'Surveillance Society' - John Major - Former British Prime Minister Says War On Terror Measures Are 'Bogus'

John Major Warns Of 'Total Loss Of Privacy'
To Increasingly Scaremongering Authoritarian British State
Former British Prime Minister
Says War On Terror Measures Are 'Bogus'
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/ssmajor.htm
Ex-PM Denounces War On Terror Iraq 'Misinformation'
As MI6 Tries To Cover Its Jihadic Tracks
And Rumours Circulate Of Iran War 'October Surprise' To Sabotage Obama

"Such is the passion of Mr McCain's anti-Iran rhetoric that some informed observers in Washington believe a bombing campaign against Iran could be the 'October surprise' that Republican strategists are planning to swing the election in their favour if polling points to a Democrat victory. The idea would be to present the war hero McCain as the best man to lead America at a time of military danger. Mr Obama, if he was reluctant in his support of a pre-election bombing, could be presented as a muddle-headed peacenik. And what if he denounced military action? Mr Obama could then stand accused of insufficient patriotism or even outright treason. His campaign would then come crashing down to a McGovern-style landslide defeat. That is the nightmare scenario for what should be a dream election. But maybe my friends in America who speculate along these lines are taking their cynicism too far."
Anatole Kaletsky - World problems for the White House
London Times, 5 June 2008

"[James] Comey had been a loyal political foot soldier of the Republican Party for many years. Yet in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, he described how he had grown increasingly uneasy reviewing the Bush administration's various domestic surveillance and spying programs. Much of his testimony centered on an operation so clandestine he wasn't allowed to name it or even describe what it did. He did say, however, that he and Ashcroft had discussed the program in March 2004, trying to decide whether it was legal under federal statutes....While Comey, who left the Department of Justice in 2005, has steadfastly refused to comment further on the matter, a number of former government employees and intelligence sources with independent knowledge of domestic surveillance operations claim the program that caused the flap between Comey and the White House was related to a database of Americans who might be considered potential threats in the event of a national emergency.... In the wake of 9/11, domestic surveillance programs of all sorts expanded dramatically. As one well-placed source in the intelligence community puts it, 'The gloves seemed to come off.' What is not yet clear is what sort of still-undisclosed programs may have been authorized by the Bush White House."
The Last Roundup: Is the government compiling a secret list of citizens to detain under martial law?
Radar Magazine, May/June 2008

"Gordon Brown’s case for holding terrorism suspects without charge for 42 days is bogus and little more than scaremongering, according to Sir John Major. The former Conservative Prime Minister, writing in The Times today, said that Mr Brown’s security measures were more likely to encourage terrorist recruitment than defeat the extremist threat to Britain.... Mr Brown is facing his most serious parliamentary test when the vote takes place next Wednesday. It could be decided by the votes of the nine Democratic Unionists. Yesterday’s criticisms will dent ministers’ confidence that amendments to the Counter-Terrorism Bill had put them on track to win next week’s key vote. Sir John’s attack is one of his strongest criticisms of Labour since he left office after the general election defeat of 1997. He broadened his critique from the issue of 42 days to wage an all-out attack on Labour’s conduct of the War on Terror since 2001. Sir John said that ancient British rights were under threat from a government that embellished the case for going to war in Iraq, was complicit in the rendition of suspects to the American internment camp at Guantanamo Bay and presented the public with a misleading case for introducing compulsory ID cards....Sir John cautioned against the creation by Labour of 'an intrusive State with authoritarian tendencies'. He added: 'This is not a United Kingdom I recognise and Parliament should not accept it.'”
42-day law will help terrorists, says Sir John Major
London Times, 6 June 2008

'Quick, Quick, Extradite, Extradite!'
42 Days Grace To Negotiate Foreign Extradition Charges And Avoid MI6 Dirty Linen Surfacing In The British Courts
'Only For Use In Exceptionally Scandalous Circumstances'

"Gordon Brown's chances of avoiding a humiliating defeat in the Commons this week dwindled after he effectively ruled out any more significant changes to proposals to detain terror suspects for 42 days without charge.... Although Mr Brown has made several concessions to the rebels in recent weeks, he rejected giving further ground in a letter that he sent to all Labour MPs on Saturday. Dismissing calls to make the measure subject to judicial review, he said: 'I ... do not believe in this instance that this is the best way forward.'”
Gordon Brown set to lose on 42-day detention
London Times, 9 June 2008

"Next week, when Parliament votes on the proposal to detain terrorist suspects without charge for up to 42 days, hard choices have to be made. Britain has lived with terrorist threats for decades. But I am under no illusion that today's threats are different in their scale and nature from anything we have faced before.... our first principle is that there should always be a maximum limit on pre-charge detention.... Our second principle is that detention beyond 28 days can be allowed only in truly exceptional circumstances."
42-day detention; a fair solution
London Times, 2 June 2008

"Aswat's cell phone received as many as 20 calls from several of the [7/7] bombers, said intelligence and law enforcement officials, one of whom said the last call was made in London the night before the July 7 bombings.... One intelligence official, who like others would discuss the investigation only on condition of anonymity, said that the list of wanted suspects was growing and that the inquiry had become far more complex in recent days.... Aswat was an aide then to Abu Hamza Masri, a fiery Muslim preacher who was arrested in April 2004 and charged with a variety of terrorism-related offenses including involvement in the Oregon camp and a role in a deadly hostage-taking in Yemen. Aswat's name does not appear in the August 2002 federal indictment of James Ujaama, an American charged with planning to set up the camp, but law enforcement sources said he was one of the unindicted co-conspirators referred to in the document."
Authorities Probe Pakistani Linked To Plot in Oregon
Washington Post, 22 July 2005

