SEPTEMBER 2006

The Liquid Bomb Hoax: The Larger Implications
By James Petras
Aug 30, 2006, 10:16

 

The charges leveled by the British, US and Pakistani regimes that they uncovered a major bomb plot directed against 9 US airlines is based on the flimsiest of evidence, which would be thrown out of any court, worthy of its name.

An analysis of the current state of the investigation raises a series of questions regarding the governments’ claims of a bomb plot concocted by 24 Brits of Pakistani origin.

The arrests were followed by the search for evidence, as the August 12, 2006 Financial Times states: “The police set about the mammoth task of gathering evidence of the alleged terrorist bomb plot yesterday” (FT August 12/13 2006).  In other words, the arrests and charges took place without sufficient evidence – a peculiar method of operation – which reverses normal investigatory procedures in which arrests follow the “monumental task of gathering evidence”.  If the arrests were made without prior accumulation of evidence – what were the bases of the arrests?

The government search of financial records and transfers turned up no money trail despite the freezing of accounts.  The police search revealed limited amounts of savings, as one would expect from young workers, students and employees from low-income immigrant families. 
The British government, backed by Washington, claimed that the Pakistani government’s arrest of two British-Pakistanis provided “critical evidence” in uncovering the plot and identifying the alleged terrorist.  No Western judicial hearing would accept evidence procured by the Pakistani intelligence services that are notorious for their use of torture in extracting ‘confessions’.  The Pakistani dictatorship’s evidence is based on a supposed encounter between a relative of one of the suspects and an Al Queda operative on the Afghan border.  According to the Pakistani police, the Al Queda agent provided the relative and thus the accused with the bomb-making information and operative instructions.  The transmission of bomb-making information does not require a trip half-way around the world, least of all to a frontier under military siege by US led forces on one side and the Pakistani military on the other.  Moreover it is extremely dubious that Al Queda agents in the mountains of Afghanistan have any detailed knowledge of specific British airline security, procedures or conditions of operations in London.  Lacking substantive evidence, Pakistani intelligence and their British counterparts touched all the propaganda buttons: A clandestine meeting with Al Queda, bomb-making information exchanges on the Pakistani-Afghan border, Pakistani-Brits with Islamic friends, family and terrorist connections in England…

US intelligence claimed and London repeated that sums of money had been wired from Pakistan to allow the plotters to buy airline tickets.  Yet air tickets were found in only one residence (and the airline and itinerary were not stated by the police).  None of the other suspects possessed plane tickets and some did not even have passports.  In other words, the most preliminary moves in the so-called bomb plot had not been taken by the accused.  No terrorist plot to bomb airplanes exists when the alleged conspirators are lacking travel funds, documents and tickets.  It is not credible to argue that the alleged conspirators depended on instructions from distant handlers ignorant of the basic ground level conditions.

Initially the British and US authorities claimed that the explosive device was a ‘liquid bomb’ – yet no liquid or non-liquid bomb was discovered on the premises or persons of any of the accused.  Nor has any evidence been produced as to the capability of any of the suspects in making, moving or detonating the ‘liquid bomb’ – a very volatile solution if handled by unskilled operatives.  No evidence has been presented on the nature of the specific liquid bomb question, or any spoken discussion or written documents about the liquid bomb, which would implicate any of the suspects.  No bottle, liquid or chemical formula has been found among any of the suspects.  Nor have any of the ingredients that go into making the ‘liquid bomb’ been uncovered.  Nor has any evidence been presented as to where the liquid was supposed to come from (the source) or whether it was purchased locally or overseas.

When the liquid bomb story was ridiculed into obscurity, British Deputy Assistant Commissioner, Peter Clark claimed that, “bomb making equipment including chemicals and electric components had been found” (BBC News 8/21/2006).

