Distribution via the Unanswered Questions Wire
UQ Wire: Official - Liquid Explosive Claims "Fiction"
By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Originally Published - Raw Story & New Criminologist
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Introduction From Nafeez Ahmed's Blog
Ex-UK Intel Official says Liquid Explosive Claims "Fiction"
By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2006
This is the exclusive story that the entire British media establishment ignored. It's a story that almost every major
newspaper was offered, but didn't want to print. It's the story of how the British and American governments, for all
intents and purposes, invented a terror threat in August 2006, to trigger a climate of fear and paranoia convenient for
the legitimization of a political agenda of intensifying social control at home, and escalating military repression in
the Middle East. And in so doing, they diverted the attention of the police and intelligence services toward a phantom,
and away from a very real threat that remains intact, and that the government refuses to deal with.
But it's not just the British media's cowardice at fault. The media has been subject to a government D-Notice, one of
those "advisory" instructions suggesting politely to editors that they avoid any information that might, purportedly,
prejudice the trial of the alleged terrorists detained in August. This has fatally skewered all reporting on the terror
plot in favour of the government's line, a prejudicial situation that seems of little concern to the authorities.
That's why you won't be reading this story in the mainstream British or American press. But thankfully, we still have a
few courageous journalists and editors out there on the cutting edge of investigative reporting, who know an important
story when they see it. It's taken about a month to do the research, interviews, writing up, and finding a home, for
this exclusive report. I'm grateful that the report has been headlined in the United States by The Raw Story [ALSO ARCHIVED BELOW] , the highly respected investigative news site responsible for breaking dozens of major stories
before they were picked up by the mainstream, including the Valerie Plame case vis-a-vis Iran, Iraq pre-war
intelligence, and so on. Indeed, their reporting is "referenced by the New York Times, the Guardian, L.A. Weekly, the
New York Post, the Toronto Star, The Hill, Roll Call, The Advocate and Hustler" -- and they get about half a million
unique hits a day.
Here in the UK, the New Criminologist (Vol. 6, No. 2, Summer 2006) has published the piece, which is great, as this is one of the oldest professional
criminology journals published by and for experts in the field. However, the full article on their website is only
available to paid subscribers -- but Raw Story have the whole thing at theirs.
And finally, The Muslim News, a British monthly newspaper that has been praised by the likes of Prime Minister Tony Blair, ex-Home Secretary Jack Straw, among others, is printing an abridged version
of the story on 29th September 2006.
I can only request you, in this context, to do the following. Do a chain-mail job on this one: Forward the link to all
your friends; and ask them to forward it to all their friends, with the same request; and to keep it going until it gets
all over the world. Perhaps we might be able to get this story, which fundamentally undermines the government's claims,
to break into mainstream consciousness without mainstream support. Thanks for your help.
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Official Sources: August Terror Plot Is A 'Fiction' Underscoring Police Failures
British Army expert casts doubt on 'liquid explosives' threat, Al Qaeda network in UK Identified
Nafeez Ahmed
Published: Monday September 18, 2006
Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer, has suggested that the police
and government story about the "terror plot" revealed on 10th August was part of a "pattern of lies and deceit."
British and American government officials have described the operation which resulting in the arrest of 24 mostly
British Muslim suspects, as a resounding success. Thirteen of the suspects have been charged, and two released without
charges.
According to security sources, the terror suspects were planning to board up to ten civilian airliners and detonate
highly volatile liquid explosives on the planes in a spectacular terrorist operation. The liquid explosives -- either
TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide), DADP (diacetone diperoxide) or the less sensitive HMTD (hexamethylene triperoxide
diamine) -- were reportedly to be made on board the planes by mixing sports drinks with a peroxide-based household gel
and then be detonated using an MP3 player or mobile phone.
But Lt. Col. Wylde, who was awarded the Queen's Gallantry Medal for his command of the Belfast Explosive Ordnance
Disposal Unit in 1974, described this scenario as a "fiction." Creating liquid explosives is a "highly dangerous and
sophisticated task," he states, one that requires not only significant chemical expertise but also appropriate
equipment.
Terror plot scenario "untenable"
"The idea that these people could sit in the plane toilet and simply mix together these normal household fluids to
create a high explosive capable of blowing up the entire aircraft is untenable," said Lt. Col. Wylde, who was trained as
an ammunition technical officer responsible for terrorist bomb disposal at the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Sandhurst.
After working as a bomb defuser in Northern Ireland, Lt. Col. Wylde became a senior officer in British Army Intelligence
in 1977. During the Cold War, he collected intelligence as part of an undercover East German "liaison unit," then went
on to work in the Ministry of Defense to review its communications systems.