"During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the US funded large numbers of jihadists through Pakistan's secret intelligence service, the ISI. Later the US wanted to raise another jihadi corps, again using proxies, to help Bosnian Muslims fight to weaken the Serb government's hold on Yugoslavia. Those they turned to included Pakistanis in Britain. According to a recent report by the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, a contingent was also sent by the Pakistani government, then led by Benazir Bhutto, at the request of the Clinton administration. This contingent was formed from the Harkat-ul- Ansar (HUA) terrorist group and trained by the ISI. The report estimates that about 200 Pakistani Muslims living in the UK went to Pakistan, trained in HUA camps and joined the HUA's contingent in Bosnia. Most significantly, this was 'with the full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence agencies'. As the 2002 Dutch government report on Bosnia makes clear, the US provided a green light to groups on the state department list of terrorist organisations, including the Lebanese-based Hizbullah, to operate in Bosnia - an episode that calls into question the credibility of the subsequent 'war on terror'. For nearly a decade the US helped Islamist insurgents linked to Chechnya, Iran and Saudi Arabia destabilise the former Yugoslavia. The insurgents were also allowed to move further east to Kosovo. By the end of the fighting in Bosnia there were tens of thousands of Islamist insurgents in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo; many then moved west to Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Less well known is evidence of the British government's relationship with a wider Islamist terrorist network. During an interview on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo. Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings. According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected by MI6. One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised by the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated Omar Saeed Sheikh..... This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit. Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought for questioning by the US about 9/11."
Michael Meacher, former UK Environment Minister
Britain now faces its own blowback
Guardian, 10 September 2005

"The London School of Economics, known for its far-Left radicalism in the 1960s, has been host to at least three al-Qa'eda-linked terrorists, The Telegraph has been told. The three - including one man called Ahmed Omar Sheikh - have been revealed as having links with the LSE in an intelligence file seen by this newspaper and now being studied by police.... Omar Sheikh... has... been named as one of the key financiers of Mohammed Atta, the pilot of one of the jets that hit the World Trade Centre on September 11."
Al-Qa'eda terror trio linked to London School of 'Extremists'
Daily Telegraph, 27 Jan 2002

"Omar Sheikh is a British national born to Pakistani parents in London on December 23, 1973. His early education was in the United Kingdom, although he also spent four years at Lahore’s prestigious Aitchison College. He then went to the London School of Economics (LSE) but dropped out before graduation. It is believed in some quarters that while Omar Sheikh was at the LSE he was recruited by the British intelligence agency MI6. It is said that MI6 persuaded him to take an active part in demonstrations against Serbian aggression in Bosnia and even sent him to Kosovo to join the jihad. At some point he probably became a rogue or double agent."
President Purvez Musharraf of Pakistan
How we found Pearl buried in ten pieces
London Times, 26 September 2006

"According to the official Whitehall-authored narrative, the four bombs, three on trains, the last on a bus, were the work of a self-radicalised cell working alone on a budget of �8,000. The bombs were home-made. There was no evidence of a mastermind nor of a network, other than a loose, social nebula of radical Islamists.... Reassuring these reports may be, but they are wrong, according to the respected terror analyst Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed, a tutor in international relations and politics at the University of Sussex. His new book, The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry, pulls apart the official narrative of 7/7, pointing out its gaps and contradictions..... Evidence of al-Qa'ida involvement is suppressed, he says, to deflect awkward questions about how a large terror network flourished unchecked in Britain for 10 years.... there is the curious official reticence over proven links between the bombers' ringleader, Mohammed Siddique Khan, and other terrorists, including senior al-Qa'ida lieutenants abroad.... The official narrative baldly states: 'The extent to which others may have been involved in indoctrinating the group, have known what they were planning, or been involved in the planning, is unknown at this stage.' The ISC report goes a little further, admitting that Khan and Tanweer probably received 'some form of operational training' in Pakistan in the months before the attacks. But Mr Ahmed is amazed that this ignores the telephone traffic between Khan and, among others, Haroon Rashid Aswat, an al-Qa'ida lieutenant previously based in Pakistan, believed by US investigators to be the mastermind of 7/7. Mr Ahmed's controversial inference is that MI5 is now trying to cover up a tacit understanding with terror groups that operated until 9/11. They were allowed to operate as long as they did not bomb Britain or UK targets abroad. There was, in effect, a 'covenant of security', he says. Radicals such as Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza, who did so much to foment violent Islamism in Britain, were used by intelligence services..."
7/7 one year on: Why did it happen? The big questions still need answers
Independent On Sunday, 2 July 2006

"[Aswat] is from the area around Leeds, close to where three of the other suspected bombers came from.....What makes him of particular interest is he does seem to have very strong ties with al Qaeda...... Aswat [is] also linked with the radical cleric in London, Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Mazri. Al-Mazri is in a British jail at this time. Aswat believed to be his right hand man. Sheikh Hamza al-Mazri believed to have been involved in sending young Muslim men to al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and Yemen.....There was wide speculation in the days after the bombing that somebody high on a watch list, somebody that U.S. officials had told British officials was high on their watch lists, arrived in Britain two weeks before the bombing and that for some reason he wasn't closely followed while in Britain. It is speculated, and it's not known. The police are very tight-lipped on what they know about this investigation. It is speculated that this could have been Aswat, but he left just before the bombing happened, indeed, the morning that the bombing happened. So it appears that he may well have come in the country, was on a watch list, then left without being followed during that time in Britain."
More Blasts Hit London; British, Australian Leaders Denounce Terror
CNN, 21 July 2006

"Aswat is believed to be the mastermind of all the bombings in London... This is the guy, and what's really embarrassing is that the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the British government, MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him.... He's a double agent.... What ties all these cells together was, back in the late 1990s, the leaders all worked for British intelligence in Kosovo. Believe it or not, British intelligence actually hired some Al-Qaeda guys to help defend the Muslim rights in Albania and in Kosovo. That's when Al-Muhajiroun got started.....The CIA was funding the operation to defend the Muslims, British intelligence was doing the hiring and recruiting. Now we have a lot of detail on this because Captain Hook [Abu Hamza], the head of Al-Muhajiroun, [his] sidekick was Bakri Mohammed, another cleric. And back on October 16, 2001, he gave a detailed interview with al-Sharq al-Aswat, an Arabic newspaper in London, describing the relationship between British intelligence and the operations in Kosovo and Al-Muhajiroun. So that's how we get all these guys connected. It started in Kosovo...."
Interview with former US Federal Prosecutor John Loftus
Fox TV, 29 July 2005