Once again there is no mention of what “electronic components” and “chemicals” were found, in whose home or office and if they might be related to non-bomb making activities.  Were these so-called new bomb-making items owned by a specific person or group of persons, and if so were they known by the parties implicated to be part of a bombing plot.   Moreover, when and why have the authorities switched from the liquid bombs to identifying old fashion electronic detonators?  Is there any evidence – documents or taped discussions that link these electronic detonators and chemicals with the specific plot to ‘blow up 9 US bound airliners?’

Instead of providing relevant facts clearing up basic questions of names, dates, weapons, and travel dates, Commissioner Clark gives the press a laundry list of items which could be found in millions of homes and the large number of buildings searched (69 so far).  If stair climbing earns promotions, Clark should be nominated for a Knightship.  According to Clark the police discovered more than 400 computers, 200 mobile telephones, 8,000 computer media items (items as catastrophic as memory sticks, CDs and DVDs); police removed 6,000 gigabytes of data from the seized computers (150 from each computer) and a few video recordings.  One presumes, in the absence of any qualitative data demonstrating that the suspects were in fact preparing bombs in order to destroy 9 US airliners, that Commissioner Clark is seeking public sympathy for his minion’s enormous capacity to lift and remove electronic equipment from one site to another in up to 69 buildings.  This is a notable achievement if we are talking about a moving company and not a high powered police investigation of an event of ‘catastrophic consequences’.

Some of the suspects were arrested because they have traveled to Pakistan at the beginning of the school year holidays.  British and US authorities forget to mention that tens of thousands of Pakistani ex-pats return to visit family at precisely that time of year.
The wise guys on Wall Street and The City of London never took the liquid bomb plot seriously:  At no point did the Market respond, nose-dive, crash or panic.  The announced plot to bomb airlines was ignored by all Big Players on the US and London stock markets.  In fact, petrol prices dropped slightly.  In contrast to 9/11 and the Madrid and London bombings (to which this plot is compared) the stock market ‘makers’ were not impressed by the governments’ claims of a ‘major catastrophe’.  George Bush or Tony Blair, who were informed and discussed the ‘liquid bomb plot’ several days beforehand, didn’t even skip a day of their vacations, in response to the catastrophic threat.
And each and every claim and piece of ‘evidence’ put forth by the police and the Blair and Bush security authorities runs a cropper. Some of the alleged suspects are released, and new equally paltry ‘evidence’ is breathlessly presented: two tape recordings of ‘martyr messages’ were found in the computer of one suspect, which, we are told, foretold a planned terrorist attack.   The Clark team claimed with great aplomb that they found one or a few martyr videotapes, without clarifying the fact that the videos were not made by the suspects but viewed by them.  Many people the world over pay homage to suicide martyrs to a great variety of political causes.  Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan visits a shrine dedicated to World War Two military dead – including Kamikaze suicide pilots, defying Chinese and Korean protests.  Millions of US citizens and politicians pay homage to the war heroes in Arlington cemetery each year, some of whom deliberately sacrificed their lives in order to defend their comrades, their flag and the justice of their cause.  It should be of no surprise that Asians, Muslims and others should collect videos of anti-Israeli or anti-occupation martyrs.  In none of the above cases where people honor martyrs is there any police attempt to link the reverent observer with future suicide bomb plots – except if they are Muslims.  Hero worship of fallen fighters is a normal everyday phenomenon – and is certainly no evidence that the idolaters are engaged in murderous activity.

A ‘martyr message’ is neither a plot, conspiracy or action – it is only an expression of free speech – one might add, ‘internal speech’ (between the speaker and his computer) which might at some future time become public speech.  Are we to make private dialogue a terrorist offense? 
As the legal time limit expires on the holding of suspects without charges, the British authorities released two suspects, charged eleven and eleven others continue to be held without charges, probably because there is no basis for proceeding further.  As the number of accused plotters thin out in England, Clark and company have deflected attention to a world-wide plot with links to Spain, Italy, the Middle East and elsewhere. Apparently the logic here is that a wider net compensates for the large holes.  In the case at hand, of the eleven who have been remanded to trial, only eight have been charged with conspiracy to prepare acts of terrorism; the other three are accused of ‘not disclosing information’ (or being informers…of what?) and ‘possessing articles useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism’ (BBC News  8/21/06).

