I am disappointed to say that so far there has been very little serious
critical discussion, grounded in factual analysis, of the alleged �Terror Plot�
foiled on the morning of Wednesday, 10th August 2006. Except for a few
noteworthy comment pieces, such as Craig Murray�s critical speculations published by the
Guardian 18th August., the mainstream media has largely subserviently parroted
the official claims of the British and American governments. This is a shame,
because inspection of the facts raises serious problems for the 10/8 official narrative.
No Imminent Plot
On the basis of the �Terror Plot,� Prime Minister Tony Blair is planning
�to push through 90-day
detention without charge for terror suspects.� Home Secretary Dr.
John Reid has ordered the draft of new anti-terror legislation that would suspend
key parts of the Human Rights 1998, to facilitate the indefinite detention of terrorism
suspects in the UK without charge or trial. The law is planned to apply also to
British citizens. And since 10th August, Britain was on its highest �critical�
state of alert, which indicates the threat of an imminent terrorist attack on
UK interests. Only in the last few days was it lowered back down to �severe.�
The stark truth is that the �Terror Plot� narrative has been thoroughly,
hopelessly, politicized. There was never any evidence of an imminent plot. A
senior British official involved in the investigation told NBC News on
14th August that:
�In contrast to previous reports . . . an attack was not imminent,
[and] the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did
not even have passports.�
If British security officials knew that an attack was not imminent, the
decision to raise the alert level to critical, indicating an imminent threat,
was unjustified by the available intelligence -- this was, in other words, a
political decision.
Other British officials told NBC News that many
of the suspects had been under surveillance for more than a year, since before
the 7th July 2005 terrorist attacks. �British police were planning to continue
to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence�
-- as it was clearly lacking. But: �American officials pressured them to arrest
the suspects sooner.� An American official also confirmed the disagreement over
timing.
Brits Opposed Arrest and Torture of Key Informant
The NBC News report further reveals, citing
British security sources, that British police did not want to yet arrest Rashid
Rauf, the alleged mastermind, al-Qaeda facilitator and key informant on the
details of the plot: �British security was concerned that Rauf be taken into
custody �in circumstances where there was due process,� according to the
official, so that he could be tried in British courts. Ultimately, this
official says, Rauf was arrested over the objections of the British.�
However, the arrest of Rashid Rauf is at the crux of the
case, as it purportedly triggered the ensuing wave of arrests, with Rauf
providing in-depth details of the plot to his interrogators in Pakistan. Among
the details attributed to Rauf is the idea that the plotters intended to mix a
�sports drink� with a gel-like �peroxide-based paste� to create a chemical
explosive that �could be ignited with an MP3 player or cell phone.�
The problem is that several Pakistani newspapers reported
on 13 August that �Rauf had �broken� under interrogation.� The reports were
described by a Pakistani human rights group �as confirmation that he had been tortured.�
According to the Guardian, �Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights
Commission of Pakistan, said that it was obvious how the information had been
obtained. �I don�t deduce, I know -- torture,� she said. �There is simply no
doubt about that, no doubt at all.��
That most of the details about the plot came from Rauf, who has been
tortured and �broken� while under interrogation in Pakistan, raises serious
questions about the credibility of the story being promoted by the British and
American governments.
Torture Precedents: the �Ricin Plot�
The revelation bears hallmarks of a familiar pattern. It is now well-known
that the interrogation of terror suspects using torture was responsible for the
production of the false �Ricin Plot� narrative. In much the same way as
Pakistan has done now, Algerian security services alerted the British in
January 2003 to the alleged plot after interrogating and torturing a former
British resident Mohammed Meguerba. We now know there was no plot. Police
officials repeatedly claimed they had found plastic tubs of ricin -- but these
claims were false. Four of the defendants were acquitted of terrorism and four
others had the cases against them abandoned. Only Kamal Bourgass was convicted,
but not in connection with the �Ricin Plot,� rather for murdering Special
Branch Detective Constable Stephen Oake during a raid. Indeed, the �rendition�
of terror suspects orchestrated by Britain, the United States, and other
western states, attempts to institutionalize and legitimize torture as a means
for the production of fundamentally compromised
information used by western states to manipulate domestic public
opinion.