"So who came up with the idea that a bomb could be made on board? Not Al Qaeda for sure. It would not work. Bin Laden is
interested in success not deterrence by failure," Wylde stated.
"This story has been blown out of all proportion. The liquids would need to be carefully distilled at freezing
temperatures to extract the required chemicals, which are very difficult to obtain in the purities needed."
Once the fluids have been extracted, the process of mixing them produces significant amounts of heat and vile fumes.
"The resulting liquid then needs some hours at room temperature for the white crystals that are the explosive to
develop." The whole process, which can take between 12 and 36 hours, is "very dangerous, even in a lab, and can lead to
premature detonation," said Lt. Col. Wylde.
If there was a conspiracy, he added, "it did not involve manufacturing the explosives in the loo," as this simply "could
not have worked." The process would be quickly and easily detected. The fumes of the chemicals in the toilet "would be
smelt by anybody in the area." They would also inevitably "cause the alarms in the toilet and in the air change system
in the aircraft to be triggered. The pilot has the ability to dump all the air from an aircraft as a fire-fighting
measure, leaving people to use oxygen masks. All this means the planned attack would be detected long before the queues
outside the loo had grown to enormous lengths."
Government silent on detonators
Even if it was possible for the explosive to have been made on the aircraft, a detonator, probably made from TATP, would
be needed to set it off. "It is very dangerous and risky to the individual," Wylde said. "As the quantity involved would
be small this would injure the would-be suicide bomber but not endanger the aircraft, thus defeating the object of
bringing down an aircraft."
Despite the implausibility of this scenario, it has been used to justify wide-ranging new security measures that
threaten to permanently curtail civil liberties and to suspend sections of the United Kingdom's Human Rights Act of
1998. "Why were the public delicately informed of an alleged conspiracy which the authorities knew, or should have
known, could not have worked?" asked Lt. Col. Wylde.
"This is not a new problem," he added, noting that 'shoe-bomber' Richard Reid had attempted to use this type of
explosive on a plane in December 2001. "If this threat is real, what has been done to develop explosive test kits
capable of detecting peroxide based explosives?" asked Wylde. "These are the real issues about protecting the public
that have not been publicised. Instead we are going to get demands for more internment without trial."
Lt. Col. Wylde also raised questions about the criminal investigation into the 7th July terrorist attacks in London last
year. He noted that police and government sources have maintained "total silence" about the detonation devices used in
the bombs on the London Underground and the bus at Tavistock Square. "Whatever the nature of the primary explosive
materials, even if it was home-made TATP, the detonator that must be used to trigger an explosion is an extremely
dangerous device to make, requiring a high level of expertise that cannot be simply self-taught or picked-up over the
internet," Wylde stated.
The government's silence on the detonation device used in the attacks is "disturbing," he said, as the creation of the
devices requires the involvement of trained explosives experts. Wylde speculated that such individuals would have to be
present either inside the country or outside, perhaps in Eastern Europe, where they would be active participants in an
international supply-chain to UK operatives. "In either case, we are talking about something far more dangerous than
home-grown radicals here."
Spy slams police inaction against terrorists
Wylde's concerns are echoed by others familiar with British terrorism-related intelligence operations, such as Glen
Jenvey, who is profiled in the bestselling book, The Terror Tracker, by terrorism investigator Neil Doyle. Jenvey worked
for several military attaches monitoring terrorist groups in London and obtained crucial video and surveillance evidence
used by British police to arrest radical cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was convicted last February.
"I've been closely monitoring the internet communications of extremist Muslim groups inside the UK both before and after
7/7, and they are intimately interconnected," said Jenvey, who is affiliated with the London-based terror watch group
VIGIL. "We've identified a coordinated leadership of at least 20 and up to 60 people, extremist preachers with blatant
international al-Qaeda terrorist connections."
Jenvey noted that even though they are known to the authorities and are monitored while breaking the law with impunity,
particularly in their private sermons, the police have failed to take appropriate action against them. "The police don't
need to round up and detain thousands of British Muslims. If they only arrested, charged and prosecuted these 20 key
terrorist leaders, they will have a struck a fatal blow against the epicentres of al-Qaeda extremism in the UK. But
they're sitting on this."