Since no bombs have been found and no plans of action have been revealed, we are left with the vague charge of ‘conspiracy’, which can mean a hostile private discussion directed against US and British subjects by several like-thinking individuals.  The reason that it appears that ideas and not actions are in question is because the police have not turned up any weapons or specific measures to enter into the locus of attack (air tickets to board planes, passports and so on).  How can suspects be charged with failing to disclose information, when the police lack any concrete information pertaining to the alleged bomb plot.  The fact that the police are further diluting their charges against three more plotters is indicative of the flimsy basis of their original arrests and public claims.  To charge a 17 year-old boy with ‘possessing articles useful to a person preparing acts of terrorism’ is so open-ended as to be laughable: Did the article have other uses for the boy or for his family (like a box cutter).  Did he ‘possess’ written articles because they were informative or fascinating to a young person?”  Since he still possessed the article, he had not passed these articles to any person making bombs.  Did he know of any specific plans to make bombs or any bomb-makers?  The charges could implicate anyone possessing and reading a good spy novel or science fiction thriller in which bomb making is discussed.  The eleven have already pleaded innocent; the trial will begin in due time.  The government and mass media have already convicted the accused in the electronic and print media.  Panic has been sown.  Fear and hysterical anger is present in the long security lines at airports and train stations…Asian men quietly saying prayers are being pulled off of airplanes and planes diverted or airports evacuated.

The bomb plot hoax has caused enormous losses (in the hundreds of millions of dollars) to the airlines, business people, oil companies, duty free shops, tourist agencies, resorts and hotels, not to speak of the tremendous inconvenience and health related problems of millions of stranded and stressed travelers.  The restrictions on lap top computers, travel bags, accessories, special foods and liquid medicines have added to the ‘costs’ of traveling.

Clearly the decision to cook up the phony bomb plot was not motivated by economic interests, but domestic political reasons.  The Blair administration, already highly unpopular for supporting Bush’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was under attack for his unconditional support for Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, his refusal to call for an immediate ceasefire and his unstinting support for Bush’s servility to US Zionist lobbies.  Even within the Labor party over a hundred backbenchers were speaking out against his policies, while even junior cabinet ministers such as Prescott stated that Boss Bush’s foreign policy smelled of the barnyard.  Bush was not yet cornered by his colleagues in the same way as Blair, but unpopularity was threatening to lead his Republican party to congressional defeat and possible loss of a majority of seats.

According to top security officials in England, Bush and Blair were ‘knowledgeable’ about the investigation into a possible ‘liquid bomb’ plot.  We know that Blair gave the go-ahead for the arrests, even as the authorities must have told him they lacked the evidence and at best it was premature.  Some reports from British police insiders claim that the Bush Administration pushed Blair for early arrests and the announcement of the ‘liquid bomb’ plot.  Security officials then launched a massive, all-out ‘terror propaganda’ campaign designed to capture the attention and support of the public with the total support of the mass media.  The security-mass media campaign served its objective – Bush’s popularity increased, Blair avoided censure and both continued on their vacations.

The bomb plot political ploy fits the previous political pattern of sacrificing capitalist economic interests to serve domestic political and ideological positions.  Foreign policy failures lead to domestic political crimes, just as domestic policy crises lead to aggressive military expansion.

The criminal frame-up of young Muslim-South Asian British citizens by the British security officials was specifically designed to cover up for the failed Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and the Anglo-American backing for Israel’s destructive but failed invasion of Lebanon.  Blair’s ‘liquid bombers’ plot’ sacrificed a multiplicity of British capitalist interests in order to retain political offices and stave off an unceremonious early exit from power.  The costs of failed militarism are borne by citizens and businesses.

