Prior to Tim’s appointment he was President and Chief Executive of one of the most successful rail networks in the United States, Consolidated Rail Corporation. Having worked at Consolidated Rail Corporation for 18 years, Tim led the company to its safest and most profitable year in 1998 and was part of the negotiating team for its $10bn merger with Norfolk Southern and CSX.

After attaining a post-graduate Law Degree, Tim rose through the senior legal and financial ranks within Consolidated Rail as General Counsel, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer, before becoming CEO.

Jay Walder Managing Director of Finance & Planning

Jay Walder joined Transport for London (TfL) as the Managing Director, Finance and Planning in February 2001. He has responsibility for TfL’s £4.6 billion annual budget and the development of London-wide transport strategy, and has been integrally involved in the implementation of the Congestion Charging system, the London Underground PPP and Crossrail.

Prior to joining TfL, he was a Professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government where his teaching and research interests were in the areas of transportation, infrastructure finance and public-sector budgeting. His publications include numerous articles and case studies on the development and financing of infrastructure, and an annual report on the United States budget (with U.S. Senator Daniel P. Moynihan). He served as a Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore during the 1999/00 academic year and has consulted with many public agencies.

Before joining the Kennedy School faculty, he was the Executive Director and Chief Financial Officer at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where he successfully led efforts to secure $9 billion for the rebuilding of the city’s subway, bus and commuter rail systems.

The Commissioner Bob Kiley

Prior to his appointment as Commissioner of Transport for London in January 2001, Robert Kiley served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the New York City Partnership. The Partnership, the city's leading business and civic organisation, improves the city's economic climate through advocacy and public-private initiatives in education, job creation, affordable housing, and neighbourhood development. Its membership reflects the impressive breadth of the city's private, non-profit and civic leadership.

From 1991 to 1994 he was President of Fischbach Corporation, a major New York-based construction and engineering company, and in 1994 became its Chairman until assuming his position at the New York City Partnership in 1995.From 1983 until 1990, he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). At the MTA he was responsible for five transportation agencies serving the New York Metropolitan Region where he directed the rebuilding of New York's public transportation system and restructured its management. He led successful efforts to obtain more than $16 billion from the New York State legislature for capital improvements to the city's subways and buses, commuter railroads, tunnels and bridges in the MTA region.Robert Kiley has consulted with corporations and public agencies at the Management Analysis Center (now Cap Gemini) then headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the 1970s he was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in Boston and served as Deputy Mayor of the City of Boston.

Early in his career, he was with the CIA, where he served as Manager of Intelligence Operations and then as Executive Assistant to the Director.

Robert Kiley is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Board Member of the Salzburg International Seminar, the American Repertory Theater, MONY Group Inc, the Princeton Review Inc and Edison Schools, Inc. He is also on the Advisory Board of the Harvard University Center for State and Local Government. A Magna Cum Laude graduate of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA, Robert Kiley and his wife Rona now live in London.

Netanyahu was to have been the scheduled keynote speaker at an Israeli corporate investment conference at the Great Eastern hotel near the Liverpool Street subway station. Conference participants were evacuated from the hotel. Shalom said he wasn't aware of any Israeli casualties. The Israeli ambassador to London, Zvi Hefetz, said Thursday that British police had called to tell embassy personnel to stay inside their offices. "There is fear that this wave (of violence) has not yet ended," Hefetz said.

NewsMax.com : Thursday, July 7, 2005 7:45 a.m. EDT

Netanyahu in London Changed Plans

JERUSALEM – British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said.

Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his position. The Israeli Embassy was in a state of emergency after the explosions in London, with no one allowed to enter or leave, said the Israeli ambassador to London, Zvi Hefet. All phone lines to the embassy were down, said Danny Biran, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official. The ministry set up a situation room to deal with hundreds of phone calls from concerned relatives. Thousands of Israelis are living in London or visiting the city at this time, Biran said.

Amir Gilad, a Netanyahu aide, told Israel Radio that Netanyahu's entourage was receiving updates all morning from British security officials, and "we have also asked to change our plans."

Netanyahu had been scheduled to stay in London until Sunday, but that could change, Gilad said.