"British intelligence officials now think that in the days and hours before the July 7 bombings, Aswat was in cellphone contact with at least two of the four suicide bombers, according to The Times of London. Aswat was a highly public aide to Abu Hamza al Masri, the militant cleric whose North London mosque was a hotbed of radical Islamist preaching. In 1999, Aswat came to the attention of the FBI and federal prosecutors here as part of the investigation into the Bly camp and its founder, former Seattle entrepreneur James Ujaama....In May 2004, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft announced an 11-count indictment by a federal grand jury in New York against Abu Hamza, who allegedly sent Aswat to Oregon to scout out the proposed training camp. A department news release said 'the indictment alleges that Abu Hamza was a terrorist facilitator with global reach — from aiding hostage takers in Yemen, to attempting to set up a jihad training camp in Oregon.' At the time, however, federal prosecutors chose not to indict Aswat for reasons that are not clear. Asked why Aswat wasn't indicted, a federal official in Seattle replied, 'That's a great question.'"
Effort here to charge London suspect was blocked
Seattle Times, 24 July 2005

'We Are Dealing Here With Highly Dangerous ~~Terrorists~~ Intelligence Services'

"Both MI5 and MI6 intelligence agencies want the extension [from 28 days to 42 days for the pre-charge detention of suspected terrorists].... John Scarlett, head of MI6, and his opposite number at MI5, Jonathan Evans, have made no secret of their concern over Lord Goldsmith's decision to publicly oppose the 42-day extension. 'We are dealing here with highly dangerous terrorists who have been trained to withstand lengthy interrogations. We need every day to question them. Those extra 14 days could be invaluable and give us time to legally expand our investigations,' said a senior counter-intelligence officer."
Detention of jihad suspects at risk
WorldNetDaily, 7 June 2008

"Malcolm Muggeridge (former intelligence officer and journalist) maintained that 'intelligence agents, in my experience, are even bigger liars than journalists'."
Go to work on an ego: why spies need the last word
London Times, 1 December 2006

"Fred Burton, a Maryland police officer who was interested in the broader field of law enforcement, was one of those fresh recruits. For 10 years as a DSS officer, he debriefed released kidnap victims from Beirut (which is how he briefly intersected Oliver North's covert arms for hostages enterprise), investigated numerous airline downings and helped run to earth Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. When Burton left the DSS in 1995, he joined Stratfor, an intelligence consulting agency in Austin. His memoir of his time in the DSS – 'Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent,' tells the story of his biggest cases.... Austin American-Statesman: You did a field investigation of the (1988) airplane crash that killed Pakistan President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq and American Ambassador Arnold Raphel. Officially, the American view is that this crash was caused by a malfunction. Do you buy that? Fred Burton: No. I was there. The crash site was in a pretty remote area, and we went through it fairly well. There was no logical explanation of how that plane went down except sabotage. Austin American-Statesman: However, officially the U.S. government doesn't believe this. Austin American-Statesman: Do you think the CIA believes this? Fred Burton: Let me say this carefully. I think that the CIA thinks what I think about that crash. Austin American-Statesman: Which leads me to a broader question. Though it might be true that, in the short term, the government might think it should lie or obfuscate about this or that intelligence-related matter, in the long term, hasn't this done incomparably more damage to the trust the American people have in their own government? Fred Burton: Well, for governments, the truth is what we tell you. That's simply the way they operate. People don't understand the sheer power of intelligence agencies."
Fred Burton, answering a journalist's question about the culture of government lying on intelligence matters. Burton is vice president for counterterrorism and corporate security at Stratfor; formerly deputy chief of the counterterrorism division of the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service; and one of the official investigators of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing and the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Ex-spy Fred Burton talks about 'Ghost'
AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN, 8 June 2008

"One of al-Qaeda’s most dangerous figures has been revealed as a double agent working for MI5, raising criticism from European governments, which repeatedly called for his arrest. Britain ignored warnings — which began before the September 11 attacks — from half a dozen friendly governments about Abu Qatada’s links with terrorist groups and refused to arrest him.... while all along he was setting up a haven for his terror organisation in Britain... He pledged to MI5 that he would not 'bite the hand that fed him'. ..... he was recruiting for al-Qaeda training camps.... Indignant French officials accused MI5 of helping the cleric to abscond. "
Al-Qaeda cleric exposed as an MI5 double agent
London Times, 25 March 2004

"The London-based Islamic cleric Abu Qatada, accused by America of being a key member of Osama bin Laden's network, claims British security services offered him a chance to escape to Afghanistan. Abu Qatada, whose Bolton bank account was frozen last week when he was named on a US list of suspected terrorists, told The Observer that MI5 approached intermediaries to offer him a passport and an Iranian visa so he could leave the country.... Intelligence sources in Pakistan claim.... to have proof that Abu Qatada is consulted by al-Qaeda. They allege that a pamphlet he wrote on 'holy war' was commissioned by them to help resolve a dispute with another extreme terror group, Takfir-wal-Hirja."
MI5 wanted me to escape, claims cleric
Observer, 21 October 2001

"Over the years, some dissidents suspected by foreign governments of involvement in terrorist acts have been protected by the British government for one reason or another from deportation or extradition.... In the past, terrorism experts say, Britain benefited significantly from its willingness to extend at least conditional hospitality to a wide range of Arab dissidents and opposition figures .... Mustafa Alani, a terrorism expert at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies, a London think tank, said [Anas] al-Liby was probably left in legal limbo by the British government, allowing him to be used or discarded as circumstances permitted.... According to a renegade officer for the British intelligence service MI5, David Shayler, British intelligence plotted with Islamic extremists [including al-Liby] to assassinate Gaddafi in early 1996..."
Britain a Refuge for Mideast Dissidents - Some With Suspected Ties to Bin Laden Resist Extradition
Washington Post, 7 October 2001

