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GeopoliticalMonitor.com
June 11, 2008
1. Executive Summary
2. The Warnings
3. The Bombings
4. The “Terrorists”
5. The “Mock Exercises”
6. Concluding Remarks
7. Endnotes
1. Executive Summary
On July 7, 2005, the date commonly known as 7/7, three tube trains in the London underground and one double-decker bus experienced
near-simultaneous explosions. The official line was that the four suicide bombers boarded each of the trains and bus with a mission to bring an “Islamic jihad” to Britain. However, there is much to this story that falters under careful analysis, and the motive, means and reaction point to British intelligence involvement.
2. The Warnings
Warnings from British Intelligence
A month to the day before the London bombings, MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence services issued a bulletin stating that the threat from international terrorism was lower than at anytime since 9/11.[1] MI5 was also closely watching two of the apparent bombers 18 months before the attacks, and yet failed to intercept them or act on their intelligence.[2] Those two suspects were considered by MI5 to not be a threat.[3]
There were many warnings before the attacks took place. Scotland Yard had warned the Israeli Embassy in London of an impending attack in the city, which occurred minutes after the warning. The Israeli Embassy then contacted former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in London at the time, and told him to remain in his hotel the morning of July 7, when he was scheduled to participate in a conference next to the Liverpool Tube Station, where the first bomb went off.[4]
Warnings from Foreign Governments
A French Intelligence report issued in late June of 2005 warned of a likely terror attack in the UK, although French intelligence declined to comment on whether they passed that information to British authorities.[5] In May of 2005, US intelligence officials warned of another “Madrid train bombing” in a European city, specifically mentioning the London Underground.[6] In December of 2004, Saudi intelligence warned Britain of an attack on the London Underground within 6 months, and that it would involve four people. This warning was passed to British authorities, as well as the FBI and CIA. A few weeks before the attacks, Saudi intelligence warned of an “imminent attack” on London.[7] A March 2005 warning from Spanish intelligence stated that Britain is a target for an imminent attack.[8]
Cardiff, the largest city in Wales, received a bomb scare on July 3, 2005, and on July 5, there was a bomb scare in Scotland, just as the G-8 summit was being held there.[9]
3. The Bombings
The three tube explosions occurred simultaneously at 8:50 am on the morning of July 7. A surviving witness to the explosion on the Aldgate East Station tube explosion, in describing the hole on the floor of the train where the bomb went off, stated that, “The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag.”[10]
Daniel Obachike, a witness to the fourth explosion that day on the double-decker bus, stated of the experience, “I was aboard the lower deck of the bus that was blown up on July 7th. I rang the emergency hotline to report the 2 dark cars I saw holding the bus up and diverting it towards Tavistock Square. Instead of being asked to provide a statement what followed was 7 months of police surveillance and harassment.” He further described having seen a black Mercedes and black BMW, “squeal to a halt in front of the bus, halting its progress along Euston Road.” After four minutes, “a police motorcyclist arrived at the blockage. The BMW driver said something to the cyclist who soon sped off. 90 seconds later the BMW suddenly drives off. The Mercedes waits till the bus diverts east into Upper Woburn Place towards Tavistock Square before it speeds away.”[11]
One witness on the bus stated of the suspected bomber, “I noticed him as he looked nervous. He was continually diving into his bag, rummaging round and looking in it. I did not see his face because he was constantly looking down.” Seconds later, the bus exploded.[12]
4. The “Terrorists”
It is important when addressing the issue of terror to take a close look at those accused of committing the terrorist acts, and any affiliations they may have had. The most interesting of all the characters in this story is Haroon Rashid Aswat, the alleged “mastermind” of the London Bombings, who was not actually involved in physically carrying them out.
Aswat arrived in the UK two weeks before the bombings, was wanted for questioning by US authorities, and in the days leading up to the bombings, several calls were made from Aswat’s cell phone to the alleged bombers.[13] Aswat reportedly even spoke to the “suicide team” hours before the four separate explosions. Aswat also visited the four homes of the bombers and selected the targets in London.[14]
In the weeks leading up to the attacks, US authorities wanted to use the CIA “rendition” program to kidnap Aswat for questioning, however, British officials were reluctant to approve the plan, apparently because Aswat was a British citizen, and as one British official stated, “you can't render somebody with U.K. papers.”[15] However, Britain has been involved in the rendition or torture of 17 of its own citizens or residents.[16] So, clearly the Brits took no issues with aiding in the rendering or torturing of its own citizens, so why did they take issue with Aswat?
