Astrology doesn’t tell you everything, but it does help connect the dots. We specialize in what analysts are supposed to be doing: pattern recognition.
This is from USA Today. Get ready for the next revelation. I highly recommend watching Olbermann and Maddow tonight on MSNBC. —efc
President Obama “is legitimately and correctly alarmed that things that were available, bits of information that were available, patterns of behavior that were available, were not acted on,” Jones said in an interview Wednesday with USA TODAY.
“That’s two strikes,” Obama’s top White House aide on defense and foreign policy issues said, referring to the foiled bombing of the Detroit-bound airliner and the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, in November. In that case, too, officials failed to act when red flags were raised about an Army psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Hasan. He has been charged with killing 13 people.
The CIA hates Cheney, if you ask me. Remember — he is the one who outed Valerie Plame Wilson. He committed treason using them as his whipping girl. Much more likely he has links to al Queda. Remember that Bush/Regan steal the election of 80 by cutting deals with the same Islamic extremists that we’re supposedly at jihad with today.
Perhaps Dick Cheney is still the de Facto head of the CIA…..ceratin factions within the organization could be loyalists to his agenda.
Fe, YES
Along these lines, I want to invite “lurkers” who are developing a feeling for astrology to contribute here. Among the few definite scientific facts known about astrology is that young (or new) astrologers and experienced ones are equally good at interpretation; but for different reasons. Even if you don’t have something to add, if you can get as far as an informed question, that would be a great contribution. Many times whole Planet Waves articles are inspired by a single email sent in off the cuff by a reader. It’s the right idea at the right time.
Here is a project that we did in 2006 and which I would love to see more of. The font on the astrology aspects is a little light on modern browsers; I will ask Anatoly to darken it up. You have NO idea the work that we put into this, to preserve that moment in history with a contemporaneous document when the world, once again, seemed to be spinning off its axis.
http://planetwavesweekly.com/resources/news.html
Bravo, BK! You send me back to School. By the way, i know a little about Nessus – it’s been sitting on my natal Sun for so long that down looks up to me. The Prez is handling it better than i am, thank goodness.
be:
Its pretty fabulous to have such a wealth of astrologers and journalists working in tandem to do real-time investigative journalistic astrology. This information will be useful for future current events and to re-analyze history.
Such is the genius of the Planet Waves community.
Bravo, Eric!!
Fe,
Great reporting, as usual and we owe you big time. In your 2nd entry I read that Abdulmutallab arrived in Yeman in August and “began preparing for the Christmas Day attack.” (NY Times). That means the solar eclipse on July 21 at 29 Cancer 26 would have been effect on Christmas Day as it is now and will be for a couple of years. The obvious thing to be observed from this eclipse chart was the proximity of the Neptune Jupiter Chiron conjunction to the U.S. (Sibley) Moon (people) and Pallas Athene (strategist).
Astrology buffs were well aware of this, but I don’t remember reading much if anything about the proximity of the Sun/Moon conjunction at 29 Cancer 26 in opposition to the U.S. Pluto at 27 Capricorn 33 rx. Wish I had, but this is how Chiron and the centaurs work isn’t it? We are a very lucky country in many ways, but to get this chance to go back and rectify the flaws in our security system without losing any lives in the Christmas Day attempt is pure grace.
As for the President’s remark that the buck stopped with him, transiting Nessus has been breathing down his ascendant for. . . how long now? At the July solar eclipse he was at 16 Aquarius 32 rx and is presently at 15 Aquarius 40 something. The President’s ascendant is 18 Aquarius 03. I really like this man.
be
Bravo, Fe.
Fe, thank you for the hard work and detailed reporting. The only minor italic one could add is that the President explicitly took responsibility by saying “Ultimately the buck stops with me”.
Here’s the pdf of the President’s directives on corrections to the security system
Here is the CNN Article on the President’s remarks.
What I find interesting in the list of corrective actions was the first of two for the CIA. Its glaring in its obviousness — that the agency must work towards timely release of critical security information. After 8 years, you would think they would already know.
You always have to read between the lines of bureaucratese to see what’s being said.
Here’s the pdf of the White House findings on the 12-25 attack.
Article to follow from CNN.
FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN’S “Daily Dish”
Did Cheney Understand We Were At War?