"The Government's legislation to permit 42 days pre-charge detention brings to the fore the wider question of civil liberties. In their response to the security threat ministers have dragged us ever closer to a society in which ancient rights are seriously damaged. I doubt this is the Government's intention, but it is the effect. It began with Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was justified by overegging the threat of Saddam Hussein's non-existent weapons of mass destruction - perhaps that error was genuine. But the case for war was embellished by linking the Iraqi regime to the 9/11 attacks on New York - for which there is not one shred of evidence. As we moved towards war, that misinformation was compounded by the implication that Saddam's Iraq was a clear and present danger to the United Kingdom, which plainly it was not. These actions damaged our reputation overseas. And, at home - on the back of the threat of terror and two serious incidents in London - they foreshadowed a political climate in which civil liberties are slowly being sacrificed..... The Government has introduced measures to protect against terrorism. These go beyond anything contemplated when Britain faced far more regular - and no less violent - assaults from the IRA. The justification of these has sometimes come close to scaremongering.... pre-charge detention in Canada is 24 hours; South Africa, Germany, New Zealand and America 48 hours; Russia 5 days; and Turkey 7� days..... But it is not only the case for 42 days detention that is bogus. So is the case for identity cards. They were to be voluntary. Now it is clear that they will be compulsory. Yet the Government has admitted that such cards would not have stopped the London bombers. Nor will they cut illegal immigration, since asylum-seekers have been obliged to carry ID cards for nearly eight years. Nor will they have any real impact on benefits fraud, as this is typically caused by misrepresentation of financial resources rather than by identity. The Government has been saying, in a catchy, misleading piece of spin: 'If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.' This is a demagogue's trick. We do have something to fear - the total loss of privacy to an intrusive state with authoritarian tendencies. This is not a United Kingdom that I recognise and Parliament should not accept it.... Nor do I believe that anyone can defend another government innovation: a national identity register containing the DNA of tens of thousands of people who have never been charged with an offence. Under present legislation, DNA can be retained permanently for even minor misdemeanours, such as being drunk. A total of more than four million samples are already on the UK database - far more than in any other country. This includes tens of thousands of children, and a disproportionate number of black men. If this is accepted, it will one day go farther. This cannot be right: for me, it is all uncomfortably authoritarian. So is a society in which the right to personal privacy is downgraded. These days a police superintendent can authorise bugging in public places. A chief constable can authorise bugging our homes or cars. The Home Secretary can approve telephone tapping and the interception of our letters and e-mails. All of this is legal under an Act passed by the Labour Government. None of this requires - as it should - the sanction of a High Court Judge."
42-day detention: the threat to our liberty
London Times, 6 June 2008

From Meacher To Major
The Bogus 'War On Terror'

Nearly five years ago former British Environment Minister Michael Meacher wrote an article in the British Guardian newspaper entitled 'This War On Terror Is Bogus'.

Meacher claimed the United States was using the 'war on terror' as cover for executing a hidden foreign policy agenda driven in large part by an emerging global energy crisis. He said the Iraq war had been planned well before 9/11. Having been sacked by Tony Blair only a few months earlier Meacher's claims caused an unprecedented stir, including open condemnation from Downing St and the American Embassy in London.

Yet that article has since stood the test of time, not least because of the later revelation from Paul O'Neill (US Treasury Secretary 2001-2002 who had attended the National Security Council meetings concerned) as to how George Bush had instructed the Pentagon to begin examining military options against Iraq within 10 days of his inauguration as US President in January 2001. This was more than seven months before 9/11.

Now former British Prime Minster John Major has claimed in an article written for the London Times that 'misinformation' was used to link the Iraqi regime to the terror of 9/11. Whilst this is hardly news for most observant people, 'misinformation' is a powerfully acerbic term when used by a man who once led the country that is today America's principle accomplice in the 'war on terror'.

Such was the import of these two 'pull-few-punches' articles (from the left and the right) that both the Guardian and the Times also ran simultaneous front page news items concerning them on the days of their publication.

The new piece from Major all but accuses New Labour of using the fear of terrorism to scaremonger Britain into sacrificing its civil liberties - or, in effect, (although Major does not say so in so many words) accusing the current government of delivering the goals of the terrorists for them.

Having survived an IRA mortar attack on himself and his cabinet in 1991, the former British Prime Minister is clearly made of stronger, or less disingenuous, stuff than the current (and immediately preceding) incumbent at Downing St, and he is well placed to take a stand on such issues given his own direct personal exposure to terrorism.

This, of course, is to say nothing of the more successful IRA bomb attack on Mrs Thatcher's cabinet at the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984, after which a defiant and non-hysterical Britain largely carried on as normal. Thatcher responded with the words, "All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail."

But things are very different today.

Major rails at the principle of lengthy detention without charge, the compulsory introduction of ID cards, and the ever expanding British government's powers of surveillance over its own citizens.

These measures, says Major, "go beyond anything contemplated when Britain faced more regular - and no less violent - assaults from the IRA." He accuses the current government of demagoguery and expresses concern about "the total loss of privacy to an intrusive state with authoritarian tendencies."

The Times describes his criticism as "an all-out attack on Labour's conduct of the War on Terror since 2001."

And where does all this terror come from in the fist place? How many Islamic terrorist attacks were there in Britain before it joined the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq?

During the 1990s the British authorities developed a 'Covenant of Security' with British Islamic jihadis whereby, in return for an undertaking not to commit acts of terrorism in the UK, they were allowed to go and fight in conflicts overseas, sometimes with the involvement of MI6 (no less) where it suited British foreign policy, such as in former Yugoslavia and North Africa prior to 9/11.

But this 'covenant' was rescinded in 2005 following British participation in the invasion of Iraq, and after demands from the radical Islamic cleric Omar Bakri Muhammed for all foreign troops to be withdrawn were not met. Four months after the termination of the covenant the suicide bombings on London's transport system took place.

Bakri was the leader of Al-Muhajiroun, the radical Muslim group that MI6 is reported to have used to secretly recruit jihadis for the fight against Serbia in the Yugoslav civil war. Bakri is a well-known associate of Finsbury Park Mosque firebrand preacher Abu Hamza in London. It is Hamza's close aide, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who is alleged to have later become the mastermind of the 7/7 London bombings, having previously been recruited as an MI6 jihadi agent during the fighting in Yugoslavia (as reportedly was, Omar Sheikh, another British jihadi who is accused of being involved in organising the 9/11 attacks - if so, then both the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks sprouted, at least in part, from seeds fed in earlier years by MI6).

