M15 'bugged July 7th bombers' leak

David Leppard, Sunday Times news reporter rang me up yesterday saying it was about a story in today's Sunday Times. After some initial confusion when I assumed he was a sub-editor fact-checking the pole-dancing piece that came out today ( I am prone to making an arse of myself like this), he told me that a leak had revealed that M15 had known about, but stopped watching two of the July 7th bombers because they' didn't have the resources'.And would I like to comment?

What David told me I found pretty staggering. We had a conversation which shocked and angered me and today this article appeared in today's Sunday Times ( front page was the poor whale that swam up the Thames on Friday then died)

'BRITAIN’S top spies knew that the ringleader of the London bombers was planning to fight for Al-Qaeda more than a year before the July 7 suicide attacks, security sources have revealed.
MI5 bugged Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, a second bomber, for two months as they talked about Khan’s desire to fight in what he saw as the Islamic holy war.

Agents also listened in as the men talked between themselves about Khan’s plans to return to Pakistan where he had attended a camp for British terrorists. They also spoke about engaging in crime to raise money for Islamic extremism.
However, police and MI5 officers ruled that the two men were not an “immediate risk” and did not present a “direct threat” to national security.
The detectives’ assessment was that the men were primarily involved in fraud rather than preparing to mount attacks in the near future. As a result, surveillance on them stopped, allowing the attacks that killed 52 people and injured 700 to go ahead'

It says a lot about how cynical I have become that my immediate suspicions were that M15 had leaked the document to get more funding. Then I wondered if the Government had leaked the document in order to make a nasty point about the Anti Terror Laws and to imply they shouldn't have been outvoted on the attempt to push through the liberties-trashing 90-Days-to-hold-suspects-without charge legislation. But no. It was a real leak ( from where? Which reminds me of an interesting previous story) and it means that Charles Clarke's claims that the bombers were 'clean skins' and the bombings 'came out of the blue' were crap. And the Security officials who said the men 'were not known' to them were talking crap too.

So could the Government have prevented Khan and his associates getting on our public transport and committing mass murder?

The article goes on to explain how Khan trained to make bombs in a terrorist training camp in Pakistan '... set up by Al-Qaeda soon after Tony Blair sent British troops into Iraq'.

Iraq. The 4 letter unmentionable word when you talk about July 7th 2005.

'MI5 has calculated that the entire plot cost less than £10,000 to carry out. It has also employed a team of in-house psychologists to analyse why the four men became terrorists.'

*Cough* I thought the Joint Intelligence Commitee gave us a steer on that in February 2003?

You know, when they explicitly told Mr Blair that that the invasion of Iraq would heighten the terrorist threat to Britain from al-Qaida? This caused Mr Blair to muse aloud at the time about the 'fear' of the 'possibility' of the 'nexus' 'between 'terrorism and WMD' in 'an event'. Such lawyerly weaseling. (See The Guardian reporting on September 11th 2005)

What an absolute balls-up: never mind WMD, never mind Saddam as a 'threat', the people of Iraq and the people of London and ordinary people everywhere are more at risk from terrorism since Iraq was invaded. What about the 'nexus' between 'terrorism and Governments starting illegal bloody wars and lying about why they are doing so and ignoring what they are warned the consequences might be?'

Oh, but, of course we can all trust in Mr Blair's 'judgement' to protect us all.

"This is where you've just got to make your judgment and it remains my judgment and I suppose time will tell whether it's true or it's not true'' said Mr Blair, when told about the heightened terrorism risk stemming from the decision concerning, and the reality of, the Iraq occupation.

For God's sake, now we know that not only was Blair was given a joint Home Office and Foreign office dossier explicity pointing out the terror threat at home in 2004, now we find out M15 were diligently listening to the conversations of the bombers for months! Judgement? I do not trust Mr Blair's judgement. I do not feel safe whilst he exercises it on my behalf and I do not trust him and this is what I say about his judgement.

It stinks. It stinks of innocent blood and explosions and preventable deaths, here and abroad.

Last month, of course, we all recall Blair refused to hold an independent or public enquiry into the London bombings, saying instead a ''narrative'' about the events would be published in the spring.

If I want to read a bloody narrative I'll nip into Waterstones. What I want is to understand is why July 7th happened. And that includes whether the Government took a knowing, calculated risk with so many lives and whether they did so knowing that this may be one of the prices of a war in Iraq.

The Government listened into the plotting of the 7th July cell, knew that the bombers were NOT 'unknown' as was originally claimed. The Government went into an illegal war to 'defeat terrorism' and because they said terrorism + WOMD = Your Worst Nightmare (TM) - yet knew there were no WMD and Iraq was 'no threat' .

Meanwhile by a hideous yet predictable irony , the terror risk of course increased. In Iraq, and at home, resulting in carnage, carnage and more carnage in Iraq, and finally in my city, on my train to work, last summer. And the wretches in power knew this, they knew the war was based on a lie and that being involved in Iraq increased the risks of terrorism, and they even listened in to Khan and his associates planning murder and mayhem.

Yet they still maintain this facile facade that there is no link between Iraq and 7th July. It beggars belief, it really does. Even the Financial Times, hardly a Galloway mouthpiece, makes the cost of this hubris, or naivete or breathtaking cynicism, or whatever the hell it is that causes this PM of mine to be so wilfully blind.

'The uncomfortable truth is that the ambitions and capabilities of the jihadis cannot be divorced entirely from the bloodshed in Iraq. The toppling of Saddam Hussein did not cause Islamist extremism but the present insurgency serves both as recruiting agent and training ground for al-Qaeda's war against the west.' ( (c) Financial Times)


I have said why we need an independent public enquiry before and the reasons have not gone away. And here is yet another compelling reason: today's leak and the realisation that the Government has been caught out yet again - the bombers, were known, not unknown, the attack did not 'come out of the blue', despite what the Home Secretary said last year.

On July 10th last year, before the identitity of the bombers was known, the Sunday Times was already reporting how young British men were being recruited into terror and hate. How much have the actions of my Government created the conditions and fanned the flames of the murderous terror they claimed they went to war to avoid?

I have had enough of these lies and evasions.

You can sign the petition for an independent public enquiry into the events of July 7th by clicking here .