© 2005 Associated Press

News Max added this subsequently:
Netanyahu's adviser Amir Gilad explained what had happened in a radio interview.

"We were exactly on our way to the hotel [located over a subway station - the first one to blow up," Gilad said. "We were asked by the British security sources not to arrive at the hotel. Still it was not clear what was happening. We stayed in the hotel where we were guests," Gilad said. Netanyahu was due to open a large conference at the time of the explosion, Gilad added. "Now we are receiving updates all morning from British security sources that are speaking about terror attacks in the underground train and also in buses throughout the city," he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had no immediate comment on the attack on London.

Michael Scheuer, a former CIA analyst, and expert noted that Britain has a far more sophisticated internal police and security system than the U.S. He suggested that if British security had failed to detect such a major, coordinated attack, America may be at far more risk.(photo Washington subway)

Comment, xymphora.com: It is very curious that Netanyahu said he was warned and somehow this information came to the public through Israel, and then a series of denials was launched by Israel. Warnings reinforce the concept of organizations having been penetrated, so this could be scare propaganda against the perpetrators, whether or not true. But didn't Netanyahu prove by his actions that he was already avoiding the scene when it happened, regardless of any statements about his having been warned? This indicates prior knowledge of someone, British or Israeli. Until a thorough timeline is developed for this event (like some developed for 9/11), pattern will be hard to see.Dianne Foster | 07.18.05 - 1:01 pm |

London's Terror Thursday establishes three realities beyond the shadow of a doubt: (1) the West is losing the "war on terrorism," (2) in our present strategic mode, we are essentially defenseless against al-Qaeda's offensive – I agree with Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit and author of Imperial Hubris, who said on National Public Radio that this is undoubtedly al-Qaeda's grisly work, and (3) there are more than two sides in this war.

With the G-8 meeting being held in Scotland, security measures in the United Kingdom were at an all-time high – and yet, despite that, al-Qaeda pulled off a fairly complex operation, involving four separate bombings, three underground trains and one bus, which was peeled away from its chassis like an opened can of beans, as one witness described it. Indeed, the London attacks have opened up a very big can of worms for Blair's government, and in Washington too, where they're realizing that the "fly trap" tactic they've been employing in Iraq has backfired rather badly.

If the Brits couldn't prevent such a sophisticated and highly coordinated attack at a time like this – when the meeting of the G-8 had British security on high alert – then one can only conclude, along with Scheuer, that the terrorists held back, and could have caused far more damage and taken many more lives if they so chose. Perhaps that thought is meant to sink into the British consciousness. The terrorists' message is clear enough: your government can't protect you. This much seems beyond dispute.

The second message may be gleaned from the statement of responsibility for the attacks, which appeared on a jihadist Web site that has been utilized by al-Qaeda on previous occasions to make announcements. Here is screenshot of the message posted shortly after the attacks, and here is a translation, courtesy of Wikipedia:

"In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate, may be upon the cheerful one and undaunted fighter, Prophet Muhammed, God's peace be upon him.

"Nation of Islam and Arab nation: Rejoice for it is time to take revenge against the British Zionist crusader government in retaliation for the massacres Britain is committing in Iraq and Afghanistan. The heroic mujahideen have carried out a blessed raid in London. Britain is now burning with fear, terror and panic in its northern, southern, eastern, and western quarters.

"We have repeatedly warned the British government and people. We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.

"We continue to warn the governments of Denmaark and all the crusader governments that they will be punished in the same way if they do not withdraw their troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. He who warns is excused.

"God says: 'You who believe: If ye will aid (the cause of) God, He will aid you, and plant your feet firmly.'"

Bin Laden's message to Muslims is that the West, far from being invulnerable, can be defeated. His primary target remains the U.S., not Britain or any of the other countries mentioned in the claim of responsibility, and his chief objective is to get us out of the Middle East. The jihadist mindset is eerily similar to that of our own leaders, and their neoconservative amen corner, who continue to advance the proposition that we must fight "the terrorists" in the streets of Baghdad so we don't have to do battle in the streets of London, Rome, and New York City. Bush declares that "we are going on the offensive," but, as I pointed out only last week, so are they:

"The President gloats that 'we're on the offense' – and explicitly justifies this on the grounds that we have to go after them before they go after us. Yet why it is impossible for them to attack the U.S. [Ed: or the UK] anyway, even while fighting American troops in Iraq, no one seems to know."