In these circumstances the 'dirt' such people have on MI6 can reasonably be expected to have been a key motivator lying behind the intelligence services interest in extending the detention without charge period to 42 days (and more if they could get it).

It would appear from an account provided by former US federal prosecutor, John Loftus, that some degree of panic broke out at MI6 when it surfaced in the press that Aswat was the suspected mastermind of 7/7.

However, although eventually detained, Aswat has never been charged in connection with the London bombings, and is now fighting extradition to the United States on other charges.

From this perspective, were there to be a repeat of another ex-MI6 jihadi carrying out a terrorist attack in Britain, the 42 day provision could be used to provide more space within which to work out how to deal with the situation - i.e. before the suspect becomes committed to entering British judicial processes where more than a few embarrassing bogus 'war on terror' beans might be spilled.

Organising extradition to another country on other charges, as appears to have happened in the Aswat case, might be one such 'solution'.

For American citizens in the US the equivalent detention without charge period is only forty eight hours, according to John Major, so the current British proposal for 42 days would seem to have more than a feint whiff of a hidden agenda about it. And not without justifiable suspicion.

Resident in Britain, Abu Qatada, a jihadi recruiter and fundraiser for Islamic separatists in the civil war in Chechnya (where Britain and America are accused by both Russia and a former senior Pentagon insider of secretly fighting a post cold war proxy mission against Moscow), claims that shortly after 9/11 "MI5 approached intermediaries to offer him a passport and an Iranian visa so he could leave the country" (according to the Observer in an article entitled "MI5 wanted me to escape"), rather than risk facing arrest (French intelligence later accused the British of helping him to abscond within the UK).

However, Qatada turned them down, and the British government has seemingly done everything in its power ever since to ensure that he is not prosecuted in an open British civilian court.

Intelligence services in other EU Countries claim Qatada has been under secret protection at various points. The British government has ultimately resorted to trying to bury the problem by deporting him (a 'solution' inconveniently stymied by the courts, as Qatada has successfully pleaded that he would be likely to face torture if extradited to Jordan where he is wanted on previous terrorism charges).

As the London Times put it in August 2005, "Abu Qatada is one of the ten men that the Government is now struggling to deport. If he reveals as part of his appeal that MI5 tried to recruit him, the service will be highly embarrassed. And he may not be the only one to do so. The whispers are that several of these characters have as much on the intelligence services as they have on them. In the 1990s Britain made a fatal decision, against the advice of other governments, to try to use these people rather than shut them down."

What is the probability, therefore, that as part of a 'jihadi embarrassment damage limitation exercise' MI6 will have exaggerated the severity of the national security situation in order to scare Gordon Brown into embarking on the 42 day saga, even if MI6 may not be sure of being able to control any 'safeguards' that emerge during the course of the legislative process?

Meanwhile, pre-suicide 'video will' recordings have made it absolutely clear, as acknowledged even by the head of MI5, that the London 7/7 bombers took their action directly as a result of the post 9/11 Anglo-American led occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Exactly the same motivation would seem to apply to those currently on trial in another prominent terrorism case in Britain, according to a report in the London Times last week. Admitting to planning a bomb attack on the British parliament building, the leader of the accused group said in court, "It is nothing to do with Islamic fundamentalism or radical Islam, it is purely down to foreign policy."

Citing research by Gallup's Center for Muslim Studies in New York, the London Times reported in February 2007 that "The War on Terror has radicalised Muslims around the world to unprecedented levels of anti-American feeling... [Yet, surprisingly] Americans have more in common with Muslims than they do with their Western counterparts in Europe. A large number of Muslims supported the Western ideal of democratic government. Fifty per cent of radicals supported democracy, compared with 35 per cent of moderates. Religion was found to have little to do with radicalisation or antipathy towards Western culture. "

There is little reason to believe that the position is any different in relation to Britain.

In parallel to this John Major claims that the false case made against Iraq "damaged our reputation overseas."

But if Britain's reputation is damaged, America's seems to be in ruins. Certainly this is the case if yet another opinion article in the London Times, published the day before John Major's, is anything to go by.

Penned by the paper's much respected Associate Editor Antole Kaletsky, this additional piece went so far as to consider the possibility of the Bush administration planning a strike on Iran this autumn as an 'October Surprise' ploy to place Barack Obama in an unpatriotic light (assuming he failed to endorse such an attack) as part of a calculated attempt to crush his bid for the Whitehouse.

Whilst such a scenario is hopefully mere speculation (although Kaletsky says it comes from 'informed observers in Washington') the very fact that it is possible to publish such thoughts in a sober media outlet of this kind, illustrates just how low the reputation of the current regime in Washington has sunk.

Yet, lest we forget, it was also Iran which became the pivot in the Republican party's previous 'October Surprise' scheming in 1980 which took Ronald Reagan into the White House, and laid the foundations for the ensuing, and similarly criminal, Iran-Contra affair.