Dick Cheney is the former vice-president whose national security expertise was central to his appeal in 2000 as Bush’s running mate. Yet within nine months, Cheney presided over the worst attack on American soil in US history, failed to capture its perpetrators, failed to bring any of its plotters to justice, made convicting them much harder because he secretly and illegally authorized their brutal torture, and recruited a new and young wave of Jihadists by the exposure of the barbarism at Gitmo, Bagram, Camp Cropper, Camp Nama and the various black torture sites he helped set up across the globe. For good measure, Cheney also lost the war in Afghanistan and his closest confidant Don Rumsfeld lost the war in Iraq (the success of the subsequent “surge” will be tested this year as troops withdraw). Under Cheney, for good measure, both Iran and North Korea made huge strides toward getting nukes.
Not only did Cheney allow bin Laden to escape in Tora Bora, he also helped radicalize many actually innocent prisoners (three quarters of those thrown into the torture camp at Gitmo were innocent of any charges), and then set many of these radicalized new Jihadists free to wreak further terror on the US and the world.
In fact, an Obama administration official has asserted that all the former Gitmo prisoners who have become Jihadists upon release were set free by Bush and Cheney. Just as Cheney had bin Laden in his grasp and allowed his fathomless incompetence to lose him, he has actually helped create and then unleash Jihadists across the world.
How this utter failure gets to pontificate on terror after his disastrous record is beyond me. But then, Mike Allen would have fewer pageviews, wouldn’t he?
Here is a somewhat linear layout of “dots” from Talking Points Memo:
Flight 253 Intel: What Did They Know And When Did They Know It?
Justin Elliott | January 7, 2010, 2:19PM
Later today President Obama is scheduled to talk about the latest details from the security review of the failed Flight 253 attack.
National Security Adviser James Jones is predicting that Americans will feel “a certain shock” by the results of the review.
But in the meantime, as Josh noted on the Editors Blog, we thought it would be worthwhile to compile what has been publicly reported about what U.S. government agencies knew about Abdulmutallab, including the supposed “warning signs” that were missed.
One highlight of our survey so far: the oft-repeated claim that Abdulmutallab bought a one-way ticket appears to be unsubstantiated, and in fact contradicted by at least two government sources. The original source for the one-way claim is not clear. (emphasis mine)
But the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority and the Dutch government have each said that Abdulmutallab’s ticket, purchased in Ghana, was round-trip. The New York Times even ran a correction Dec. 30 saying it had erroneously described the ticket as one-way in a story, when it was in fact round-trip.
Here goes:
PRE-FLIGHT 253
In May, the British government denied Abdulmutallab’s request for a visa renewal because “he applied to study at a bogus college,” according to the BBC, citing Home Secretary Alan Johnson. After the denial, he was placed on a watch list whose members can transit through the UK, but not enter the country. But according to the New York Times account of Johnson’s BBC interview, he “was vague about whether officials in the United States had officially been informed of the action, although he said he doubted that there had been a ‘hiccup’ in the process.”
The National Security Agency in August picked up “conversations” among leaders of “Al Qaeda in Yemen discussing a plot to use a Nigerian man for a coming terrorist attack,” according to unnamed government officials cited by the New York Times. The Times says that’s the same month Abdulmutallab arrived in Yemen “and apparently soon began preparing for the Christmas Day attack.” The NSA circulated the intel but that it’s “unclear which agencies received the information,” the newspaper reports.
White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan was briefed in October by a Saudi official on the underwear bomb technique used by Abdulmutallab, according to Newsweek. Muhammad bin Nayef had survived an assassination attempt over the summer by a bomber the Saudis believed used the underwear technique.
In October or November, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, Abdulmutallab’s father, met with U.S. embassy officials in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, after becoming worried that his son had become radicalized. A Dec. 30 Times piece says the embassy meeting was in November, while a Dec. 27 piece says it was in October. The AP says November.
In response to the father’s embassy visit, officials dispatched a “Visas Viper” terrorism warning to the National Counterterrorism Center, the Times reported. It describes the memo as referring “to the father’s statement that his son had fallen under ‘the influence of religious extremists based in Yemen’ but does not directly say that Mr. Abdulmutallab is a terrorist or is planning an attack.”
Time magazine reported last week: “According to a source close to the family, it was an alleged threat to blow up an American plane that apparently alarmed his parents and supposedly resulted in his father going to warn the U.S. embassy.” That sentence is full of qualifiers (alleged, apparently, supposedly) that suggest the magazine may not be totally confident of its source’s claim. It’s also not reporting that Abdulmutallab’s father actually told the embassy of the plane plot — only that knowledge of the plot alarmed his parents. Still, this is the only report we’ve seen that suggests Abdulmtallab’s father actually knew of the specific plot.
