For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton, and this is Antiwar Radio.
Time to welcome our first guest.
It's Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell.
His website is haskellfamily.blogspot.com.
Two L's in Haskell there.
Haskellfamily.blogspot.com.
Welcome back to the show, Kurt.
How are you?
I'm doing good today.
Thanks for having me.
Well, I appreciate you joining us on the show again here.
You guys remember we talked with Kurt about a month ago.
He was an eyewitness to some things that didn't quite seem right on flight 253.
Well, before, during and after flight 253, where this young man Abdulmutlaab attempted to set off a bomb over Detroit on Christmas Day.
And there's been some developments in the case, so I'm happy to have you here to go over some of this.
I guess in the first place, why don't you give us kind of the brief version of what exactly it was that you saw at the airport in Amsterdam when apparently this young man was changing planes from Lagos, Nigeria in Amsterdam there, and then getting on the same plane as you, flight 253 to Detroit.
Okay, what I saw in Amsterdam, I'll just explain it real quick.
My wife and I were sitting on the floor playing cards near the final ticket gate.
We had already gone through all the security procedures, so this was in a secure area.
We were about 10 feet from the final ticket gate, and I saw Mutlaab go to the counter with another man who looked like he was a wealthy-looking Indian man who's been now called the so-called sharp-dressed man.
They approached the counter together.
Only the Indian man spoke, and what he said was, this man needs to board the plane, but he doesn't have a passport.
The ticket agent then said, well, if he doesn't have a passport, he can't board the plane, and the Indian man then said, he's from Sudan.
We do this all the time, and the ticket agent then referred the two of them down a hallway to speak to a manager, and I never saw the Indian man again, and obviously Mutlaab would later try and blow up our plane.
All right now, and can you be certain that the well-dressed man did not get on the plane?
I guess after you guys got off the plane in Detroit, everyone who'd been on the plane was in one big holding area with the cops for a while there, right?
Right, yeah, for hours and hours, and I looked for him, and there was no one that even closely resembled him at all, so I'm near 100% certain that he wasn't on the flight.
Okay, well, there's a couple of things here.
First of all, I guess on this part of the story, they just denied that you were right about this, and gave quite a few different accounts of what happened there, and I wanted to bring up a couple possibilities.
I guess I don't know this for certain, but it seems, well, this part is, you may be certain about this, that there was surveillance video of that entire secure holding area we were talking about before you, when you were through security, but not yet on the plane, where you witnessed this happening, and then also I've read that in Amsterdam, they have such high security there that every passenger is taken and interviewed on a one-on-one basis, and can you verify that?
Were you interviewed on a one-on-one basis before getting through security, and if so, was there a video camera there, or do you know?
My wife and I were interviewed together.
It was pretty, the questions were pretty standard, you know, were you in possession of your carry-on bags at all times, did anyone try and put anything in them, those kind of questions.
We had four or five questions.
I didn't notice any cameras around, but I wasn't looking for them, because nothing raised any red flags for me at that time, so, but the Dutch police have come out and said they reviewed 200 hours of security video from the Amsterdam airport, so 200 hours is pretty extensive when we're only looking at a one to two hour possible time period between flights, so that tells me there are about 100 different cameras around, maybe 200, so, you know, I would think that they would have video of all these areas.
All right, now, can I say one other thing?
Sure, sure.
The official story on the sharp-dressed man didn't change a few times.
I don't want the listeners to get confused.
The official story was we reviewed 200 hours of security video, and it shows no accomplices.
The change story, the story regarding the so-called man in orange, a different man I saw after we landed, changed five times, so I just don't want anyone to get confused on that.
Right, yeah, well, thanks for clarifying that.
Sure.
Although they have changed their story, I guess, at least once now, on, I mean, I guess, I don't want to read too much into this, but I'm not sure it would be reading too much into it, to quote from, admittedly, it's Brian Ross at ABC News, so, you know, who knows, but it does say that as part of the additional security, federal agents are conducting extensive background checks on every passenger who flew to Detroit on the Northwest flight, in case one of them might have been sent as a spotter on the mission, and federal agents tell abcnews.com they are attempting to identify a man who passengers said helped Abdulmutlab change planes for Detroit when he landed in Amsterdam from Lagos, Nigeria.
Authorities had initially discounted the passenger accounts, but the agents say there is a growing belief the man, I guess, may have played a role to make sure Abdulmutlab did not get cold feet, and that's from the article alert female suicide bombers may be heading here from Yemen at abcnews.com.
But this is an apparent reference to you and your wife, sounds like.
Yeah, I just want to make a few comments on that.