NLPWESSEX, natural law publishing
nlpwessex.org

"Suspicions about a deal between the Reagan campaign and Iran over the hostages have circulated since the day of President Reagan's inaugural, when Iran agreed to release the 52 American hostages exactly five minutes after Mr. Reagan took the oath of office. Later, as it became known that arms started to flow to Iran via Israel only a few days after the inauguration, suspicions deepened that a secret arms-for-hostages deal had been concluded. Five years later, when the Iran-contra affair revealed what seemed to be a similar swap of hostages for arms delivered through Israel, questions were revived about the 1980 election. In a nice, ironic twist, the phrase 'October surprise,' which Vice Presidential candidate George Bush had coined to warn of possible political manipulation of the hostages by Jimmy Carter, began to be applied to the suspected secret activities of the 1980 Reagan-Bush campaign... In a Madrid hotel in late July 1980, an important Iranian cleric, Mehdi Karrubi, who is now the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, allegedly met with Mr. Casey [Reagan's campaign manager and later his Director of the CIA] and a U.S. intelligence officer who was operating outside authority. The same group met again several weeks later.... From Oct. 15 to Oct. 20, events came to a head in a series of meetings in several hotels in Paris, involving members of the Reagan-Bush campaign and high-level Iranian and Israeli representatives. Accounts of these meetings and the exact number of participants vary considerably among the more than 15 sources who claim direct or indirect knowledge of some aspect of them. There is, however, widespread agreement on three points: William Casey was a key participant: the Iranian representatives agreed that the hostages would not be released prior to the Presidential election on Nov. 4; in return, Israel would serve as a conduit for arms and spare parts to Iran. At least five of the sources who say they were in Paris in connection with these meetings insist that George Bush was present for at least one meeting. Three of the sources say that they saw him there... Immediately after the Paris meetings, things began to happen. On Oct. 21, Iran publicly shifted its position in the negotiations with the Carter Administration, disclaiming any further interest in receiving military equipment.... Between Oct. 21 and Oct. 23, Israel sent a planeload of F-4 fighter aircraft tires to Iran in contravention of the U.S. boycott and without informing Washington. Cyrus Hashemi, using his own contacts began privately organizing military shipments to Iran. On Oct. 22, the hostages were suddenly dispersed to different locations. And a series of delaying tactics in late October by the Iranian Parliament stymied all attempts by the Carter Administration to act on the hostage question until only hours before Election Day... On Jan. 15, Iran did an about-face, offering a series of startling concessions that reignited the talks and resulted in a final agreement in the last few hours of Jimmy Carter's Presidency. The hostages were released on Jan. 21, 1981, minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President. Almost immediately thereafter, according to Israeli and American former officials, arms began to flow to Iran in substantial quantities... Moshe Arens, the Israeli Ambassador to Washington in 1982, told The Boston Globe in October 1982 that Israeli's arms shipments to Iran at this time were coordinated with the U.S. Government 'at almost the highest of levels.' ... The allegations of these individuals have many disturbing implications for the U.S. political system. One is the tampering with foreign policy for partisan benefit. That has, of course, happened before and it may well happen again, but it assumes special poignancy in this case since it would have involved tampering with the lives and freedom of 52 Americans. Another implication is that leaders of the U.S. exposed themselves to the possibility of blackmail by Iran or Israel. Third, the events suggest that the arms-for-hostage deal that in the twilight of the Reagan Presidency became known as the Iran-contra affair, instead of being an aberration, was in fact the re-emergence of a policy that began even before the Reagan-Bush Administration took office."
Gary Sick - The Election Story of the Decade
New York Times, 15 April 1991

"Gordon Brown today made a defiant stand in defence of his plan to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge, insisting he had balanced the need to protect civil liberties against the interests of national security.....Brown rang some potential rebels at the weekend. But his hopes of crafting a consensus will be undermined by the Council of Europe, and by the parliamentary joint select committee on human rights, which is expected to reject the compromise being touted by ministers. They have been privately suggesting that the detention powers would be triggered only in defined 'grave exceptional circumstances'...."
Brown remains defiant on 42 days
Guardian, 2 June 2008

"Britain's most controversial top lawyer, Lord Goldsmith, who was the Blair government attorney general (2001-2007) and advised Blair legally could go to war against Iraq, now has delivered a devastating blow to Blair's successor, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, according to a report in Joseph Farah's G2 Bulletin. Lord Goldsmith has said he cannot support Brown's proposal to extend from 28 days to 42 days the pre-trial detention of suspected terrorists. Both MI5 and MI6 intelligence agencies want the extension.... John Scarlett, head of MI6, and his opposite number at MI5, Jonathan Evans, have made no secret of their concern over Lord Goldsmith's decision to publicly oppose the 42-day extension. 'We are dealing here with highly dangerous terrorists who have been trained to withstand lengthy interrogations. We need every day to question them. Those extra 14 days could be invaluable and give us time to legally expand our investigations,' said a senior counter-intelligence officer."
Detention of jihad suspects at risk
WorldNetDaily, 7 June 2008

"A senior al-Qaeda leader is reportedly being looked after by British intelligence at a safe house in northern England - but security sources are denying the claim. Abu Qatada is accused by the United States, Spain, France and Algeria of being a key influence in the 11 September attacks on the US.... senior European intelligence officials have reportedly told Time Magazine that Mr Qatada and his family are being lodged, fed and clothed by British intelligence services. 'The deal is that Abu Qatada is deprived of contact with extremists in London and Europe but can't be arrested or expelled because no one officially knows where he is,' says the source, whose claims were corroborated by French authorities according to the magazine.... Baltasar Garzon, a Spanish National High Court judge charged with leading Spain's al-Qaeda crackdown, called the Muslim cleric the 'spiritual head of the mujahideen in Britain'. Judge Garzon, who questioned al-Qaeda suspects in Madrid last year, said Mr Qatada was the most important British contact of Spain-based terror suspect Abu Dahdah. Dahdah, whose real name is Imad Eddin Barakat Yarbas, was one of eight suspected members of a group charged with preparing and carrying out the 11 September attacks. Judge Garzon added that Mr Qatada had links with terror suspects in Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Britain and Spain. Following the judge's comments, Mr Qatada told BBC Radio 4's Today programme Bin Laden 'had a point' in his desire to rid his home country, Saudi Arabia, of any American influence. 'I believe in Jihad,' he said. 'And I believe in the necessity of liberating our nation and freeing it from bondage.'"
Britain 'sheltering al-Qaeda leader'
BBC Online, 8 July 2002

"One of al-Qaeda’s most dangerous figures has been revealed as a double agent working for MI5, raising criticism from European governments, which repeatedly called for his arrest. Britain ignored warnings — which began before the September 11 attacks — from half a dozen friendly governments about Abu Qatada’s links with terrorist groups and refused to arrest him.... while all along he was setting up a haven for his terror organisation in Britain... He pledged to MI5 that he would not 'bite the hand that fed him'. ..... he was recruiting for al-Qaeda training camps.... Indignant French officials accused MI5 of helping the cleric to abscond. "
Al-Qaeda cleric exposed as an MI5 double agent
London Times, 25 March 2004