Two US officials told Newsweek that the father “was worried that the young man had been spending time with extremists from Yemen, but he said nothing about terrorism” (emphasis ours). The magazine adds: “He wanted the Americans to help him get his son back.”
The BBC quotes a Dec. 29 written statement by Abdulmutallab’s father saying that he voiced his concerns “to the Nigerian security agencies about two months ago and to some foreign security agencies about a month-and-a-half ago, then sought their assistance to find and return him home.”
Apparently in response to the embassy visit, the National Counterterrorism Center in November added Abdulmutallab’s name to the 550,000-person “catch-all” Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE), according to the Washington Post. His name did not make it to any of several much smaller flight security lists, the Post reported.
THE TICKET
The AP quoted a Nigerian official, Civil Aviation Authority chief Harold Demuren, saying that Abdulmutallab bought a round-trip ticket with cash at the KLM office in Accra, Ghana on Dec. 16. The $2,831 ticket was from Lagos, Nigeria, to Detroit via Amsterdam, he said. The return date was said to be Jan. 8, the Guardian quotes the same Nigerian agency as saying. A CBS report refers to a “scheduled two-week trip,” which would be in keeping with the Jan. 8 return date. And a Dutch government report described by the International Herald Tribune (via Nexis) said that Abdulmutallab “had a round-trip ticket purchased in Ghana.”
However, multiple news outlets and commentators have asserted Abdulmutallab had a one-way ticket. That includes Time, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, the Journal news pages, and Michael Gerson in the Washington Post. None of those outlets cite a source for the one-way ticket claim. The New York Times actually ran a Dec. 30 correction saying that an earlier piece “referred incorrectly to the plane ticket used by the suspect. It was a round-trip ticket, not a one-way ticket.”
THE FLIGHT
CBS reported that Abdulmutallab “checked no bags, carrying aboard only a small bag for a scheduled two-week trip.” It calls the lack of checked baggage a “potential red flag” that was missed.
On Christmas Eve, Abdulmutallab departed from Lagos in Nigeria on KLM Flight 588, according to the International Herald Tribune (via Nexis). The paper reported that he arrived in Amsterdam at 5:37 a.m. local time on Christmas day, and then departed for Detroit on Flight 253 three hours later, at 8:54 a.m.
Michigan couple Kurt and Lori Haskell say they were on Flight 253 and they saw an older, well-dressed Indian man accompany Abdulmutallab to the gate in Amsterdam and ask a ticket agent if Abdulmutallab could board without a passport, saying he was from Sudan. Kurt Haskell says the ticket agent directed the pair to a manager down the hall and he did not see them again. However, the Dutch counterterrorism agency has said that Abdulmutallab had a valid Nigerian passport, which was presented before he boarded Flight 253 in Amderstam, as well as a U.S. visa. And Reuters cites Dutch prosecutors who reviewed over 200 hours of video and found no accomplice with Abdulmutallab.
While Flight 253 was in the air, U.S. boarder officials discovered Abdulmutallab’s name in the TIDE data based and had decided to question him on landing on Detroit, according to the Los Angeles Times. However, ” Homeland security officials declined to discuss what information reached the U.S. border officials in Amsterdam on Christmas Day or the actions of those officials related to Northwest Airlines Flight 253.”
Information on all US-bound passengers is forwarded to the Department of Homeland Security before takeoff, according to the New York Times.
This is the way it looks outside my window today. . .’cept the dots are white and the sky is gray.
So, what do you guys think the “certain shock” will be? I know one thing the two incidents have in common. Both the killer and the would-be killer are still alive and we have them both. Still in hospitals probably, but alive.
From Andrew Sullivan’s blog-“The Daily Dish”
Obama strongly hints that those responsible for the mistakes that let a known Jihadist threat waltz onto an airplane with powder in his undies and virgins on his mind will be fired. The leaked private statement:
“This was a screw up that could have been disastrous. We dodged a bullet but just barely. It was averted by brave individuals, not because the system worked, and that is not acceptable.”
The sanitized public one:
The U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots, which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list,” Obama said. “In other words, this was not a failure to collect intelligence; it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had,” the president said. “The information was there, agencies and analysts who needed it had access to it, and our professionals were trained to look for it and to bring it all together.” Obama said he could accept the imperfect nature of intelligence work, “but it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged,” he said, adding: “That’s not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it.”
You don’t have to be Ed McMahon to recognize a setup. Talk about pattern recognition. Wonder how they are going to put the “punch” in this line.