That CNN article you reference Emptywheel has this to say about what happened to the bomb:

“The agent who penetrated al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and returned from Yemen with the group’s new “airline bomb” was always under Saudi control and was not a double-agent, two sources briefed by Saudi counterterrorism officials have told CNN.”

Later in that same CNN article they address the issue of how the bomb was moved that only adds to the confusion:

“It is still unclear how the device left Yemen. One Arab source familiar with the investigation said he assumed it had been carried on a plane, which would raise troubling questions about airport security in the capital, Sanaa. But another hinted that it had been carried overland, in the possession of the Saudi mole.”

The Washington Post’s article on the story the very same day as the CNN article had this to say about the bomb’s travels:

“And the man turned the device over to his Saudi handlers inside Yemen.

The Saudis flew the bomb out of the country on a noncommercial jet and handed it over to American officials in an unidentified third country, according to Mustafa Alani, director of security and defense studies at the Gulf Research Center in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, who has close contacts with the kingdom’s intelligence and counterterrorism agencies. A U.S. official confirmed aspects of his account.”

This leads to confusion obviously and questions about the hypothesis that FBI Director Robert Mueller picked the bomb up on his April 24th 2012 visit to Yemen.

Given the US government’s serious investigative response to the original AP story on UndieBomb 2.0, it seems like the resulting chill on news reporting of the story has left a good number of unanswered questions and contradictory “facts” out there.

I just saw your update Emptywheel confirming that there were indeed news reports on the increase in airport and airplane security from ABC on April 30 prior to the May 7 AP story.

Don’t consider this as raining on your parade about why the US government increased in airport and airplane. Instead, I’m throwing out a possible alternative explanation for that increase.

The simplest description of that explanation is that US intelligence (and its other intelligence partners in the operation, the Brits, the Saudis, and the Yemenis) didn’t know what they didn’t know.

By that I mean that no one knew if this one new recovered UndieBomb was the only UndieBomb in the pipeline. They may not have had sufficient intel as to whether there were other UndieBombers who also were equipped with the new UndieBomb 2.0.

It may be that the undercover UndieBomber did not know or was walled off from potentially other similar participants.

Brian Ross and ABC — and anthrax stenography comes to mind (i.e. Glenn Greenwald http://www.salon.com/2008/08/01/anthrax_2/).

Also, stepped up security for Undiebomb 2.0, but Undiebomber 1.0 got special pass to board without a passport. Remembering passenger Kurt Haskell’s statement to the court at Undiebomber’s trial, here: http://www.emptywheel.net/2012/02/16/doj-once-again-succeeds-where-dod-has-failed/#comment-334885

[edited for length]

On Christmas Day 2009, my wife and I were returning from an African safari and had a connecting flight through Amsterdam. As we waited for our flight, we sat on the floor next to the boarding gate. What I witnessed while sitting there and subsequent events have changed my life forever. While I sat there, I witnessed Umar dressed in jeans and a white t-shirt, being escorted around security by a man in a tan suit who spoke perfect American English and who aided Umar in boarding without a passport. The airline gate worker initially refused Umar boarding until the man in the tan suit intervened. The event meant nothing to me at the time. Little did I know that Umar would try to kill me a few hours later as our flight approached Detroit. The final 10 minutes of our flight after the attack were the worst minutes of my life. During those 10 minutes I sat paralyzed in fear. Unfortunately, what happened next has had an even greater impact on my life and has saddened me further.

When we landed, I was shocked that our plane taxied up to the gate. I was further shocked that we were forced to sit on the plane for 20 minutes with powder from the so called bomb all over the cabin. The officers that boarded the plane did nothing to ensure our safety and did not check for accomplices or other explosive devices. Several passengers trampled through parts of the bomb as they exited the plane. We were then taken into the terminal with our unchecked carry on bags. Again, there was no concern for our safety even though Umar told the officers that there was another bomb on board as he exited the plane. I wondered why nobody was concerned about our safety, accomplices or other bombs and the lack of concern worried me greatly. I immediately told the FBI my story in order to help catch the accomplice I had seen in Amsterdam. It soon became obvious that the FBI wasn’t interested in what I had to say, which upset me further.

For one month the government refused to admit the existence of the man in the tan suit before changing course and admitting his existence in an ABC News article on January 22, 2010. That was the last time the government talked about this man. The video that would prove the truth of my account has never been released. I continue to be emotionally upset that the video has not been released. The Dutch police, meanwhile, in this article (show article), also confirmed that Umar did not show his passport in Amsterdam which also meant that he didn’t go through security as both are in the same line in Amsterdam. It upsets me that the government refuses to admit this fact.

[edited for length]

Also, when I was searching for link to that text, Haskell’s name also showed up in a PDF of the Abdulmutallab trial you have posted wherein Haskell is being excluded as a witness at the Undiebomber’s trial at the government’s request: http://www.emptywheel.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/111011-Abdulmutallab-Trial.pdf

That makes a ton of sense re: 550 interviews being the hundreds of marshals.

