic explosive that was not detected at airport security in Amsterdam or […]
12/25/2009
“On Christmas Day 2009, a 23-year-old Nigerian named Umar Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate a bomb sewn into his underwear on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. The bomb fizzled, igniting but not exploding. The plane landed safely with 300 on board.” – Bob Woodward, Obama’s Wars, Page 340 […]
12/15/2009
“A study published in December 2009 by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point concludes that ‘the vast majority of al Qaeda’s victims are Muslims: the analysis here shows that only 15% of the fatalities resulting from al Qaeda attacks between 2004 and 2008 were Westerners.” [The 15th of the month used for date sorting […]
12/15/2009
In December 2009, “West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center published a study entitled ‘Deadly Vanguards: A Study of al-Qaeda Violence Against Muslims.’ The study showed that between 2004 and 2008, a mere 15 percent of the 3,010 victims in al-Qaeda’s attacks were Westerners. From 2006 to 2008, only 2 percent (or 12 of 661) of the […]