In an analogous fashion Bush and his Zioncon and other militarists exploited the events of 9/11 to pursue a militarist multi-war strategy in Southwest Asia and the Middle East.  With time and scientific research, the official version of the events of 9/11 have come under serious questioning – both regarding the collapse of one of the towers in New York, as well as the explosions in the Pentagon.  The events of 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq sacrificed major US economic interests:  Losses in New York, tourism, airline industry and massive physical destruction; losses in terms of a major increase in oil prices and instability, increasing the costs to US, European and Asian consumers and industries.

Likewise the Israeli military invasion of Gaza and Lebanon, backed by the US and Great Britain, were economically costly destroying property, investments and markets, while raising the level of mass anti-imperial opposition.

In other words, the politics of US, British and Israeli (and by extension World Zionist) militarism has been at the expense of strategic sectors of the civilian economy.  These losses to key economic sectors require the civilian-militarists to resort to domestic political crimes (phony bomb plots and frame-up trials) to distract the public from their costly and failed policies and to tighten political control.  On both counts, the civilian militarists and the Zioncons are losing ground.  The ‘liquid bomb’ plot is unraveling, Israel is in turmoil, the Zioncons are preaching to the converted, and the US is, as always, the United States: The Democratic civilian militarist are capitalizing on the failures of their incumbent colleagues.
© Copyright 2006 by AxisofLogic.com

AN ARTICLE ON THE NEW YORK TIMES WAS CENSORED FOR BRITISH NEWSPAPERS

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

Location:London, United Kingdom
http://nafeez.blogspot.com/

On 28th August 2006, the New York Times printed an investigative story on that month’s 10/8 “terror plot”, undermining the claims of US and British government officials, and suggesting that details had been exaggerated beyond all proportion for political reasons. The article was also published online.

But interested British readers quickly discovered that they had been denied access to the article. Instead they discovered the following web message:

“This Article Is Unavailable

On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain. This arises from the requirement in British law that prohibits publication of prejudicial information about the defendants prior to trial.”

Even printed copies of the newspaper destined for the UK were scrubbed. Apparently for strictly legal reasons.

My findings, like that of the NY Times article, do not prejudice any trial -- but they do prejudice the standards of political convenience adopted by British and American officials, whereby their repeated distortions, exaggerations and outright fabrications about the "terror plot" have been used to justify government attempts to push for suspension of sections of the Human Rights Act 1998, and to drastically increase draconian anti-terror powers.

For this reason, publication of the latest evidence undermining the government’s prejudicial claims serves not to create further prejudice, but to correct the lies and distortions that have already been widely disseminated and swallowed whole by an increasingly pathetic and subservient media, that remains unable to learn from the pattern of deceit long established in examples like the non-existent “Ricin Plot” (as former British Ambassador Craig Murray says, “there was no ricin; and there was no plot”). What the new evidence, indeed, demonstrates quite clearly, is that the British government, deliberately, consciously, pretended that there was an imminent threat from a plot which, it knew all too well, barely existed.I am posting the New York Times article in full, online, for the first time . And I would urge you all to re-post everywhere you can.

August 28, 2006 -- The New York Times

Details Emerge in British Terror Case


By DON VAN NATTA Jr., ELAINE SCIOLINO and STEPHEN GREYLONDON,
Aug. 27 TH 2006

— On Aug. 9, in a small second-floor apartment in East London, two young Muslim men recorded a video justifying what the police say was their suicide plot to blow up trans-Atlantic planes: revenge against the United States and its “accomplices,” Britain and the Jews.

“As you bomb, you will be bombed; as you kill, you will be killed,” said one of the men on a “martyrdom” videotape, whose contents were described by a senior British official and a person briefed about the case. The young man added that he hoped God would be “pleased with us and accepts our deed.”

As it happened, the police had been monitoring the apartment with hidden video and audio equipment. Not long after the tape was recorded that day, Scotland Yard decided to shut down what they suspected was a terrorist cell. That action set off a chain of events that raised the terror threat levels in Britain and the United States, barred passengers from taking liquids on airplanes and plunged air traffic into chaos around the world.

