MI5 row sparks 7/7 inquiry calls

"The amount of time I spent editing this bastard," says Mr Gilbertson. One sequence features President George Bush citing the word "crusade" after 9/11, repeating his threat and proceeding to a horrific history lesson about the Crusaders of old "like an unholy tide of demons let loose upon the earth". The presentation then twists into horrific images of mutilated, dismembered and slaughtered children in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and elsewhere. "If these pictures can make me cry," says Mr Gilbertson, "what effect are they going to have on some impressionable Muslim youth?" According to reports after the bombings, the man regarded as the bombers' ringleader, Mohammad Sidique Khan, distributed what newspapers called "horror DVDs". By October 2003, Mr Gilbertson had become so alarmed by his own work and the discourse around him that he went to the local Holbeck police station. He says he was told to send his material to West Yorkshire police headquarters. The package he sent to the force's HQ in Wakefield included examples of the DVDs he had produced, a contact number at which he could be reached and a list of names, including two of the bombers - Shehzad Tanweer and Sidique Khan - as well as the recipients and senders of their email traffic.

He heard nothing; his warning, he claims, disappeared into a black hole. "I only wish I had had some access to MI5. I probably could have got them in there, before the bombs went off."

Mr Gilbertson's package was addressed to the anti-terrorist squad. Asked this week about Mr Gilbertson's approach, a spokesman for West Yorkshire police told the Guardian: "It's going to be almost impossible to trace what happened to a specific item of mail. We don't have an anti-terrorist squad, and there's no way of saying to where it might have gone from the mailroom. We get all sorts of material on extremist groups - but it's impossible to say whether this made its way into the intelligence system, whether it was discounted as low-level intelligence or whether it was acted upon in some way."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,1804953,00.html

Back in Leeds, MSK and others running the bookstore were using the computer expertise of Martin Gilbertson, but by October 2003 Gilbertson was becoming increasingly worried about the Beeston extremists and supplied copies of material they produced to the West Yorkshire Police. He also supplied a list of names including MSK and the second London bomber Shehzad Tanweer.

After our coverage of the Crevice trial, Martin Gilbertson contacted the programme to reveal that months after he'd given the tipoff to West Yorkshire police, the computers and the Iqra bookshop were seized in a police raid. This raid was about the same time surveillance began on the leader of the Crevice plot, Omar Khyam.

Khyam was followed up the M1, travelling with Sidique Khan in February 2004. By June 2004 MI5 knew the car was registered to Sidique Khan. At this point, searching on that name would have unearthed the references to Sidique Khan we've described.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/6613269.stm

Thank you for your message. Given the volume of emails about events on 7 July and a commonly expressed misguided belief that our exercise revealed prescient behaviour, or was somehow a conspiracy (noting that several websites interpreted our work that day in an inaccurate / naive / ignorant / hostile manner) it has been decided to issue a single email response as follows: It is confirmed that a short number of 'walk through' scenarios planed well in advance had commenced that morning for a private company in London (as part of a wider project that remains confidential) and that two scenarios related directly to terrorist bombs at the same time as the ones that actually detonated with such tragic results. One scenario in particular, was very similar to real time events.



However, anyone with knowledge about such ongoing threats to our capital city will be aware that (a) the emergency services have already practiced several of their own exercises based on bombs in the underground system (also reported by the main news channels) and (b) a few months ago the BBC broadcast a similar documentary on the same theme, although with much worse consequences. It is hardly surprising therefore, that we chose a feasible scenario - but the timing and script was nonetheless, a little disconcerting.



In short, our exercise (which involved just a few people as crisis managers actually responding to a simulated series of activities involving, on paper, 1000 staff) quickly became the real thing and the players that morning responded very well indeed to the sudden reality of events.



Beyond this no further comment will be made and based on the extraordinary number of messages from ill informed people, no replies will henceforth be given to anyone unable to demonstrate a bona fide reason for asking (e.g. accredited journalist / academic).



Peter Power

Visor Consultants Limited

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=46961&mesg_id=47397

Not only did MI5 have Sidique Khan's name as a contact with 'Q' - the suspected plot coordinator who is still at liberty in the UK - before the fertiliser plot arrests were made, they found out after the arrests that the car that the arrested men had travelled in was registered to him as well.

London bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan featured in a surveillance operation by intelligence services last year, a BBC investigation suggests.

Khan was secretly filmed and recorded speaking to a UK-based terror suspect, according to a well-placed source.

A Radio 4 File on 4 and BBC Two Newsnight investigation also suggests he was in contact with al-Qaeda activists for the last five years.
...
The programme makers stress there is no independent corroboration that Khan was secretly filmed by intelligence services talking to the terror suspect, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4375598.stm

Blair Ignored Most Obvious Lesson of 9/11
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/7/26/101845/102
by leveymg
Tue Jul 26th, 2005 at 07:18:45 PDT
Roll up known cells, and keep "friendly" Intel agencies on a very short leash.

leveymg's diary :: ::

Tony knows damned well why 9/11 happened. During the summer of 2001, the CIA, the Saudis, and the Israelis were running several loosely-coordinated penetration operations against al-Qaeda and each other inside the US. Other intelligence services were watching. The President was given the option of rolling up the UBL cells - but, for his own reasons, Bush declined to issue that order.