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: while the Islamists cannot begin to bring the sort of firepower that we wield in Iraq to bear in the streets of London, they can, over time, create conditions where a stiff upper lip is not enough. At that point – or, hopefully, well before then – the Brits, and indeed all of us in the West, are going to have to make a cold calculation of the costs and the benefits of invading the Middle East. Is it worth the high price we must pay, or is it time to come up with a strategy a bit more sophisticated than shaking the tree in which the hornets' nest sits – in the hope that it will eventually fall to the ground?

If the answer is yes, it is worth it, then we must be prepared to do what the War Party has been urging since 9/11: abolishing for the duration many of the freedoms we now enjoy and signing on to a foreign policy of perpetual war against much of the Muslim world. Aside from taxing ourselves into penury and instituting a military draft, this means basically shutting down the relatively free society we have been living in and replacing it with a garrison state, one in which freedom of movement, of privacy, of the right to not be tracked by the government 24/7 goes the way of the horse-and-buggy, spats, and the music of Tommy Dorsey.

To answer "no," however, is to take the path of what the War Party derides as "appeasement" – in spite of the reality that our present policy is an invaluable aid to bin Laden and his cohorts. Against the tidal wave of emotion – a good deal of it cheap histrionics – the advocates of a rational foreign policy will have to fight an uphill battle, at least for the moment. However, when the dust clears, and common sense sets in, the backlash against the Blair government is sure to rise up: after all, the Israelis claimed – at least at one point – that the Brits warned them of the attack "minutes" in advance. The British authorities, for their part, deny any such warning – as the Israelis are now doing, at least offically.

The first Associated Press story about a warning received by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu said this:

"British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said. Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said. …

"Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his position."

In subsequent versions of the same story, all references to the call from Scotland Yard have been scrubbed, and we are told that Netanyahu received the warning after the blasts. This instant revisionism was duly noted by the blogosphere. It took them a while to get their story straight – and I'm not talking about the Associated Press.

So when did Netanyahu receive his warning – and who warned whom? Stratfor.com circulated an interesting analysis shortly after the first stories began to come out: Although several news reports had Netanyahu on his way to the conference, Stratfor avers that he simply stayed put. Also noted is Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's denial that Scotland Yard informed the Israeli Embassy of the attacks in advance, with the Brits echoing this "clarification," but Stratfor has the supposed scoop:

"Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned 'minutes before' the first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks 'a couple of days' previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm.

"The British government sat on this information for days and failed to respond. Though the Israeli government is playing along publicly, it may not stay quiet for long. This is sure to apply pressure on Blair very soon for his failure to deter this major terrorist attack."

I would also point out that Stratfor, with its passion for reiterating the obvious, stated in its summary that "there has been massive confusion" over the warning – confusion generated by whom, and to what purpose, is best left to the fertile imaginations of my readers.

The Stratfor piece puts the best spin on this story, at least from the Israeli point of view. If word that Netanyahu had a warning got out, then the best way to salvage it – and even score a few brownie points in the process – is to float the story that the warning was received not minutes but days before the attacks, and that the recipient of those warnings was not Netanyahu but the British government. Taking the focus off the eternal "war on terrorism," and trying to solve the problems of world poverty and global warming, the British government deliberately downplayed the threat, even ignored it – in spite of Israel's best efforts.

And if you believe that, there's a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in purchasing.

Netanyahu was no doubt a target of the bomb plot – why else would the terrorists bomb an underground station directly below the hotel where the investment conference was going to take place? If Israeli intelligence knew about the attacks days in advance, and only thought to let Netanyahu in on the secret "minutes" before the bombs went off – well, that's a little hard to believe, now isn't it? (Oh, wait … maybe not.)

I don't believe that Scotland Yard knew diddly-squat about the terror plot, either days or minutes before the bombs exploded, although what seems beyond dispute is that Netanyahu was warned beforehand. The question is, who warned him?