Aswat left London on the day of the bombings, mere hours after the bombings. He went to Pakistan, where he was reportedly arrested by the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) on July 20, 2005. However, that turned out not to be Aswat, and shortly after, he was reportedly arrested in Zambia.[17]
Aswat was wanted by US officials for his believed involvement in trying to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon in 1999. He came to the attention of US counterterrorism officials in 2002, but it was reported that he had been killed in Afghanistan fighting US forces.[18]
Aswat the Asset
Former US federal prosecutor, John Loftus, stated in an appearance on Fox News, that British intelligence had recruited British Muslims to fight in Bosnia against the Serbs. Loftus claimed that Aswat was arrested in Pakistan, as was reported, but instead of it being a case of mistaken identity, he was then released.[19] Loftus stated that Aswat is a double agent for MI6 and further, that when US officials wanted to prosecute Aswat back in 1999, “the headquarters of the US Justice Department ordered the Seattle prosecutors not to touch Aswat,” because he was working for British intelligence. As Loftus further pointed out, Aswat, while being on a watch list and wanted by the US, was able to land in London and even fly out of London without any problems, and that, “The only reason he could get away with that was if he was working for British intelligence.”[20]
5. The “Mock Exercises”
Peter Power’s “Exercise”
Another interesting dynamic of the London bombings was the occurrence of terror drills being undertaken at the same time as the attacks. If that alone was not seemingly coincidental, the drills envisioned exactly what happened on that day, as it was happening.
According to a BBC interview on the day of the attacks with Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which is a private firm that was under contract with the London Metropolitan Police, “At half past nine this morning we [Visor Consultants] 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.” The BBC interviewer then interjected, “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?” to which Power responded, “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.”[21]
Power earlier in the day told another news outlet about the exercise Visor Consultants was running for a still-unnamed company, of which he stated, “We based our scenario on the simultaneous attacks on an underground and mainline station. So we had to suddenly switch an exercise from 'fictional' to 'real'.” He later told another news outlet that the exercise “was based on bombs going off, to the time, [and] the locations” of the actual explosions.[22]
Terror Drills in a “War on Terror” Context
Why are drills of events important to understand, besides the obvious coincidence of them coinciding with the real events? When many individuals in government or the private sector are taking part in a drill, mock exercise, or war game, and the real events play out, it creates a delayed response. Normal procedure is often not followed, because many taking part in, or simply observing or being aware of the drill, are not aware that the events are taking place in the “real world”.
This is also what occurred on 9/11. The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is a highly secretive US intelligence agency with a bigger budget than the CIA, from which it draws most of its personnel. Former CIA officer John Fulton, who was chief of the NRO’s strategic gaming division on 9/11, were “running a pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be created if a plane were to strike a building.”[23] Further, NORAD, responsible for protecting the skies above North America on 9/11, had for two years prior to 9/11, conducted exercises simulating commercial planes being hijacked and flown into targets in the US. Among the imagined targets was the World Trade Center and Pentagon.[24] In August of 2001, the Pentagon held an exercise imagining a plane hitting the building, on August 31, the Transportation Department held an exercise of a plane hijacking, and an emergency drill was scheduled to take place on the 97th floor of the World Trade Center South Tower on the morning of 9/11, and New York’s Office of Emergency Management in World Trade Center Building 7, (the third building to fall that day), was preparing for an exercise on reacting to a bio-terrorism attack on downtown New York the following day.[25]
6. Concluding Remarks
Clearly, there is a great need to look more in-depth at the London 7/7 bombings, as there are many unanswered questions. If the British government did not have anything to hide, why was it reported as early as December of 2005, that there would be no public inquiry into the bombings?[26] Family members of those killed as well as survivors have even threatened to take legal action over the government’s refusal of a public inquiry.[27]
So what exactly do they have to hide?