"The London-based Islamic cleric Abu Qatada, accused by America of being a key member of Osama bin Laden's network, claims British security services offered him a chance to escape to Afghanistan. Abu Qatada, whose Bolton bank account was frozen last week when he was named on a US list of suspected terrorists, told The Observer that MI5 approached intermediaries to offer him a passport and an Iranian visa so he could leave the country.... Intelligence sources in Pakistan claim.... to have proof that Abu Qatada is consulted by al-Qaeda. They allege that a pamphlet he wrote on 'holy war' was commissioned by them to help resolve a dispute with another extreme terror group, Takfir-wal-Hirja."
MI5 wanted me to escape, claims cleric
Observer, 21 October 2001

"Abu Qatada is one of the ten men that the Government is now struggling to deport. If he reveals as part of his appeal that MI5 tried to recruit him, the service will be highly embarrassed. And he may not be the only one to do so. The whispers are that several of these characters have as much on the intelligence services as they have on them. In the 1990s Britain made a fatal decision, against the advice of other governments, to try to use these people rather than shut them down."
Lack-of-intelligence services
London Times, 18 August 2005

"....all these guys should be going back to an organization called Al-Muhajiroun, which means The Emigrants. It was the recruiting arm of Al-Qaeda in London; they specialized in recruiting kids whose families had emigrated to Britain but who had British passports. And they would use them for terrorist work.... the first group of course were primarily Pakistani. But what they had in common was they were all emigrant groups in Britain, recruited by this Al-Muhajiroun group. They were headed by the, Captain Hook, the imam in London the Finsbury Mosque, without the arm. He was the head of that organization. Now his assistant was a guy named Aswat, Haroon Rashid Aswat. Aswat is believed to be the mastermind of all the bombings in London... This is the guy, and what's really embarrassing is that the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the British government, MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him.... He's a double agent.... Now we knew about this guy Aswat. Back in 1999 he came to America. The Justice Department wanted to indict him in Seattle because him and his buddy were trying to set up a terrorist training school in Oregon..... Well it comes out, we've just learned that the headquarters of the US Justice Department ordered the Seattle prosecutors not to touch Aswat..... apparently Aswat was working for British intelligence.... Some people say that the British intelligence fibbed to us. They told us that Aswat was dead, and that's why the New York group dropped the case. That's not what most of the Justice Department thinks. They think that it was just again covering up for this very publicly affiliated guy with Al-Muhajiroun. He was a British intelligence plant.... Now at this point, two weeks ago, the Brits know that the CIA wants to get a hold of Haroon. So what happens? He takes off again, goes right to London. He isn't arrested when he lands, he isn't arrested when he leaves. ... He's on the watch list. The only reason he could get away with that was if he was working for British intelligence. He was a wanted man.... And [he] goes to Pakistan.... The Pakistanis arrest him. They jail him. He's released within 24 hours. Back to Southern Africa, goes to Zimbabwe and is arrested in Zambia.... What ties all these cells together was, back in the late 1990s, the leaders all worked for British intelligence in Kosovo. Believe it or not, British intelligence actually hired some Al-Qaeda guys to help defend the Muslim rights in Albania and in Kosovo. That's when Al-Muhajiroun got started.....The CIA was funding the operation to defend the Muslims, British intelligence was doing the hiring and recruiting. Now we have a lot of detail on this because Captain Hook, the head of Al-Muhajiroun, [his] sidekick was Bakri Mohammed, another cleric. And back on October 16, 2001, he gave a detailed interview with al-Sharq al-Aswat, an Arabic newspaper in London, describing the relationship between British intelligence and the operations in Kosovo and Al-Muhajiroun. So that's how we get all these guys connected. It started in Kosovo...."
Interview with former US Federal Prosecutor John Loftus
Fox TV, 29 July 2005

Invasion Of Iraq Precipitates End Of 'Covenant Of Security'
And 7/7 Bombings Followed

"On Thursday evening, at a tennis center community hall in Slough, west of London, their leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his adherence to Osama bin Laden. If Europe fails to heed Mr. bin Laden's offer of a truce — provided that all foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq in three months — Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the Western countries that play host to them [i.e. the 'coventant of security' will be brought to an end], the sheik said.... 'Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts,' one counterterrorism official said."
Chorus of Muslim radicalism rising in Europe
New York Times, 27 April 2004

"Britain on Friday barred radical Muslim cleric Omar Bakri from returning to the country that was his home [Britain] for the past 20 years, saying his presence was no longer 'conducive to the public good.' The decision came as the country’s top legal official defended plans to deport another radical Muslim cleric and nine other foreigners suspected of posing a threat to national security. The moves are an indication of the dramatic impact of last month’s transit bombings [7/7] in a country until recently regarded as something of a safe haven for radicals. Jordan said Friday it would ask Britain next week to extradite one of those detained, cleric Omar Mahmoud Othman Abu Omar, also known as Abu Qatada. Spanish officials have described him as Osama bin Laden’s 'spiritual ambassador in Europe.' Bakri, 45, left Britain on Saturday, one day after Prime Minister Tony Blair proposed tough new anti-terrorism measures including the deportation of extremist Islamic clerics who preach hate. Bakri was arrested in Lebanon on Thursday. Bakri, who has dual Syrian and Lebanese citizenship, had come under increasing pressure from the British government for his hard-line rhetoric after last month’s [London] bombings. He had insisted that he planned to return to north London, where his wife and children live. Home Secretary Charles Clarke had written to Bakri to inform him he would not be allowed back into Britain. The cleric has 14 days to appeal.... Bakri founded the now-disbanded radical Islamic group al-Muhajiroun, which came under scrutiny in Britain, particularly after some of its members praised the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.”
Britain bars radical Muslim cleric's reentry
MSNBC, 12 August 2005