The ominous language of seven recovered martyrdom videotapes is among new details that emerged from interviews with high-ranking British, European and American officials last week, demonstrating that the suspects had made considerable progress toward planning a terrorist attack.

Those details include fresh evidence from Britain’s most wide-ranging terror investigation: receipts for cash transfers from abroad, a handwritten diary that appears to sketch out elements of a plot, and, on martyrdom tapes, several suspects’ statements of their motives.But at the same time, five senior British officials said, the suspects were not prepared to strike immediately.

Instead, the reactions of Britain and the United States in the wake of the arrests of 21 people on Aug. 10 were driven less by information about a specific, imminent attack than fear that other, unknown terrorists might strike.

The suspects had been working for months out of an apartment that investigators called the “bomb factory,” where the police watched as the suspects experimented with chemicals, according to British officials and others briefed on the evidence, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, citing British rules on confidentiality regarding criminal prosecutions.

In searches during raids, the police discovered what they said were the necessary components to make a highly volatile liquid explosive known as HMTD, jihadist materials, receipts of Western Union money transfers, seven martyrdom videos made by six suspects and the last will and testament of a would-be bomber, senior British officials said. One of the suspects said on his martyrdom video that the “war against Muslims” in Iraq and Afghanistan had motivated him to act.

Investigators say they believe that one of the leaders of the group, an unemployed man in his 20’s who was living in a modest apartment on government benefits, kept the key to the alleged “bomb factory” and helped others record martyrdom videos, the officials said.Hours after the police arrested the 21 suspects, police and government officials in both countries said they had intended to carry out the deadliest terrorist attack since Sept. 11.

Later that day, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in London, said the goal of the people suspected of plotting the attack was “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” On the day of the arrests, some officials estimated that as many as 10 planes were to be blown up, possibly over American cities. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, described the suspected plot as “getting really quite close to the execution stage.”

But British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two of the suspects did not have passports, but had applied for expedited approval. One official said the people suspected of leading the plot were still recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers.

While investigators found evidence on a computer memory stick indicating that one of the men had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to cities in the United States, the suspects had neither made reservations nor purchased plane tickets, a British official said. Some of their suspected bomb-making equipment was found five days after the arrests in a suitcase buried under leaves in the woods near High Wycombe, a town 30 miles northwest of London.

Another British official stressed that martyrdom videos were often made well in advance of an attack. In fact, two and a half weeks since the inquiry became public, British investigators have still not determined whether there was a target date for the attacks or how many planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes was speculative and exaggerated.

In his first public statement after the arrests, Peter Clarke, chief of counterterrorism for the Metropolitan Police, acknowledged that the police were still investigating the basics: “the number, destination and timing of the flights that might be attacked.”

A total of 25 people have been arrested in connection with the suspected plot. Twelve of them have been charged. Eight people were charged with conspiracy to commit murder and preparing acts of terrorism. Three people were charged with failing to disclose information that could help prevent a terrorist act, and a 17-year-old male suspect was charged with possession of articles that could be used to prepare a terrorist act. Eight people still in custody have not been charged. Five have been released. All the suspects arrested are British citizens ranging in age from 17 to 35.Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of one critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and detonating liquid explosives while airborne.

A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality, said HMTD, which can be prepared by combining hydrogen peroxide with other chemicals, “in theory is dangerous,” but whether the suspects “had the brights to pull it off remains to be seen.”While officials and experts familiar with the case say the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters, they add that questions about the immediacy and difficulty of the suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the public statements made at the time.“In retrospect,’’ said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, “there may have been too much hyperventilating going on.”

Some of the suspects came to the attention of Scotland Yard more than a year ago, shortly after four suicide bombers attacked three subway trains and a double-decker bus in London on July 7, 2005, a coordinated attack that killed 56 people and wounded more than 700. The investigation was dubbed “Operation Overt.’’