7. Endnotes
[1] Jimmy Burns, MI5 downgrades terror threat to UK businesses. The Financial Times: June 7, 2005: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1215b096-d789-11d9-9f43-00000e2511c8.html
[2] Ian Cobain, et al., MI5 decided to stop watching two suicide bombers. The Guardian: May 1, 2007: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/may/01/terrorism.politics2
[3] Jason Bennetto, Revealed: MI5 ruled London bombers were not a threat. The Independent: December 17, 2005: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/revealed-mi5-ruled-london-bombers-were-not-a-threat-519798.html
[4] India Daily, Britain failed to protect London even after Israel warned Britain of coming Al-Queda terror – inefficiency or conspiracy? India Daily News Bureau: July 7, 2005: http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/3489.asp
[5] Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry. Duckworth Publishers, 2006: Pages 124-125
[6] Ibid., pages 126-127
[7] Ibid., pages 127-129
[8] Ibid., pages 130-131
[9] Ibid., pages 135-136
[10] CEN News, "I was in tube bomb carriage - and survived". Cambridge Evening News: July 11, 2005: http://www.veronicachapman.com/archive/83e33146-09af-4421-b2f4-1779a86926f9.lpf.htm
[11] Steve Watson, 7/7 Witness: Bus Was Diverted To Tavistock Sq. By Two Unmarked Cars. Infowars.net: December 11, 2006: http://infowars.net/articles/december2006/111206Daniel.htm
[12] Caroline Palmer and Steven Kennedy, Bus Riders: It Was Homicide Bomb. Fox News: July 8, 2005: http://libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=101177&Disp=23
[13] Times Online, Tangled web that still leaves worrying loose ends. The Sunday Times: July 31, 2005: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article549996.ece
[14] Zahid Hussain et al., Top al-Qaeda Briton called Tube bombers before attack. The Times: July 21, 2005: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article546327.ece
[15] William K. Rashbaum and Raymond Bonner, Suspect in London fatal blasts eluded arrest. International Herald Tribune: July 30, 2005: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/29/news/britain.php
[16] Richard Norton-Taylor, Stephen Grey and Vikram Dodd, MI5 tip-off to CIA led to men's rendition. The Guardian: March 28, 2006: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/mar/28/politics.guantanamo
[17] Liam McDougall, Brains behind terror plot may be Brit the security services thought. The Sunday Herald: July 31, 2005: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4156/is_20050731/ai_n14827406/print
[18] William K. Rashbaum and Raymond Bonner, Suspect in London fatal blasts eluded arrest. International Herald Tribune: July 30, 2005: http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/07/29/news/britain.php
[19] Michael Meacher, Britain now faces its own blowback. The Guardian: September 10, 2005: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/10/terrorism.politics
[20] Michel Chossudovsky, London 7/7 Terror Suspect Linked to British Intelligence? Global Research: August 1, 2005: http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=782
[21] Michel Chossudovsky, 7/7 Mock Terror Drill: What Relationship to the Real Time Terror Attacks? Global Research: August 8, 2005:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20050808&articleId=821
[22] J7, Visor Consultants' 'simultaneous bombs' rehearsal on 7 July 2005. The July 7 Truth Campaign: http://www.julyseventh.co.uk/july-7-terror-rehearsal.html#international
[23] John J. Lumpkin, Agency planned exercise on Sept. 11 built around a plane crashing into a building. AP: August 21, 2002:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/agency_planned_exercise_on_sept_11_built_around_a_plane_crashing_into_a_building.htm
[24] Steven Komarow and Tom Squitieri, NORAD had drills of jets as weapons. USA Today: April 18, 2004: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-04-18-norad_x.htm
[25] Cooperative Research, Complete 9/11 Timeline: Military Exercises Up to 9/11. Cooperative Research History Commons: http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_911_timeline&before_9/11=militaryExercises
[26] BBC, No inquiry into 7 July bombings. BBC News: December 14, 2005: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4526604.stm
[27] BBC, Call for public inquiry into 7/7. BBC News: August 15, 2007:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6948174.stm