Air marshals work for the Homeland Security department, TSA, right? I wasn’t aware that the AG was notified of bomb plots, etc. I really don’t know much about who gets read into what but I was kind of surprised that Holder had been privy to that information. You’d think that the bomb plot/double agent thing would have been closely held.

I also remember that part of Brennan’s testimony where he was asked why he gave those details and why he held the teleconference with Clarke and Townsend et al, and I remember how jumpy Brennan was about it.

COATS: And what — and you expressly called this teleconference — arranged this teleconference, so for what exact purpose?

BRENNAN: There were a number of people who were going to be going out on the news shows that night who were asking about the — the reports about this intercepted IED, and wanted to get some context as far as the nature of
the threat, and also were asking questions about, “Well, you said and the U.S. government said that there was no threat during the anniversary of the bin Laden take-down, so how could there not have been a threat if in fact this IED was out there?

Thankfully, more leaky people in dee cee are leaking like John Brennan on a trip to Paris with General Petraeus. But the Undie #2 -Underwear Fails Again, is a sequel almost the same as the first Undie Bomber #1.

Even after the informant left Yemen with the explosive device and turned it over to his handlers, U.S. intelligence officials believed they could use him to help disrupt and destroy the terrorist network operating from Yemen, known as Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, according to three congressional aides briefed on intelligence matters.

They said spy services could make it appear that the underwear bomb had failed and could send their agent back to Yemen to help identify and track Al Qaeda’s top bomb makers and planners.

Sequels can be dangerous. The Intelligence Community was going to do the same thing as before. They would scare us with an Undie Bomb. The one plot twist is that Undie #2 returns to Al Qaeda Central Command, to strike again, with more underwear bombs.

I give it two thumbs down, as Siskel and Ebert would say.

@Frank33: I particularly like this part of that Los Angeles Times article:

“Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. called the unauthorized disclosure “within the top two or three most serious leaks that I have ever seen.” He added, “It put the American people at risk.”

A former CIA lawyer, who asked not to be identified so he could speak candidly, called that an exaggeration.

“Any time you’ve got a human being involved who was compromised, it’s serious,” he said. “But it certainly wasn’t one of the top two or three that I would have picked. And I never heard of a leak investigation throwing out a dragnet over this many reporters.”

The claim that the leak put Americans at risk rests on the argument that any compromise of an intelligence operation against terrorists theoretically increases the danger that they could harm Americans, he said.”

@Snoopdido: Okay. FBI reports up to DoJ? Now it makes sense. Somehow I didn’t realize that’s where they reported. Don’t know why I didn’t know that :)

@Snoopdido:

but why ahead of time?

what persons or institutions could be so confident the doj/fbi would be needed that they would tell them the impending FUTURE?

fortune telling ain’t easy work :))

On Rachel M’s show, Richard Engel posits an alternate theory that the AP subpoena was all about finding whatever USG individual leaked the fact that the US had the UndieBomb 2.0 in hand. That seems to be the key item of intel that caused all the hair-on-fire, not that “we” had control of the device all along which is what came from Brennan. Would this support that idea that there may have been more than one of our spies in the network, I.e. maybe after one was blown the other was still OK… until the info that we had the device came out? Seems like it doesn’t all quite fit yet.

So much for operational security. Reminds me of the press watching the Domino’s delivery traffic during the Clinton administration to see whether whatever was then the crisis du jour was really serious or not, by knowing whether the folks were working late and eating in the office.

In other words, just good reporting and lousy opsec making a good story.

Did Engel say that AP blew the cover of the MI6 double agent? I don’t see how that could possibly be true and at least three senators in the confirmation hearing understood that it was Brennan who blew the cover, and one of them attending meetings in London trying to smooth the whole thing over, and he seemed pretty clear that Brennan was the culprit. If that’s what Engel said, and coupling that with the Media Matters trying to protect Brennan, I find it to be really weird and possibly an attempt to confuse people. But that transcript from the confirmation is sitting right there in black and white.

Another thought is that if MI6 was that pissed off at Brennan, that’s not good for national security because surely it will affect the way the two intel agencies work together. That’s another good reason why Brennan should never have been nominated or confirmed, IMHO.

@emptywheel: His only witness.

Kurt Haskell statement: I continued to be greatly saddened at this point as I felt the truth continued to be hidden. When Umar listed me as his only witness, I was happy to testify, not on his behalf, but on behalf of the truth. I never expected to testify, as my eyewitness account would have been too damaging to the myth that the government and media are putting forward. A mere 5 days after I was announced as a witness, there was an inexplicable guilty plea which exasperated me as I no longer would be testifying.

It sounds like both Undiebomber 1.0 and Kurt Haskell have stories yet to be heard. Would be amazing and wonderful if they could still do that.