It is perhaps not all that surprising then to learn that,
according to a Daily Mail headline, the Pakistanis have found �no
evidence against �terror mastermind,�� despite two weeks of
interrogation under torture and forensic combing of Rauf�s home and computer.
The plot �may not have been as serious, or as far advanced, as the authorities
initially claimed,� observes the Mail somewhat sheepishly, and
belatedly. �Analysts suspect Pakistani authorities exaggerated Rauf�s role to
appear �tough on terrorism� and impress Britain and America.� I wonder if the
paucity of evidence has something to do with why, as the Independent on
Sunday reported: �Both Britain and Pakistan say the question of Mr Rauf�s
possible extradition [to the UK] is some way off.�
Indeed. A spokesman for Pakistani�s Interior Ministry gave some helpful
elaboration, telling the Mail that extradition �is not under
consideration.�
The extradition to Britain of the alleged chief
mastermind of a plot to kill thousands of Americans and British citizens by
simultaneously blowing up multiple civilian airliners has, in other words, been
ruled out indefinitely.
Er, Still No Evidence . . .
All the evidence now suggests that the Americans wanted immediate arrests
without proper evidence. It seems, there was no imminent necessity of such
immediate action, nor was there sufficient evidence of an imminent plot, other
than the claims of an informant under torture. There are only two further
possibilities. Either there was no real evidence of any plot at all; or these
premature arrests could have seriously compromised a long-term surveillance
operation against suspects who may have been involved in a wider network
involved in terrorist-related activity, an operation that has now been
scuppered -- meaning that we may never know for sure what they were actually
planning.
Meanwhile, reports of material evidence in the UK have been unnervingly
threadbare. Only eleven out of the 24 suspects arrested over the alleged
airliner bomb plot have been charged, largely it seems on the basis of police
findings of �bomb-making equipment and martyrdom videos.� Out of the other
thirteen, two have been released without charge. But the �bomb-making
equipment� discovery of �chemicals� and �electrical components� is ambiguous at
best, especially given that police descriptions of the alleged bomb
construction plan is to mix a sports drink with a peroxide-based household gel
(the chemicals), and detonate the mixture with an MP3 player or mobile phone
(electrical components). If possession of such items makes you a terror suspect
in possession of potential bomb-making equipment, then we are all terror
suspects. As Craig Murray observes:
�Let me fess up
here. I have just checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports
drinks, and a variety of household cleaning products. Also MP3 players and
mobile phones. So the authorities could announce -- as they have whispered to
the media in this case -- that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb, and
potential timing devices, have been discovered. It rather lowers the bar
doesn�t it?�
Yes -- clearly, it lowers the bar to potentially include millions of
perfectly normal British citizens. The police story is also, simply,
scientifically absurd, as Murray further notes: �The idea that high explosive
can be made quickly in a plane toilet by mixing at room temperature some nail
polish remover, bleach, and Red Bull and giving it a quick stir, is nonsense.�
Citing US chemistry experts, Washington-based information security journalist
Thomas C. Greene similarly concludes that " . . . the fabled binary liquid
explosive -- that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with
sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out
of the question . . . But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid
explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a
movie plot."
CIA, MI6 and ISI
A report by Asia Times Pakistan Bureau Chief
Syed Shahzad citing Pakistani intelligence sources confirms that the
British-born Pakistanis arrested in Lahore and Karachi were active members of
al-Muhajiroun, the banned UK-based extremist Islamist group currently directed
by Omar Bakri Mohammed from Lebanon. Moreover, they had been penetrated by
Pakistani intelligence services. �I can tell you with surety,� said
one Pakistani source, �that the boys [recently] arrested in Pakistan have long
been identified by the Pakistani establishment.� They had come to Pakistan and
�interacted with a few officials of the Pakistani army� with a view to stage a
coup against the Musharraf regime. Omar Bakri has repeatedly issued fatawas
calling for the assassination of Musharraf. In fact:
�Pakistani intelligence -- coming from a strong
military background -- penetrated deep into them . . . The closeness of the
Pakistani intelligence with some boys with a Muhajiroun background was a known
fact, but at what stage it turned out to be their �London terror plot,� we are
completely in the dark. However, I safely make a conjecture that those highly
motivated boys were exploited by agents provocateurs. A religious Muslim youth
in his early 20s is undoubtedly full of hatred against the US, and if somebody
would guide them to carry out any attack on US interests, there would be a
strong chance that they would go for that. And I think this is exactly what
happened . . . they were basically [en]trapped.�
I have no doubt that these individuals could have been
associated with extremist groups. But while it may be possible they were
involved in terrorist-related activity, it is now indisputable that there was
no evidence of an imminent plot, and the specific claims about the details were
obtained from an informant under torture. We should therefore be very cautious
in accepting the �Terror Plot� official narrative, as there is clearly a
continuing danger of political interference compromising ongoing intelligence
investigations for political expedience.
