Three weeks ago the BBC World Service Trust, a charity for the British network, was angling for a share of State Department funding to promote Internet freedom. But after Americans revolted at the idea, the organization has pulled out entirely, failing to even submit a grant proposal.

The BBC charity had developed a lucrative relationship with the U.S. government during the Obama administration. U.S. tax dollars are supporting at least two BBC World Service Trust projects: The State Department gave the organization $300,000 for work in Burma and USAID gave it $4.5 million for a project in Nigeria.

But outrage from American taxpayers, members of Congress and the Broadcasting Board of Governors was apparently enough to dissuade the British organization from making a formal proposal this time. At stake was up to $28 million in funding for work on Internet freedom issues.

Even with the BBC World Service Trust out of the running, there’s still hard feelings over a British organization seeking U.S. funding for work that the federal government’s own taxpayer-funded broadcaster does as well.

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According to Reuters, Dutch authorities have announced that Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the terrorist who penetrated the Dutch security system on Christmas Day on Flight 253 to Detroit, acted alone with no accomplices at the Amsterdam airport.

This directly contradicts the first-hand, eye-witness account from Kurt Haskell, a lawyer from Taylor, Michigan who was on board Flight 253.  We have reported Mr. Haskell’s account here at Big Government as well as his interview with Andrew Breitbart on The Dennis Miller Show, the nationally syndicated radio program on Westwood One.

Mr. Haskell tells us he is sticking to his story.  “I’m not surprised, we expected this.  They are trying to discredit me without actually PROVING me wrong.  But, I’m not going to shut-up about this.“

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Jaw-dropping story in today’s Washington Post:

President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser on Sunday defended the administration’s decision to try in federal court the man charged with attempting to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day and indicated that he would be offered a plea agreement to persuade him to reveal what he knows about al-Qaeda operations in Yemen.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old Nigerian charged with the failed attempt on the Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight, was initially “talking to people who detained him” but now has a public defender and “doesn’t have to,” John O. Brennan said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“We have different ways of obtaining information from individuals” in the criminal-justice process, Brennan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “A lot of people . . . understand what they’re facing, and their lawyers recognize that there is advantage to talking to us in terms of plea agreements, [and] we’re going to pursue that.” Brennan told CNN’s “State of the Union” that other terrorism suspects have “given us very valuable information as they’ve gone through the plea-agreement process.”

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Michigan Live is reporting a shocking claim by a passenger aboard Flight 253:

Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who posted an earlier comment about his experience, talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by sending a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were returning from a safari in Uganda when they boarded the NWA flight on Friday.
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