Number one, this article came out January 22nd, 29 days after our flight.
Where was this article up until that?
The official story until that point was we reviewed 200 hours of security video, and it shows nothing.
Were you lying then, or are you lying now, federal government?
It's one or the other, because obviously, if there's now a growing belief that the man played a role, well, you've had the video all along, and you're not showing it, so we're to believe you now, I guess.
A couple other things on that article.
It's an article about female suicide bombers.
It really has nothing to do with flight 253 at all, and it's just two sentences buried in the bottom of the article.
Why isn't this front page news all over the world?
I really would like to know the answer to that.
Number two, why do they say passengers saw this man?
I was the only person that saw this man that I know of.
The only one.
So I have another question to the federal government.
Is there someone else that saw this man that's just not coming forward?
Or, number two, are you intentionally not stating my name because you don't want publicity, more publicity shown to me and what I've been stating to the public?
It should say we're attempting to identify a man who Kurt Haskell said helped Abdulmutallab change, and I didn't say he helped him change planes.
Not at all.
This is another part of the story that's wrong.
I said he helped him board by not showing a passport, which is an entirely different story, and this is just garbage that they're saying he helped him on to make sure he did not get cold feet.
No, what he did is he helped him on without showing a passport through a secure area when he wasn't a passenger himself, the sharp-dressed man, and through some conversation in a back room got this man on with a bomb and without a passport.
So Mr. Brian Ross needs to get his story straight, although I'm glad that someone in the media is actually attempting to somewhat report what I saw.
So your wife was not with you at the time that you saw this?
She was, but we were playing cards and she had her back to what was going on.
So I was facing the ticket desk.
She had her back to it, and at the time it meant absolutely nothing to me.
It was the total non-event.
So it meant so little to me.
I didn't even tell her what I had seen until after I realized it was the same man that tried to blow up our plane after we landed.
Then I told her the story.
I see.
Now, were you a witness?
There are two named witnesses that I've been able to find so far.
Well, I'm sure there's more than this, but two I found this morning anyway.
Bo Taylor, an employee of USAID, and a woman named Patricia Keatman, who apparently were both on the plane and say that they saw, I guess Taylor says he saw the actual attempt to, or at least once the commotion started, he noticed someone filming.
Perhaps the filming had started at that moment, but Patricia Keatman and her family say that, I guess she's saying her daughter noticed that apparently someone on the plane was videotaping the attempted bomber long before, maybe throughout the whole flight, certainly long before he ever attempted to do that.
Now, were you witness to any of that, the videotaping on board the plane?
No.
Where I was sitting, this man, the cameraman, was sitting in row 31 or 32 on the left side of the plane by the window.
And Lori and I were in row 27 by the window on the right seat of the plane.
And after row 28, there was the restroom.
So our view of that seating area was blocked by the restroom.
I did hear them say that in the media.
And to me, that just raises further questions because you have, well, you haven't gotten into it yet, but statements from a couple government officials that basically say, this is a normal thing we do, letting terrorists on planes so we can track them and catch their accomplices in the U.S. And then we have another, which was made by Mr. Michael Leiter, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.
And then we have a statement by Patrick Kennedy of the State Department who says the State Department intentionally did not revoke Mutalab's visa so they could track him and catch potential accomplices.
Now, if you take these two statements, add in together what I saw, which was a man in a suit in a secure area, escorting Mutalab on the plane without showing a passport, add up the three together, you have a story where the U.S. government let Mutalab on this plane to track him and catch potential accomplices.
I'm not saying he had a bomb or they knew he had a bomb.
But when you add those three together and then you add in the cameraman, well, the entire official story gets really sketchy.
Yeah, well, I certainly agree with that.
And I'm certainly as suspicious as can be.
But, you know, if I were you, I would stick to, you know, what you know, rather than speculating and leave the speculating to others, because if you're the witness and you're the news story, then it kind of muddies the issue when you start doing the journalism yourself.
And maybe you're right, but there comes a point to when there's so much evidence that there can be no other interpretation.
And I'd like to hear someone else's interpretation of that, because I don't think there is a realistic second interpretation.
Well, my only interpretation is it sounds right to me, but then again, we just don't know who that guy was, right?
I mean, if we know who the guy was, we'd know who the guy was.
But let's look at what we do know.
He's in a secure area.
He's not on the plane.
He's helping Mutalab on the plane.
Mutalab doesn't speak.
So he's some sort of escort for Mutalab.
Mutalab gets on the plane.
There was all this other evidence the government had of Mutalab being a potential terrorist, including his dad contacting the government.