But the deep involvement of the Pakistani ISI in penetrating
the very group that was subsequently arrested and tortured, raises serious
questions about what was going on. Moreover, the Asia Times also notes
that the Pakistani intelligence operation against these groups was coordinated
on the initiative of the CIA and MI6. Indeed, MI6 had also ensured that a deep
undercover British intelligence operative had �infiltrated the
group, giving the authorities intelligence on the alleged plan,�
according to several US government sources.
The revelation that the arrestees were associated with
al-Muhajiroun also raises serious intelligence issues. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the
leader of the group, which recently operated under the names of the Saved Sect
and al-Ghuraaba, was recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to recruit British
Muslims to fight in Kosovo. Despite being implicated in
the 7/7 London bombings, the British government exiled him to Lebanon where he
resides safely outside of British jurisdiction, and thus effectively immune
from investigation and prosecution. One inevitably wonders about the nature of
Bakri�s corrupt relationship with British intelligence services today.
P20G: Stimulating
Reactions
So what were the CIA, MI6 and ISI doing? Given the
disturbing context here, in which the entire �Terror Plot� narrative has
obviously been deeply politicized and to some extent even fabricated, a
balanced analysis needs to account precisely for the stated new
�counter-terror� strategies of western intelligence services. In August 2002, a
report by the Pentagon�s Defense Science Board revealed the latest strategic
thinking about creating a new US secret counterintelligence organization -- the
Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P20G) -- which would, among other
things, conduct highly clandestine operations to �stimulate
reactions� among terrorist groups, by infiltrating them or
provoking them into action in order to facilitate targeting them. In January
2005, Seymour Hersh revealed in the New Yorker that the P20G strategy
had been activated:
�Under Rumsfeld�s new approach, I was told,
US military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign
businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in
nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers,
local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or
terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat
operations, or even terrorist activities.�
Hersh refers to a series of articles by John Arquilla, a
professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey,
California, and a RAND terrorism consultant, where he elaborates on this
strategy of �countering terror� with Pseudo-Terror. �When conventional military
operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the
1950s,� muses professor Arquilla, �the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu
tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These �pseudo gangs,� as
they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by
befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the
terrorists� camps.� He goes on to advocate that western intelligence services
should use the British case as a model for creating new �pseudo gang� terrorist
groups, purportedly to undermine �real� terror networks. �What worked in Kenya
a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment
among today�s terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be
difficult.� He then confidently observes about John Walker Lindh, the young
American lad who joined the Taliban before 9/11: �If a confused young man from
Marin County can join up with Al Qaeda, think what professional operatives
might do.�
Hmmm. . . .
I�m thinking about it, and I�m looking at the deep
intelligence penetration of al-Qaeda affiliated networks like al-Muhajiroun by
the CIA, MI6 and ISI, and unfortunately I�m not experiencing the same sense of
elation as Arquilla. Is the 10/8 �Terror Plot� connected to the post-9/11 P20G
strategy?
Whatever happened on 10/8, it is not the majestic
�success story� that it has been painted by the British and American
governments. It is symptomatic of something far worse, the mechanics of which
will never be truly understood in the absence of a full-scale independent
public inquiry focusing on the 7th July bombings, but including associated
British and western �security� policies which see Pseudo-Terrorism as a
legitimate tool of statecraft.
� 2006 Nafeez Mosaddeq
Ahmed
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed (http://nafeez.blogspot.com) is the
author of "The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry
"(London: Duckworth 2006) and "The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation
and the Anatomy of Terrorism" (New York: Olive Branch 2006). He teaches
international relations, political theory and contemporary history at the
University of Sussex, Brighton.