Date: August 14, 2006 11:30:09 AM PDT
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [IPCUSA] The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?
*August 14, 2006
The UK Terror plot: what's really going on?*
I have been reading very carefully through all the Sunday newspapers to
try and analyse the truth from all the scores of pages claiming to
detail the so-called bomb plot. Unlike the great herd of so-called
security experts doing the media analysis, I have the advantage of
having had the very highest security clearances myself, having done a
huge amount of professional intelligence analysis, and having been
inside the spin machine.
So this, I believe, is the true story.
None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane
ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of
the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn't be a plane bomber for
quite some time.
In the absence of bombs and airline tickets, and in many cases
passports, it could be pretty difficult to convince a jury beyond
reasonable doubt that individuals intended to go through with suicide
bombings, whatever rash stuff they may have bragged in internet chat rooms.
What is more, many of those arrested had been under surveillance for
over a year - like thousands of other British Muslims. And not just
Muslims. Like me. Nothing from that surveillance had indicated the need
for early arrests.
Then an interrogation in Pakistan revealed the details of this amazing
plot to blow up multiple planes - which, rather extraordinarily, had not
turned up in a year of surveillance. Of course, the interrogators of the
Pakistani dictator have their ways of making people sing like canaries.
As I witnessed in Uzbekistan, you can get the most extraordinary
information this way. Trouble is it always tends to give the
interrogators all they might want, and more, in a desperate effort to
stop or avert torture. What it doesn't give is the truth.
The gentleman being "interrogated" had fled the UK after being wanted
for questioning over the murder of his uncle some years ago. That might
be felt to cast some doubt on his reliability. It might also be felt
that factors other than political ones might be at play within these
relationships. Much is also being made of large transfers of money
outside the formal economy. Not in fact too unusual in the British
Muslim community, but if this activity is criminal, there are many
possibilities that have nothing to do with terrorism.
We then have the extraordinary question of Bush and Blair discussing the
possible arrests over the weekend. Why? I think the answer to that is
plain. Both in desperate domestic political trouble, they longed for
"Another 9/11". The intelligence from Pakistan, however dodgy, gave them
a new 9/11 they could sell to the media. The media has bought,
wholesale, all the rubbish they have been shovelled.
We then have the appalling political propaganda of John Reid, Home
Secretary, making a speech warning us all of the dreadful evil
threatening us and complaining that "Some people don't get" the need to
abandon all our traditional liberties. He then went on, according to his
own propaganda machine, to stay up all night and minutely direct the
arrests. There could be no clearer evidence that our Police are now just
a political tool. Like all the best nasty regimes, the knock on the door
came in the middle of the night, at 2.30am. Those arrested included a
mother with a six week old baby.
For those who don't know, it is worth introducing Reid. A hardened
Stalinist with a long term reputation for personal violence, at Stirling
Univeristy he was the Communist Party's "Enforcer", (in days when the
Communist Party ran Stirling University Students' Union, which it should
not be forgotten was a business with a very substantial cash turnover).
Reid was sent to beat up those who deviated from the Party line.
We will now never know if any of those arrested would have gone on to
make a bomb or buy a plane ticket. Most of them do not fit the "Loner"
profile you would expect - a tiny percentage of suicide bombers have
happy marriages and young children. As they were all under surveillance,
and certainly would have been on airport watch lists, there could have
been little danger in letting them proceed closer to maturity - that is
certainly what we would have done with the IRA.
In all of this, the one thing of which I am certain is that the timing
is deeply political. This is more propaganda than plot. Of the over one
thousand British Muslims arrested under anti-terrorist legislation, only
twelve per cent are ever charged with anything. That is simply
harrassment of Muslims on an appalling scale. Of those charged, 80% are
acquitted. Most of the very few - just over two per cent of arrests -
who are convicted, are not convicted of anything to do terrorism, but of
some minor offence the Police happened upon while trawling through the
wreck of the lives they had shattered.
Be sceptical. Be very, very sceptical.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
