MI5 told MPs on eve of 7/7 'no imminent terror threat'

[Mark Gobell]

MI5 told MPs on eve of 7/7: no imminent terror threat

Ian Cobain, David Hencke and Richard Norton-Taylor
Tuesday January 9, 2007
The Guardian

The director-general of the security service MI5 told senior MPs there was no imminent terrorist threat to London or the rest of the country less than 24 hours before the July 7 suicide bombings.

Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller gave the assurance at a private meeting of Labour whips at the Commons on the morning of July 6 2005, the Guardian has learned from a number of those present.

The whips are said to have been confident, on leaving the meeting, that they could brief fellow MPs that the security situation was under control, and are said to have been deeply alarmed by the following day's events.

Last month Dame Eliza announced that she is to retire in April. That announcement came weeks before details are expected to be made public of an MI5 operation which saw two of the July 7 bombers kept under surveillance, but not arrested.

It is now known that officers had trailed the bombers' leader, Mohammed Siddique Khan, more than a year before the attacks, and had listened as he spoke of his plans for waging jihad. They had also photographed him, yet had not been able to identify him.

Security sources denied that Dame Eliza's decision to retire was in any way connected to the briefing given to the Labour whips, or to any aspect of MI5's performance before the July 7 bombings. They said she had made her plans clear in early 2005 to Charles Clarke, then home secretary, before the bombs went off.

This would suggest that just two and a half years into her tenure, she was able to give a leaving date more than two years in advance.

However, the disclosure that MI5 had been so completely taken by surprise on July 7 will fuel calls for a public or independent inquiry into the events leading up to the suicide bomb attacks that claimed 52 lives and injured hundreds.

Grahame Russell, whose son Philip, 29, died in the Tavistock Square bus bombing, said: "Unless we have a public inquiry where witnesses can be called and questioned, we will never get the truthful answers about what happened before, during and after July 7 2005."

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, repeated his demands for an independent rather than public inquiry, along the lines of the Franks committee, which examined the causes of the Falklands war.

"Reports like this, and the Metropolitan police commissioner saying hours before the bombings that London had a 'gold standard' of counterterrorism policing, can only reinforce the absolute need for an independent inquiry, along the lines of the Franks inquiry.

"It is absolutely necessary for the continued security of the British public that we know precisely if, when and how security failures have occurred, and for action to be taken to minimise the risk of it happening again."

The government argues that such an inquiry would be an expensive and time-consuming diversion for the police and the security service.

MI5 says it has identified 30 major terrorist plots in Britain and is targeting more than 1,600 individuals actively engaged in promoting attacks, here and abroad.

A dozen Labour whips were addressed by Dame Eliza about the terrorist threat to the UK the day before the bombings, at a meeting called by Hilary Armstrong, then the government chief whip. Such meetings have been held on an irregular basis since the attacks of September 11, although they are usually given by a senior MI5 officer rather than the director general.

Sources have told the Guardian that Dame Eliza told them that there was "no imminent threat to London or the country" from a terrorist attack.

They also say she appeared rather detached from the detail of security operations that must have been taking place at the time.

It was already known that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, a government body based at the headquarters of MI5, had reduced its assessment of the threat to Britain from level 2, or "severe-general" to level 3, or "substantial", six weeks before the July 7 bombings.

Whitehall is now trawling for candidates to replace Dame Eliza. The clear favourite is Jonathan Evans, her respected deputy, who has led MI5's al-Qaida-related counterterrorist operations.

As part of a decision to make the terrorist warning system more transparent, from today anyone who registers their email on MI5's website will be told when the threat level changes as well as about any other new information placed on the site.

The current assessment is at level 2, now known as "severe", meaning an attack is highly likely. The highest threat level is "critical", meaning that an attack is expected imminently.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/story/0,,1985972,00.html

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We are through the looking glass here people.

Our insecurity "profesionals" tell us there is no threat and then someone explodes bombs and murders us, yet they constantly tell us that there is a threat and no bombs go off anywhere.

What do we pay these people for ?

[rodin]

[andyb]

Can you actually believe this on the MI5 website. It would be funny if it weren't true!

[Bushwacker]

[numeral]