My longtime readers know that the question of how much the Israelis knew about 9/11 before those planes ploughed into the World Trade Center, and how they knew it, has been taken up in this space on many previous occasions. My short book, The Terror Enigma: 9/11 and the Israeli Connection, shows that Israel wasn't behind the 9/11 attacks, as many in the Arab world allege, but that they did have some knowledge that a terrorist attack was about to take place on American soil and somehow neglected to tell us about it. A controversial thesis, to be sure, and one that has caused me no small amount of trouble, perhaps understandably so. I would submit, however, that in this instance, too, the same pattern seems to be repeating itself – and that this goes a long way toward vindicating the thesis initially presented by Fox News reporter Carl Cameron in a four-part series broadcast in December 2001, and elaborated on by me in The Terror Enigma.

When you think about it, the idea that Netanyahu may have had advance warning of the attacks isn't all that improbable. Israel, after all, depends for its survival on the ability of its intelligence services to track Osama bin Laden and his allies worldwide. However, the decision to share that intelligence with Israel's ostensible allies in the "war on terrorism" cannot be taken for granted; and surely the choice not to do so, in the case of both New York and London, can be easily understood in terms of Israeli interests.

Who benefits from the London attacks, aside from the obvious candidate, which is bin Laden? With the "coalition of the willing" showing signs of going wobbly, and the recent announcement that Britain was withdrawing a good portion of its forces from Iraq, the political momentum in Britain (and the United States), which was going against the Iraq war, is suddenly reversed. Politicians are doing their best Churchill imitations, and the questions arising in the U.S. Congress and the media are swamped by an emotional tidal wave of pro-war sentiment. The scandals that plague the War Party both in Britain and the U.S. are eclipsed, and suddenly, with the prospect of suicide bombers in the streets of London – and perhaps New York – Martin Peretz's battle-cry uttered in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 is taken up once again: "We are all Israelis now." (Although, for good tactical reasons, Ariel Sharon is telling his diplomats not to say this too loudly.)

Who benefits? Who loses? And who knew? Surely Netanyahu knew, either "days" or "minutes" before the blasts shattered all hope that the War Party might yet be defeated – and it wasn't Scotland Yard that tipped him off. In any case, the key question that must be asked, and answered, before the lesson of London's Terror Thursday can be fully assimilated and learned, is this: What did Bibi know, and when did he know it?

– Justin Raimondo
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6585

Ironically, former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani found hinself again in the middle of a terroritst attack, he has been in London on business, and was in Liverpool Street station this morning as some of the bombs went off. He said: "I was right near Liverpool [Street] Station when the first bomb went off and was notified of it and it was just to me very eerie to be right there again when one of these attacks takes place.

London Underground Bombing 'Exercises' Took Place at Same Time as Real Attack
Culpability cover scenario echoes 9/11 wargames

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet | July 9 2005

A consultancy agency with government and police connections was running an exercise for an unnamed company that revolved around the London Underground being bombed at the exact same times and locations as happened in real life on the morning of July 7th. On a BBC Radio 5 interview that aired on the evening of the 7th, the host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a 'crisis management' advice company, better known to you and I as a PR firm.

Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch. Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.

The transcript is as follows.

POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.
HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?
POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.

The fact that the exercise mirrored the exact locations and times of the bombings is light years beyond a coincidence. Power said the drill focused around 'simultaneous bombings'. At first the bombings were thought to have been spread over an hour, but the BBC reports just today that the bombings were in fact simultaneous.

Mr. Power and Visor Consultants need not have been 'in on the bombing' or anything of that nature for this to be of importance. The British government or one of their private company offshoots could have hired Visor to run the exercise for a number of purposes.

The exercise fulfils several different goals. It acts as a cover for the small compartamentalized government terrorists to carry out their operation without the larger security services becoming aware of what they're doing, and, more importantly, if they get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence they can just claim that they were just taking part in the exercise.