The Police Are Tipped Off
The police were apparently tipped off by informers. One former British counterterrorism official, who was working for the government at the time, said several people living in Walthamstow, a working-class neighborhood in East London, alerted the police in July 2005 about the intentions of a small group of angry young Muslim men.

Walthamstow is best known for its faded greyhound track and the borough of Waltham Forest, where more than 17,000 Pakistani immigrants live in the largest Pakistani enclave in London.

Armed with the tips, MI5, Britain’s domestic security services, began an around-the-clock surveillance operation of a dozen young men living in Walthamstow — bugging their apartments, tapping their phones, monitoring their bank transactions, eavesdropping on their Internet traffic and e-mail messages, even watching where they traveled, shopped and took their laundry, according to senior British officials.

The initial focus of the investigation was not about possible terrorism aboard planes, but an effort to see whether there were any links between the dozen men and the July 7 subway bombers, or terrorist cells in Pakistan, the officials said.

The authorities quickly learned the identity of the man believed to have been the leader of the cell, the unemployed man in his mid-20’s, who traveled at least twice within the past year to Pakistan, where his activities are still being investigated.

Last June, a 22-year-old Walthamstow resident, who is among the suspects arrested Aug. 10, paid $260,000 cash for a second-floor apartment in a house on Forest Road, according to official property records. The authorities noticed that six men were regularly visiting the second-floor apartment that came to be known as the “bomb factory,” according to a British official and the person briefed about the case.Two of the men, who were likely the bomb-makers, were conducting a series of experiments with chemicals, said the person briefed on the case.

MI5 agents secretly installed video and audio recording equipment inside the apartment, two seniorBritish officials said. In a secret search conducted before the Aug. 10 raids, agents had discovered that the inside of batteries had been scooped out, and that it appeared several suspects were doing chemical experiments with a sports drink named Lucozade and syringes, the person with knowledge of the case said. Investigators have said they believe that the suspects intended to bring explosive chemicals aboard planes inside sports drink bottles.

In that apartment, according to a British official, one of the leaders and a man in his late 20’s met at least twice to discuss the suspected plot, as MI5 agents secretly watched and listened. On Aug. 9, just hours before the police raids occurred in 50 locations from East London to Birmingham, the two men met again to discuss the suspected plot and record a martyrdom video.As one of the men read from a script before a videocamera, he recited a quotation from the Koran and ticked off his reasons for the “action that I am going to undertake,” according to the person briefed on the case. The man said he was seeking revenge for the foreign policy of the United States, and “their accomplices, the U.K. and the Jews.” The man said he wanted to show that the enemies of Islam would never win this “war.”

Beseeching other Muslims to join jihad, he justified the killing of innocent civilians in America and other Western countries because they supported the war against Muslims through their tax dollars. They were too busy enjoying their Western lifestyles to protest the policies, he added. Though British officials usually release little information about continuing investigations, Scotland Yard took the unusual step of disclosing some detailed information about the investigation last Monday, when the suspects were charged.

A Trove of Evidence

“There have been 69 searches,” Mr. Clarke, the chief antiterrorist police official from Scotland Yard, said Monday. “These have been in houses, flats and business premises, vehicles and open spaces.”Investigators also seized more than 400 computers, 200 mobile phones and 8,000 items like memory sticks, CD’s and DVD’s. “The scale is immense,” Mr. Clarke said. “Inquiries will span the globe.”

He said those searches revealed a trove of evidence, and officials and others last week provided additional details.

Four of the law firms that are defending suspects declined to comment.When police officers knocked down the door to the second-floor apartment on Forest Road, they found a plastic bin filled with liquid, batteries, nearly a dozen empty drink bottles, rubber gloves, digital scales and a disposable camera that was leaking liquid, the person with knowledge of the case said. The camera might have been a prototype for a device to smuggle chemicals on the plane.

