One other event occurred in 2009 which foreshadowed events to come: Obama's infamous "Apology Tour". Not only did he snub Israel by refusing their invitation to speak before the Knesset, not only did he horrify Americans by bowing to and kissing the ring of the Saudi Prince, but he went to Cairo and delivered a humiliating speech:
In this speech, he denounced American "exceptionalism", and decried American "colonialism" and "imperialism", which are code words in the Middle East. The Arabs have always resented the fall of the Ottoman Empire, and deeply resent being divided into states. So, those two words fed their rage and indignation. Obama's words in Egypt played right into anti-American, anti-Western sentiment. Not only that, but a few short years later Vladimir Putin would use those words to slap America in the face yet again. But, even in 2009 it was becoming clear that our President was less-than-proud of the country he claims to lead.
In my last post, I mentioned numerous terrorist attacks that occurred in Barack Obama's first year in office. The most heinous of those attacks, in my opinion, occurred on December 30, 2009. There was a rash of such attacks around Christmas time, but Camp Chapman is of note for several reasons. First, the primary victim of that bombing was Jennifer Matthews, a key member of CIA's Bin Laden Task Force. A summary of the event begins at 1:21:00:
As the video shows, a terrible security lapse occurred that claimed the lives of nine people, including Jen Matthews. Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi was a Jordanian doctor who maintained a blog in his spare time that advocated jihad. In January, Jordan detained al-Balawi for three days, at the end of which they believed they had convinced the doctor to work for them. He disappeared for three months, at the end of which he announced that he was "in", meaning he had gained access to Bin Laden's inner circle. Al-Balawi supposedly did so by going in to al-Qaeda Central, Waziristan, and gaining the trust of various members until he was finally able to have dinner with al-Zawahiri.
Already I had a problem with this story when I first heard it. Having spent a lifetime with a more-than-casual interest in espionage and terrorism, I know that the intelligence community says it takes a minimum of ten years to infiltrate one of these groups to the highest level. Ten years. The reason is they are clan-based. Everyone is someone's uncle, and naturally they check the background of those who express an interest in joining them. For al-Balawi to have convinced the number two in al-Qaeda that he was genuine in only three months seemed to me to be highly suspect.
Then, as the video points out, there is the question of how his name arrived on Barack Obama's desk. A blogger from Jordan? Really? After fifteen years, a previously unknown doctor pops up out of nowhere, and he is considered to be so high-value that POTUS is briefed? Who made that decision? It certainly was not Jennifer Matthews. It was someone much higher up, and I have every reason to believe it was the same person who was responsible for multiple security "lapses" during his tenure as Station Chief in Saudi Arabia, the person who presided over the Khubar Towers bombing, whose peers questioned his ability to do his job.
John Owen Brennan.
So, let me see if I have this straight. Pretend I work for CIA. A blogger is captured by Jordan, and there is a three-day interrogation of Humam al-Balawi. At the end of those three days, he is offered money and a plane ticket to go to Waziristan and infiltrate al-Qaeda. I actually believe someone has been turned in three days just because he took the money? He is now trustworthy? Al-Balawi spends three months in al-Qaeda Central, and when he comes back I take him at his word that he has not changed his mind? Are you serious? I would hope CIA has a better vetting process than that.
So, my prize asset is cleared to bypass not one, not two, but three checkpoints to get to his targets. Now, I have never served at an overseas post but my father was career Navy, spent a second career at Miramar Naval Air Station in security, and I am a veteran of the Air Force, so I have seen security procedures on stateside bases. No one blows by the guard post unless he is brass, and even then if the guard does not recognize the person he will be stopped, regardless of rank. Certainly a high-risk area like Afghanistan would have had incredibly tight security. Sergeant So-and-So could not have called the post and told them to let al-Balawi through. Someone extremely high up the food chain cleared that terrorist.
As Deputy National Security Advisor, John Brennan had Obama's ear, and if he said al-Balawi was solid POTUS would have gone along with it...the same way he went along with Benghazi, which was covered in a previous post. I hold him personally responsible for Jennifer Matthews' death, and given his Islamist agenda, I do not rule out a direct hand in it. Who knows what she may have learned in Khost? Did she run across information that would thwart future plans of his? I will cover Bin Laden in my next post, but for now let me just remind the reader that rumors abound about his death.
* * * * *
2010 was relatively quiet. There was the normal ruckus surrounding the mid-term elections, complete with obscenities being used to refer to the newly-formed Tea Party; Bradley Manning was arrested for divulging classified documents to WikiLeaks which purportedly showed wrongdoing on the part of our military in Iraq and Afghanistan; Iran was once again demonized for its nuclear program; and of course there were the usual terrorist attacks overseas. Obamacare was still a front-burner topic as the debate raged on as to whether or not it was Constitutional.
2011 was anything but quiet.
LINK: Camp Chapman Attack http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Chapman_attack
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