Jenvey points to Omar Bakri Mohammed, a colleague of convicted terrorist Abu Hamza who headed the now-banned Islamist
group al-Muhajiroun in the United Kingdom. Despite being exiled to Lebanon, Omar Bakri continues to communicate with
UK-based extremist groups which are believed to be successors of al-Muhajiroun operating under new names, including the
Saved Sect and al-Ghurabaa. British security sources have confirmed that the 7/7 bombers were associates of Omar Bakri's
network, and Bakri himself publicly boasted a year before the London bombings that an al-Qaeda cell in London was
planning a terrorist strike.
An investigation by the counterterrorism unit in the New York Police Department found that Bakri's al-Muhajiroun had
formed 81 front groups and support networks in six countries, most of them based in London, the home counties bordering
London, the Midlands, Lancashire and West Yorkshire. By the time Home Secretary Dr. John Reid moved in July to proscribe
the latest incarnation of al-Muhajiroun, al-Ghurabaa, this sprawling interconnected network was fully functioning and
continues to operate namelessly, despite proscription. Bakri's network has recently adopted the name "Al Sabiqoon
Al-Awwaloon".
Jenvey complains that, despite the arrest in early September of radical cleric Abu Abdullah, convicted terrorist Abu
Hamza's successor at the Finsbury Park Mosque, a "hardcore group of 20 or more extremists operating around Omar Bakri"
remains at large. "The police have every reason to act, and they know who these people are. Their failure to do so has
only exacerbated unjustified demonization of Muslims. These extremists are not Muslims in any meaningful sense, they are
simply terrorists obsessed with violence."
MI5, MI6 recruiting extremists?
Even the arrest of Abu Abdullah only occurred after his support for terrorism was widely reported in the British and
American media in late August. On 23rd August, he justified the killing of Westerners and told CNN correspondent Dan
Rivers that Tony Blair is a "legitimate target" of jihad. The Sunday Times remarked that he "is apparently being allowed
to operate unchecked by the authorities five months after a law was passed making it a criminal offence to glorify
terrorism."
Torture may have been used to extract evidence for the weekend police raids which resulted in the arrest of 14 British
Muslims, including Abdullah. Sources confirm that information came from detainees at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo, where
interrogation techniques classified as torture under international law are routinely used.
The reluctance to take decisive action against the leadership of the extremist network in the UK has a long history.
According to John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor, Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza, as well as the suspected
mastermind of the London bombings Haroon Aswat, were all recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to draft up British Muslims
to fight in Kosovo. American and French security sources corroborate the revelation. The MI6 connection raises questions
about Bakri's relationship with British authorities today. Exiled to Lebanon and outside British jurisdiction, he is
effectively immune to prosecution.
Other London-based radical clerics with terrorist connections also had a relationship to the security services. Abu
Qatada, described as al-Qaeda's European ambassador, was, according to French sources a long-time MI5 informant.
Pakistani government insiders similarly believe that Ahmed Omar Sheikh Saeed, the British al-Qaeda finance chief from
Forest Gate, not only worked with the ISI, Pakistani's military intelligence service, but was also recruited by the CIA
as an informant. Saeed, who reportedly wired several hundred thousand dollars to alleged chief 9/11 hijacker Mohamed
Atta, is currently in Pakistani custody for the murder of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl.
Omar Bakri regularly uses the internet to communicate from Lebanon with his followers in Britain. On Sunday evening, 3rd
September, Omar Bakri told participants in an online chat forum that he had been pulled in by the Lebanese authorities
at the request of the US and British governments and questioned in relation to the "terror plot". Although he denied
involvement in the plot, he claimed that some of the 24 British Muslim suspects were known to him. When asked to confirm
or deny whether Bakri had indeed been arrested at the request of the British, the Foreign Office had no comment. Bakri
said that he was regularly questioned by Lebanese officials on behalf of the British government.
The official reluctance to act against Bakri and his active associates in the UK does not match the government's
willingness to act pre-emptively to foil a plot of doubtful reality. Official reluctance to acknowledge the significance
of the detonators used in the 7/7 terrorist operation suggests that the threat is far more sophisticated than
authorities have admitted, and that emphasis on home-grown amateurs is mistaken. Lt. Col. Wylde's observations would
seem to indicate that the terror-threat narrative is being manipulated for reasons of political expediency.
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Acknowledgements: Thanks to Graham Ennis, Nigel Wylde and Glen Jenvey for their research assistance and contribution to
this story. They bear no responsibility for any errors therein. An abridged version of this story will be printed in The
Muslim News, UK on 29th September 2006.
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, £9:99) and The War on
Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of Terrorism (Arris, £12:99). He testified in the US Congress about his
research on international terrorism in July 2005. He teaches International Relations at the University of Sussex,
Brighton.
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