In the pocket of one of the suspects, the police found the computer memory stick that showed he had looked up airline schedules for flights from London to the United States, a British official said. The man is said to have had a diary that included a list that the police interpreted as a step-by-step plan for an attack. The items included batteries and Lucozade bottles. It also included a reminder to select a date.

In the homes of a number of the suspects, the police found jihadist literature and DVD’s about “genocide” in Iraq and Palestine, according to British officials. In one house searched by the police in Walthamstow, the authorities found a copy of a book called “Defense of the Muslim Lands.”A “last will and testament” for one of the accused was said to have been found at his brother’s home. Dated Sept. 24, 2005, the will concludes, “What should I worry when I die a Muslim, in the manner in which I am to die, I go to my death for the sake of my maker.” God, he added, can if he wants “bless limbs torn away!!!”

Looking for Global Ties

In addition, the British authorities are scouring the evidence for clues to whether there is a global dimension to the suspected plot, particularly the extent to which it was planned, financed or supported in Pakistan, and whether there is a connection to remnants of Al Qaeda.

They are still trying to determine who provided the cash for the apartment and the computer equipment and telephones, officials said.

Several of the suspects had traveled to Pakistan within weeks of the arrests, according to an American counterterrorism official.

At a minimum, investigators say at least one of the suspects’ inspiration was drawn from Al Qaeda. One of the suspects’ “kill-as-they-kill” martyrdom video was taken from a November 2002 fatwa by Osama bin Laden. British officials said many of the questions about the suspected plot remained unanswered because they were forced to make the arrests before Scotland Yard was ready.The trigger was the arrest in Pakistan of Rashid Rauf, a 25-year-old British citizen with dual Pakistani citizenship, whom Pakistani investigators have described as a “key figure” in the plot.

In 2000, Mr. Rauf’s father founded Crescent Relief London, a charity that sent money to victims of last October’s earthquake in Pakistan. Several suspects met through their involvement in the charity, a friend of one of them said. Last week, Britain froze the charity’s bank accounts and opened an investigation into possible “terrorist abuse of charitable funds.” Leaders of the charity have denied the allegations.Several senior British officials said the Pakistanis arrested Rashid Rauf without informing them first. The arrest surprised and frustrated investigators here who had wanted to monitor the suspects longer, primarily to gather more evidence and to determine whether they had identified all the people involved in the suspected plot.

But within hours of Mr. Rauf’s arrest on Aug. 9 in Pakistan, British officials heard from intelligence sources that someone connected to him had tried to contact some of the suspects in East London. The message was interpreted by investigators as a possible signal to move forward with the plot, officials said.“The plotters received a very short message to ‘Go now,’ ” said Franco Frattini, the European Union security commissioner, who was briefed by the British home secretary, John Reid, in London. “I was convinced by British authorities that this message exists.”

A senior British official said the message from Pakistan was not that explicit. But, nonetheless, investigators here had to change their strategy quickly.

“The aim was to keep this operation going for much longer,” said a senior British security official who requested anonymity because of confidentiality rules. “It ended much sooner than we had hoped.” From then on, the British government was driven by worst-case scenarios based on a minimum-risk strategy.

British investigators worried that word of Mr. Rauf’s arrest could push the London suspects to destroy evidence and to disperse, raising the possibility they would not be able to arrest them all. But investigators also could not rule out that there could be an unknown second cell that would try to carry out a similar plan, officials said.Mr. Clarke, as the country’s top antiterrorism police official in London with authority over police decisions, ordered the arrests.

But it was left to Mr. Reid, who has been home secretary since May and is a former defense secretary, to decide at emergency meetings of police, national security and transport leaders, what else needed to be done. Mr. Reid and Mr. Clarke declined repeated requests for interviews.Prime Minister Tony Blair was on vacation in Barbados, where he was said to have monitored events in London; Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott did not attend the meeting.