The man looks Indian looking, but he has an American accent.
And then you add in these comments from not one, but two government officials made on the record in Congress.
Put it all together.
I don't think there's any other interpretation.
Well, you very well could be right.
And I certainly want to cover in depth about these recent statements about letting the guy on the plane deliberately.
It's amazing.
Some of the things that people will will admit to the media when I guess they don't know they ain't supposed to or something.
But first, let me remind the audience, especially if you guys are just tuning in.
So, you know, I'm talking with Kurt Haskell.
He was eyewitness to the doings at the attempted bombing of Flight 253 on Christmas Day.
And he's got a new article that's at LewRockwell.com right now on the front page and also can be found at HaskellFamily.blogspot.com.
I guess this is the second to most recent, but the most compelling one here is called The Truth About Flight 253 Has Been Revealed.
And now so let's go through this.
We still have about 10 minutes here.
Let's let's be specific about who said what to the press.
And I guess start here with Patrick Kennedy, the Undersecretary for Management at the State Department.
He didn't just talk to Detroit News.
Detroit News was reporting what he told a congressional committee in sworn testimony.
Right.
I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but I can paraphrase.
The State Department begged off revocation of Mutlab's passport to catch potential accomplices.
They didn't want to catch one lone soldier.
They wanted to catch a whole network of people that were with Mutlab.
That was the gist of his statement.
The exact quote is in my blog and also in the Detroit News article.
Yeah, I have it here.
It's revocation action would have disclosed what they were doing rather than simply knocking out one soldier.
Oh, he wanted it goes on.
He they wanted to apprehend the whole network rather than simply knocking out one soldier in that effort.
So and then there was also Michael Leitner, who is the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who said that the kid was on the watch list, but that when I believe he said the kid was on the watch list.
But he says that if someone is on the watch list is because we have generally made the choice that we want them here in the country for some reason or another.
So this was not the do not let this person on the plane list like your five year old might be on.
This is the yes, let's let him into the country and keep closed tabs on him list.
Right.
And I think he made a second statement, too, although I don't have have it in front of me that the U.S. government often lets terrorists into the United States to track their movements.
Some some statement along those lines.
But again, I don't have that quote in front of me right now.
Mm hmm.
Well, so, I mean, it looks like I wish I guess I need to get some explosives experts on to talk about this bomb, you know, and get some good speculation about what went wrong with it or whether it ever even could have worked the way it was put together and that kind of thing.
I guess there's speculation about, you know, whether when he went to the bathroom, somebody else had left pieces, you know, of whatever mechanism for him or something or who knows what exactly.
And I guess we could go here into asking about the man in orange.
But then I sort of think that maybe that's a red herring and that the man in orange could actually be a distraction from what's really going on here and may not have actually had anything to do with this.
But what do you think about that?
I think the important part of the story is the sharp dressed man.
And I don't think there's any other logical explanation except that this is a U.S. government agent, even though you disagree with me.
I don't necessarily disagree with you.
I mean, to be perfectly honest with you, Kurt, I can't imagine why they wouldn't just say, oh, yeah, he was a Pakistani.
That's why we got a bomb, Pakistan.
If they wanted for this to be part of the narrative, it's clear that they would all prefer that you didn't notice anything and never said anything.
I, you know, the obvious answer is that, well, yeah, the guy was CIA or something.
But I'm just saying the obvious answer is still just a lead to conclusion rather than, you know, really knowing.
I mean, hell, maybe he was Mossad.
Maybe he was Dutch intelligence or national police or who knows what.
We don't know who the guy was.
We'd like to know very much.
And we're suspicious.
Right.
That's what I'm willing to say for sure.
OK, you know.
And in fact, you know, I share your frustration with, you know, the the media basically going along with and this is, you know, symptomatic of the entire press corps in virtually every case.
They just go along with whatever the FBI spokesman said last.
None of them seem to have their own interest in trying to get to the bottom of what are pretty darn good questions, it sounds like to me, you know?
Yeah, especially with the government story on the man in orange changing five times.
And now we're just expected to believe any story that comes out of the FBI or the U.S. government.
It's ridiculous.
Well, can you take us through those five times?
Sure.
Let me.
I'll try to remember them all.
There's so many.
You know, I started talking about the man in orange right after we landed to the press and the official government story for four days was there was no such man.
And then it changed, you know, after media pressure about me and several other passengers talking out about him in the press, U.S. Customs changed their story to, yes, there was another man being held, being held indefinitely on immigration charges from our flight.
And then I went out to the media and I pointed out that he was being held after a dog found something in his carry-on bag.
