The strange cases of Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi and Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab

It would appear that the Jordanian doctor who blew himself and seven others up, at Base Chapman in Khost province last week, was a triple agent. Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi,was arrested last year by Jordanian intelligence on suspicion of terrorist sympathies. He then agreed to support the US in its war against terror. Khalil must have been pretty convincing because he was then invited to Forward Operating Base Chapman to help the CIA in their search for Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, and what do you think happened when he got there? Well, for one thing Khali wasn't searched for explosives when he entered the base and  it seems that he just sauntered in and killed the base's female chief, three other CIA officials and three security guards. In the meantime the CIA has promised to avenge the attack.

Not quite sure here what they mean by "avenging the attack" and one can only hope that we won't be reading about some collective punishment, disguised as an operation to wipe out a terrorist base, where dozens of innocent civilians get killed in the not too distant future. Of course, we won't be reading about it, at least not those of us who get their news from the 'Daily Drivel', after all that is not the kind of news that makes the mainstream press. Still, no doubt, Langley is a trifle upset, for not only have CIA operatives in the field been killed but the agency has also once again been made to look a trifle stupid. Why wasn't this man searched before entering the base?

Of course, the whole story stinks from top to bottom, just as much as that of the pants bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Not only did his father warn the CIA about his son's possible intentions but it would also appear that the agency knew that a plot was being hatched in the Yemen for a Nigerian to blow up a plane. Moreover, while we might put that, and indeed the bombing at Base Chapman, down to a simple cock up, it becomes a trifle eerie when we read that: "A passenger who boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam with attempted plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab says the would-be terrorist had no passport and was aided by a sharp-dressed man who claimed Mutallab was a Sudanese refugee, just one of a plethora of startling inconsistencies surrounding an incident that has led to ramped up security and increased levels of harassment in airports."

The said passenger is a certain Kurt Haskell, an attorney with his own law firm who was accompanied by his wife. According to Haskell the well-dressed man portrayed the Nigerian Mutallab as a desperate Sudanese refugee in order to elicit sympathy and to get the officials to overlook his not having a passport. After landing, Haskell said he saw Mutallab and another man being taken into custody. But a spokeswoman from the FBI in Detroit said Mutallab was the only person taken into custody. Now, we shouldn't speculate and we shouldn't even assume but this, of course, is where it becomes quite eerie; was the FBI retrieving its agent, who made sure that Mutallab got on the plane despite his having no passports?

Positively, eerie and exceptionally frightening and remember, while we are still unsure of the consequences of the Base Chapman bombing, we already know that Obama has used the strange case of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab as a pretext for bringing his dirty little covert war in the Yemen out into the open, to create a renewed fear of terrorism on the home front, to introduce sharper security controls at airports throughout the world and, last but not least, the evidence would now seem to suggest, as an excuse to keep Guantanamo open. 

Of course, there are a lot of assumptions here, indeed, no little speculation, when we discover that Mr Haskell also said in a CNN interview that the well-dressed man and Mutallab disappeared up the corridor to talk to an official. Maybe, just maybe, this would indicate that Mutallab found his passport on his way to meet the official and maybe just maybe, the well-dressed man was only innocently trying to help the "poor Nigerian". Academic caution is the order of the day! However, that requires us being a little less gullible all round.