“While the arrests were unfolding, the Home Office raised Britain’s terror alert level to “critical,” as the police continued their raids of suspects’ homes and cars. All liquids were banned from carry-on bags, and some public officials in Britain and the United States said an attack appeared to be imminent. In addition to Mr. Stephenson’s remark that the attack would have been “mass murder on an unimaginable scale,” Mr. Reid said that attacks were “highly likely” and predicted that the loss of life would have been on an “unprecedented scale.”Two weeks later, senior officials here characterized the remarks as unfortunate. As more information was analyzed and the British government decided that the attack was not imminent, Mr. Reid sought to calm the country by backing off from his dire predictions, while defending the decision to raise the alert level to its highest level as a precaution.

In lowering the threat level from critical to severe on Aug. 14, Mr. Reid acknowledged: “Threat level assessments are intelligence-led. It is not a process where scientific precision is possible. They involve judgments.”

Reporting for this article was contributed by William J. Broad from New York, Carlotta Gall from Pakistan, David Johnston and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.

British Ministry Of Truth Wants To Prosecute American Bloggers
If our Government doesn't like your news you may be a criminal, Next things to be banned on planes may be newspapers

Steve Watson / Infowars | August 31 2006

The decision made by the New York Times to block British readers from seeing an article detailing the liquid terror plot suspects has raised vital questions regarding freedom of information in this country and within cyberspace.

The New York Times said on Tuesday it had blocked British Internet readers from seeing a story detailing elements of the investigation into a suspected plot to blow up airliners between Britain and the United States.

However, this raises the question, what action could be taken against anyone else in America who posts details of the information on their own blog or website?

Well it turns out that you could be prosecuted by the redcoat government.

"There has not been a prosecution for contempt over anybody publishing outside this jurisdiction (Britain), but logically there is no reason why there should not be," said Caroline Kean, partner at UK media law firm Wiggin.

This means that should Alex Jones or Jeff Rense, or anyone in the alternative media in America, post the New York Times story online for all to see then they could face criminal proceedings.

The official reason the story was banned is because it may influence jurors and prevent suspects receiving a "fair trial."

The story reportedly raised questions over the authenticity of the entire plot and suggested that an attempt to blow up the airliners was not as imminent as authorities had suggested.

Any juror in this case that would be influenced by such information would no doubt also be influenced by the furor that the government has made out the alleged plot and its own milking to death of it in an attempt to fear-monger the British public into total subservience and acquiescence.

Whilst many people in this country seem to be scared to death and accepting of whatever the authorities tell them is going to happen, many more seem to have finally woken up and are able to see straight through the mist of lies and spin, doubting that any plot ever existed in the first place.

A Guardian/ICM poll last week revealed that just 20% of British voters believe the government is telling the truth about the threat to bomb transatlantic airliners using liquid explosives - meaning 80% of the country do not trust Blair and the war on terror agenda.

This means that it's OK for the government to make public whatever information it sees fit and influence the trials of the suspects as well as shaping public opinion, but for anyone else to do so, either in the UK or in other countries, is a criminal offence.

British newspapers the Times and the Daily Mail also published details from the New York Times article. According to a Reuters report, a government source said no injunctions had been taken out against the British papers, but action could not be ruled out.

So what happens if you attempt to bring a copy of the New York Times in on a plane? Is that terrorism now? Should newspapers be banned on all flights as well as baby milk and i-pods?

This highlights how much of a threat our governments now see the internet as. The free flow of information between people around the world is breaking down and dissipating the lies and spin that they have come to rely on to plough ahead with their chosen foreign and domestic agendas.

This week it has also been revealed that Government spending on spin has almost quadrupled since Labour came to power nine years ago. The Government spent £154 million on advertising over the past 12 months – making it the third biggest advertising outlet in the country in front of almost every major global corporation that has a UK base.

It is telling that the government feels that only by keeping people entirely in the dark and suffocating them with their own brand of propaganda can they operate without hindrance. This blackout media, a tactic regularly used in Communist China, is transgressing borders now and targeting the individual citizen, regardless of the sovereign laws of their country. Is any of this indicative of a free society?