This is precisely what happened on the morning of 9/11/2001. The CIA was conducting drills of flying hijacked planes into the WTC and Pentagon at 8:30 in the morning.It is clear that at least five if not six training exercises were in operation in the days leading up to and on the morning of 9/11. This meant that NORAD radar screens showed as many as 22 hijacked airliners at the same time. NORAD had been briefed that this was part of the exercise drill and therefore normal reactive procedure was forestalled and delayed.The large numbers of 'blips' on NORAD screens that displayed both real and 'drill' hijacked planes explain why confused press reports emerged hours after the attack stating that up to eight planes had been hijacked.

The Anglo-American establishment that controls the military-industrial complex of the West has been caught over a hundred times carrying out bombings and other terrorist attacks around the world to further their corporate aims and to blame their enemies.The US government has been caught planning to carry out attacks and carrying out attacks. The British government has been caught red-handed as well. Members of Vladimir Putin's FSB were caught planting bombs in a Russian apartment building in 1999 by the Moscow police.This is not speculation. Kermit Roosevelt admited on NPR radio that in 1953 the CIA and British intelligence carried out a wave of bombings and shooting in Iran He then went on to brag about how they subsequently blamed the bombings on Iran's President, Mossadegh. Do you understand, these people brag about what they do 40 years later?

The London bombings have the same signature as the Madrild bombings of 3/11. Both of these bombings are almost indistinguishable from the Bolognia bombing in 1980 that killed over 80 people. The bombing in Bolognia was part of a CIA operation code named Gladio, where the US government would pay right-wing terrorists to carry out bombings to be blamed on leftists in Europe. All of this was blown wide open when two of the Bolognia bombers were convited in an Italian court, forcing them to spill their guts admitting that they were neo-fascists contracted by the CIA. Operation Gladio documents have since been declassified.

The London terror alert level was lowered before the bombings took place. This gave the perpetrators extra cover to plan and execute the attack without having to evade the most stringent security.

In any crime you look at history and motive, The British government has been caught in multiple examples of carrying out bombings in London which were then blamed on the IRA. They even had one of their own MI5 agents wihin the Omagh bomb squad. Click here for an archive of this evidence. The wider agenda will become clearer when Blair firmly points the finger at the selected patsies designated to take the fall. But for the moment he's happy to grandstand as the courageous leader who immedately returned to London to take control of the chaos.

BBC polls that were showing 80 per cent plus opposed the ID card will now likely flip back in the opposite direction. Support for the European Union and increased globalization through the G8 will rise. Who stands to gain from all this? Who has the motive?

From Putin blowing up his own apartment buildings to Israel being behind Hamas, the evidence is consistently clear that large scale terrorism is always state sponsored. The Madrid train bombing is another example. The bombers were found to be police informants with close links to the Spanish security services. They had access to the most secure areas of the Madrid train system. The Spanish government initially tried to blaim the Basque group ETA for the blast in the hope that the people would rally behind the government and get them re-elected. After ETA denied involvement and the people started saying the government was involved, the Spanish government had to blame Al-Qaeda and kill some patsies by claiming they blew themselves up during a raid.

(Were)The London Underground exercises were used as the fallback cover to carry out the attack.(?) This is the biggest smoking gun yet pointing directly to the most secretive levels of the British establishment

JOSEPH FARAH'S G2 BULLETIN
      Who shorted
      British pound?
      Currency fell 6% in 10 days
      before London terror attacks
Posted: July 16, 2005
      3:40 p.m. Eastern
      
      Editor's note: Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin is an online, subscription  intelligence news service from the creator of WorldNetDaily.com - a  journalist who has been developing sources around the world for almost 30  years. The subscription price for the premium newsletter has been slashed
 in  half and is now available for only $9.95 per month.

      © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com

      WASHINGTON -- In the 1988 Hollywood hit "Die Hard," starring Bruce  Willis, a group of "terrorists" take over a Japanese banking institution  in  Los Angeles, hold hostages and make demands for release of "political  prisoners."       But it turns out the terrorists aren't really terrorists. They are  bank robbers trying to make off with the fortune in the bank's vaults.       Could it be Osama bin Laden has seen "Die Hard"?       That is a question Scotland Yard and other law enforcement agencies  are actually asking themselves following the July 7 London transit system  attacks that killed 54 and injured scores more as they continue to scour  the  planet for evidence and additional conspirators.

