CENSORED: The NY Times "Terror Plot" Expose They Don't Want You (Brits) to Read

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"In fact," continues the NY Times, "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."

Speculative and exaggerated is a rather polite term, some might say. "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.'" So what did they know about this alleged plot?

Not very much really. Here we get to the really "prejudicial" part. "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."

In my 21st August analysis, I had already raised fatal questions about the technical viability of the "terror plot" scenario. So did, apparently, "a chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality." Thus while officials and experts are cited as generally agreeing that "the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters", they also 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." So perhaps some of these people were extremists, possibly involved in criminal activity, possibly up to no good -- but the "terror plot" scenario remains fundamentally questionable.

As Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the New York Police Department told America's newspaper of record: "In retrospect, there may have been too much hyperventilating going on."

Hyperventilating is not quite the word I would use. "Bullshitting", appears to be a more fitting, if less polite, description.

Also consistent with what I wrote more than a week ago, the NY Times quoted British officials saying "many of the questions about the suspected plot remained unanswered because they were forced to make the arrests before Scotland Yard was ready." I had already noted that the Brits didn't want to move on the suspects due to the paucity of evidence. "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."

But Rauf had been tortured by Pakistani interrogators, according to the Pakistani Human Rights Commission. Which means the central source for the details about the plot are inadmissible by law. "Several senior British officials said the Pakistanis arrested Rashid Rauf without informing them first". What the Times doesn't mention is that the impetus for the Pakistanis to move came from the Americans. "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."

Our boys in the police and intelligence services, in other words, saw no reason to do anything. But the Americans did. And in doing so, they compromised an ongoing intelligence operation, just so they could manufacture a false "intelligence success". It seems, moreover, that our government didn't only lie to its people. It also lied to its friends. "The plotters received a very short message to 'Go now,' " Franco Frattini, the European Union's security commissioner, told the NY Times. He had been briefed by Dr. Reid. "I was convinced by British authorities that this message exists", he said.

The message, folks, didn't exist. "A senior British official said the message from Pakistan was not that explicit", reported the NY Times. In other words, it didn't say 'Go now'. It said something else, far more ambiguous. But that didn't stop Dr. Reid from telling everybody the opposite. Meanwhile, "Mr. Reid and Mr. Clarke declined repeated requests for interviews." What a surprise. Two weeks after they had chorused a story of an imminent strike creating death on an unprecedented scale even worse than 9/11, "senior officials here [in the US] characterized the remarks as unfortunate."

Most people, I fear, would characterise those remarks in more damning terms.

Has anyone, by the way, noted the frequency with which anonymous British officials have been sourced for this story? Are they all in contempt of court for showing that the government's claims were untrue, for attempting to correct the public record? I don't think so.

And that's why I post the entire story for you. Read at your peril....

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ANNEX

August 28, 2006 -- The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/world/europe/28plot.html

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