And then the story changed again to, yes, there was a man being held, but he was from a different flight.
And that was impossible because our entire flight was quarantined from anyone else.
And I pointed that out in the media and then the story changed again to someone's being held on immigration or agricultural violations.
And then this story changed again to, I believe it was two men were detained, both from different flights and both were let go.
So five different versions, each corresponding with myself coming out into the media, speaking out and discrediting their most recent story.
Yeah, it's also worthy of note here that I think just a couple of days after the attempted attack, Richard Wolff, who if I, if I have my, you know, press corps type people straight, I think he's written a book or is writing a book about Obama and is pretty close in there with the White House.
And he said on Keith Olbermann's show that perhaps Obama himself, or at least the Obama administration is concerned that this may have been an intentional act within the government.
Right.
Which letting him on the plane, like that's, that's pretty harsh for them to tell somebody like Richard Wolff, who's going to go and repeat it to Keith Olbermann, you know.
Right.
Which exactly backs up my claim that claim that the sharp-dressed man was the U.S. government agent, 100 percent.
It sure seems to.
Yes, it does.
Yeah.
Well, let's go back to the media thing.
Since this Brian Ross article, have you gotten any more attention other than from the alternative media on this?
Or is this basically just dead in the water like we could have predicted the next day?
No, not on that.
I have gotten calls from the media and done some interviews regarding the Free Press article of January 29th with which dealt with the botched security after we landed, which I spoke out about that, too, immediately after we landed.
And I was ignored in the press, too, up until this January 29th article came out.
And then all of a sudden, the press wants to talk to me about that.
But in regards to the sharp-dressed man and these comments by government officials, no, the mainstream media is completely ignoring me on that.
Hmm.
Well, you know, we went from the system worked great because, after all, passengers beating up an attempted terrorist and preventing him from committing his attack.
They are our last line of defense, which makes you wonder why they disarm all of us regular people.
You know, we can't even bring a screwdriver on or nothing, but we're the last line of defense.
So that was the system worked.
And then the story was, well, there was a systemic failure to connect the dots here and the intelligence broke down and the cops, like always, hate each other and refuse to talk to each other.
And so the NSA knew this and the CIA knew that, but they didn't put it all together in time.
And now, even officially, according to an undersecretary of state in sworn testimony before the Congress and numerous credible media reports, they're the best version from the government's point of view of this story now is that, yeah, we let the guy on the plane because we wanted to follow him.
But oops, we didn't know he had a bomb.
That's really the best they can do at this point.
Am I right?
Yeah.
That's the most charitable interpretation of this thing.
But then you have to question why someone was filming and what was his involvement.
And if I could go back to that comment you just stated from Janet Napolitano.
Sure.
What I think is very interesting about that is she said the system worked.
My interpretation of that is that it was a Freudian slip because the system did work.
They let him on the plane to track him, catch people who he was involved with, and maybe they let him on with a defective bomb, knowing that intentionally.
I don't know.
But I think it was a Freudian slip by Janet Napolitano because this is just part of their system, letting terrorists on planes so they can track them.
I don't think it was some outrageous comment by her.
I think it was a mistake.
In her belief, the system did work just as they had planned.
Yeah.
Well, then again, they're always going to, you know, the Unabomber's brother turns them in and they claim credit for all their great police work at 16 years of failure, you know, so who knows?
Well, boy, I got to tell you, it's I guess I'm back up against the media thing here.
What about foreign press?
What about the Guardian and the Independent?
And what about, you know, Dizit?
And what about the Italian papers and, you know, Japanese, Australian?
Really, none of the mainstream media has contacted me at all.
I have been contacted by some alternative media in various countries, and I've spoken to them, but not the mainstream press.
And you have to ask why, too.
If I'm some kind of crazy guy, why don't they just come out and immediately say I'm a crazy guy and there's no truth to this?
Here's the video.
Look, it's wrong.
You know, he saw something else, not change their story, have only one official version, etc., etc.
I mean, you have to look at all that, too, in assessing my credibility.
And also, you know, the trickling out of facts that are coming out that are backing up the story that I've stated since day one.
I've been vindicated on numerous fronts already.
So, you know, I believe I prove my credibility, unlike the government.
All right, everybody.
That's Kurt Haskell.
You can read about him at mlive.com.
The Detroit News here has been actually covering this thing.
And you can check out his blog at haskellfamily.blogspot.com.
Thanks again, Kurt.
And hopefully we can keep in touch as there's more developments, if there are more developments in this story.
There'll be some more developments.
All right.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks for having me.