So, in order to keep the game going, US counter-terrorism accepted the risks of allowing the 19 to enter the country -- the regular "gumshoe" FBI were intentionally kept out of the loop, and the Bureau liaison at CTC was ordered not to put out alerts. Not knowing what the hell else to do, FBI HQ basically stalled all ongoing CT investigations. The WTC and Pentagon attacks proceeded unhindered.

The lessons were clear. All those double-agents, agents provocateur, consensual monitoring, and simulations created a huge opportunity for someone to put together a workable operational plan. You remove the opportunity by rounding up everyone who might be taken down. You watch the rest very closely. You lock out opposing intelligence services, and keep allies on a very short leash.

Tony Blair ignored these obvious lessons, and the London Bombings occurred as a result. The second wave of attacks - with the unexploded minitions - were something else, something perhaps more sinister.

The buildup to 7/7 involved several US double-agents. This is almost pathetically obvious. Just read between the lines below, you'll see exactly what happened.

*********************

Effort here to charge London suspect was blocked

By Hal Bernton and David Heath

Seattle Times staff reporters

The Justice Department blocked efforts by its prosecutors in Seattle in 2002 to bring criminal charges against Haroon Aswat, according to federal law-enforcement officials who were involved in the case.

British authorities suspect Aswat of taking part in the July 7 London bombings, which killed 56 and prompted an intense worldwide manhunt for him.

But long before he surfaced as a suspect there, federal prosecutors in Seattle wanted to seek a grand-jury indictment for his involvement in a failed attempt to set up a terrorist-training camp in Bly, Ore., in late 1999. In early 2000, Aswat lived for a couple of months in central Seattle at the Dar-us-Salaam mosque.

snip

"It was really frustrating," said a former Justice Department official involved in the case. "Guys like that, you just want to sweep them up off the street."

snip

At the time, however, federal prosecutors chose not to indict Aswat for reasons that are not clear. Asked why Aswat wasn't indicted, a federal official in Seattle replied, "That's a great question."

more
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/20023 ...

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Pakistani American Aiding London Probe
Man in U.S. Custody Has Ties to Al Qaeda
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20 ...

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 25, 2005; Page A14

It is safe to assume that most people would not react to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in quite the same way as Mohammed Junaid Babar.

SNIP

Thus began the strange jihadist odyssey of Babar, 30, a naturalized U.S. citizen and Yankees fan who said he gave up a $70,000-a-year job as a computer programmer to join al Qaeda operatives in plotting attacks against U.S. soldiers and targets in Britain.

Now in U.S. custody after pleading guilty to terrorism charges last year, Babar has proved invaluable to U.S. and British investigators probing this month's attacks on the London transit system, numerous officials said. He has identified at least one of the suicide bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, through photographs and has provided other details that may be helpful in unraveling the plot, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources.

The revelation that Babar is linked to the July 7 London attacks, which killed at least 56 including the four suicide bombers, is only the latest connection to emerge between the grandson of Pakistani immigrants and al Qaeda.

In addition to his connection to the London bombers, Babar has admitted in court proceedings to supplying bomb-making materials to a Pakistani cell in the United Kingdom that had plotted to blow up restaurants, pubs and train stations there. (When the cell was broken up in 2004, British authorities discovered more than 1,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the same material used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.) Furthermore, Babar said in federal court in Manhattan during a plea hearing last summer that he spent much of 2003 and early 2004 in the Waziristan province of Pakistan, supplying money and materials -- including night-vision goggles, sleeping bags and other items -- to "a high-ranking al Qaeda official" for use in the fight against U.S. and Northern Alliance forces across the border in Afghanistan. He also admitted to setting up a jihad training camp in the region, a court transcript shows.

Babar also is believed to have links to Issa al-Hindi, the operative involved in surveillance of financial buildings in the United States before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"This guy's connection to different cells and plots just seems to be expanding," said one U.S. law enforcement official, who declined to be identified because parts of the case are classified. "He is the fish that is getting bigger."

Although his arrest and prosecution last year in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York went largely unnoticed, U.S. counterterrorism and law enforcement officials say they have long recognized Babar's importance as a link to major al Qaeda players.

In an interview last fall, Frances Fragos Townsend, now the White House national security adviser, pointed to the Babar case as an example of a major prosecution. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey also said in an interview during the same period that Babar's case provided a lesson on the importance of greater surveillance powers for the government, citing evidence that he checked e-mail at a library despite having access in his home.

SNIP

U.S. counterterrorism officials said Babar first hit their radar screen in late 2001, after the incendiary comments he made to ITN were broadcast. But it was not until April 2004, after Babar had returned to New York and was put under surveillance by the FBI, that he was arrested.

Babar has told authorities that he recognized Khan, one of the London bombers, as a person he met in Pakistan and that he accompanied him to a jihad camp in the area, sources said.

Although Babar could face as many as 70 years in prison, he is likely to receive a lesser sentence for cooperating with U.S. authorities, and a sentencing date has not been scheduled, officials said.

**********************************

Not a word in The Post today about the other guy in Seattle who the US arrested and Ashcroft let go. Haroon Aswat and a confederate ended up as a central figure in the London bombing. ((http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph ...

The Seattle Time story, updated version here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/20023 ...

These revelations show how deeply entwined US intelligence operatives have become in the London cells. It also shows that MI-5 and DHS have a long way to go before they learn how to prevent international terrorist attacks. Obviously, allowing double-agents to run around the world isn't the way to do things. If I were a British MP, I would demand answers of Mr. Blair. If I were Mr. Blair, I might recall the Ambassador from Washington.

Mark