      Why? Because it appears some profited by short selling the British  pound in the 10 days leading up to the attacks.       The pound fell about 6 percent (approximately 1.82 to 1.72) against
 the dollar for no apparent reason - until, of course, the terror attacks  sent the British markets reeling still further.

      "This was an almost unprecedented weakness and far too sharp to be a  coincidence," one economist with more than 35 years of experience in the  investment industry, told Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin, the premium, online  intelligence newsletter published by the founder of WND. "That is, after  all, an annualized rate of loss of well over 100 percent."       The fall did not go unnoticed by investigators, who are wondering  whether the terrorist masterminds behind the attacks decided to make some  money on their action or whether other investors with inside information about possible attacks took advantage of that knowledge.       "Currencies of establish countries simply do not fall that fast based  upon any kind of economic or financial analysis," said the economist.  "Somebody - somewhere - knew something. Or maybe I should say  'somebodies.'"

      Could it be the terrorists have learned to make their attacks  self-funding operations?       Could it be the terrorists are actually motivated by factors other  than Islamic fanaticism?       These are some of the questions law enforcement agencies are asking -  but they're not really expecting to get answers.       The problem is that short selling of this kind can be done with near
 total anonymity.       "Trade currency futures through a Swiss or Austrian bank via an  offshore company incorporated in Crete and you have a totally untraceable  transaction," the economist noted. "No one will ever know who made the  really big money off this situation, but I guarantee you this - someone  did."

      It's not the first time suspicion about terrorists - or someone -  profiting from short-selling prior to an attack.       Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S., David Ruder,  chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission from 1987 to 1989,  raised  the question of whether terrorists may have gotten away with profiting  from  their attacks by short-selling shares in the U.S. markets.       Then U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill confirmed the government  was  investigating possible short selling, but was not optimistic those  responsible would ever be found.

      Short selling allows investors to bet that stocks will fall by  borrowing and selling shares in the hope of buying back at a lower price.


      After Sept. 11, Chicago Board Options Exchange data showed 1,575 put  options purchased in United Airlines' parent company five days before the  attacks. On an average day, only 390 such put options are purchased.  Investors bought 2,258 put options in American Airlines parent company,  compared with 220 on a typical day. Insurance and other stocks also  experienced and upswing in short sales.

      Investigators never revealed how much money was bet, but short  sellers  could have made 30 times what they invested, given the huge plunge in the  stock prices of those companies.       Government investigators from around the world never learned the  identity of the short sellers in 2001. And, despite vigorous efforts being  made to find out who was behind the short selling of the British pound in  early July, hopes are slim the culprits will be found.

NEWSMAX.COM :
European stocks dropped sharply after the blasts, with exchanges in London, Paris and Germany all down about 2 percent. Insurance and travel-related stocks were hit hard, and the British pound also fell. Gold, traditionally seen as a safe haven, rose.

The explosions also unnerved traders on Wall Street, sending stocks down sharply.

Three U.S. law enforcement officials said at least 40 people were killed. They spoke on condition of anonymity and said they learned of the number from their British counterparts.

This is clearly an al-Qaida style attack. It was well-coordinated, it was timed for a political event and it was a multiple attack on a transportation system at rush hour," said Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King's College in London.

Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick said there had been no arrests, and it was unclear whether suicide bombers were involved.

Asked about the claim of responsibility, Paddick said: "We will be looking at that ... at the moment we don't know if that's a legitimate claim or not." He added British officials had received no prior warning or advance intelligence that the attacks would occur.

In London, Paddick said at least 33 people killed in the subway system alone. He confirmed other fatalities on the bus but gave no figures.

Buckman, the London doctor, said ambulance staff told him about 10 people died in the bus blast. BMA doctors treated about nine seriously wounded people in the building's courtyard, two of whom later died, he said.

Officials at seven major hospitals surveyed by The Associated Press reported at least 393 people wounded. Among them, at least 45 were in serious or critical condition, including amputations, fractures and burns, officials said. British police confirmed 37 fatalities and 700 injured.

London Mayor Ken Livingstone said the blasts were "mass murder" carried out by terrorists bent on "indiscriminate ... slaughter."

"This was not a terrorist attack against the mighty or