"Dr Mohammed al-Masari, a Saudi extremist who has permission to remain here indefinitely, claims Britain's tolerance towards Islamic radicals helps keep it free from attack.... Masari, who helped Fawwaz establish bin Laden's London office, is now in close and open alliance with two other leading British Islamic extremists: Sheikh Abu Hamza al Masri and Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed. Bakri is the leader of al-Muhajiroun, a highly vocal group which apes fringe Left-wing groups in trying to recruit impressionable young members at universities and mosques. During the fighting in Afghanistan, some al-Muhajiroun spokesmen claimed that hundreds of young Muslims were leaving British cities to fight for the Taliban... While Bakri's activities are thought to be largely propagandist, Hamza is regarded as a more sinister figure. Born Mustafa Kamel in Egypt in 1958 he holds British citizenship and is imam of the North London Central Mosque in Finsbury Park - a base for radical politics. Among those who frequented the mosque are Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, and Zacarias Moussaoui, a former student in London now in jail in America accused of being the '20th hijacker'.... Others who passed through Finsbury Park included Djamel Beghal and Kamel Daoudi, both in custody in France accused in connection with a plot to blow up the US embassy in Paris... Hamza is wanted by the authorities in Yemen for alleged terrorist activities and is at the centre of an FBI investigation into attempts to establish a jihad training camp in Oregon. After Hamza the most radical and dangerous cleric is considered to be Abu Qatada. He was named by a Spanish judge as bin Laden's 'spiritual ambassador' in Europe. Some sources claim that he was taken by MI5 to a safe house."
Britain a perfect haven for Islamic radicals looking for recruits
Daily Telegraph, 11 September 2002

"During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, the US funded large numbers of jihadists through Pakistan's secret intelligence service, the ISI. Later the US wanted to raise another jihadi corps, again using proxies, to help Bosnian Muslims fight to weaken the Serb government's hold on Yugoslavia. Those they turned to included Pakistanis in Britain. According to a recent report by the Delhi-based Observer Research Foundation, a contingent was also sent by the Pakistani government, then led by Benazir Bhutto, at the request of the Clinton administration. This contingent was formed from the Harkat-ul- Ansar (HUA) terrorist group and trained by the ISI. The report estimates that about 200 Pakistani Muslims living in the UK went to Pakistan, trained in HUA camps and joined the HUA's contingent in Bosnia. Most significantly, this was 'with the full knowledge and complicity of the British and American intelligence agencies'. As the 2002 Dutch government report on Bosnia makes clear, the US provided a green light to groups on the state department list of terrorist organisations, including the Lebanese-based Hizbullah, to operate in Bosnia - an episode that calls into question the credibility of the subsequent 'war on terror'. For nearly a decade the US helped Islamist insurgents linked to Chechnya, Iran and Saudi Arabia destabilise the former Yugoslavia. The insurgents were also allowed to move further east to Kosovo. By the end of the fighting in Bosnia there were tens of thousands of Islamist insurgents in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo; many then moved west to Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Less well known is evidence of the British government's relationship with a wider Islamist terrorist network. During an interview on Fox TV this summer, the former US federal prosecutor John Loftus reported that British intelligence had used the al-Muhajiroun group in London to recruit Islamist militants with British passports for the war against the Serbs in Kosovo. Since July Scotland Yard has been interested in an alleged member of al-Muhajiroun, Haroon Rashid Aswat, who some sources have suggested could have been behind the London bombings. According to Loftus, Aswat was detained in Pakistan after leaving Britain, but was released after 24 hours. He was subsequently returned to Britain from Zambia, but has been detained solely for extradition to the US, not for questioning about the London bombings. Loftus claimed that Aswat is a British-backed double agent, pursued by the police but protected by MI6. One British Muslim of Pakistani origin radicalised by the civil war in Yugoslavia was LSE-educated Omar Saeed Sheikh..... This is all the more remarkable when this is the same Omar Sheikh who, at the behest of General Mahmood Ahmed, head of the ISI, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, the leading 9/11 hijacker, before the New York attacks, as confirmed by Dennis Lormel, director of FBI's financial crimes unit. Yet neither Ahmed nor Omar appears to have been sought for questioning by the US about 9/11."
Michael Meacher, former UK Environment Minister
Britain now faces its own blowback
Guardian, 10 September 2005

"Omar Sheikh is a British national born to Pakistani parents in London on December 23, 1973. His early education was in the United Kingdom, although he also spent four years at Lahore’s prestigious Aitchison College. He then went to the London School of Economics (LSE) but dropped out before graduation. It is believed in some quarters that while Omar Sheikh was at the LSE he was recruited by the British intelligence agency MI6. It is said that MI6 persuaded him to take an active part in demonstrations against Serbian aggression in Bosnia and even sent him to Kosovo to join the jihad. At some point he probably became a rogue or double agent."
President Purvez Musharraf of Pakistan
How we found Pearl buried in ten pieces
London Times, 26 September 2006

"A suspected terrorist who scored a legal victory against the Government this week is a senior al-Qaeda operative living openly in London, security agencies say. The man, who can be identified only as G, is one of five people who challenged the Treasury’s powers to freeze terrorist suspects’ bank accounts in a successful High Court action....While in Pakistan, G is said to have met Haroon Rashid Aswat, another Briton who is suspected of involvement in terrorism, and who was arrested in southern Africa in 2005. Mr Aswat is in custody fighting extradition to the US on terrorist charges."
Terror suspect who won court battle is named as a ‘top al-Qaeda agent’
London Times, 26 April 2008

"Aswat's cell phone received as many as 20 calls from several of the [7/7] bombers, said intelligence and law enforcement officials, one of whom said the last call was made in London the night before the July 7 bombings.... One intelligence official, who like others would discuss the investigation only on condition of anonymity, said that the list of wanted suspects was growing and that the inquiry had become far more complex in recent days.... Aswat was an aide then to Abu Hamza Masri, a fiery Muslim preacher who was arrested in April 2004 and charged with a variety of terrorism-related offenses including involvement in the Oregon camp and a role in a deadly hostage-taking in Yemen. Aswat's name does not appear in the August 2002 federal indictment of James Ujaama, an American charged with planning to set up the camp, but law enforcement sources said he was one of the unindicted co-conspirators referred to in the document."
Authorities Probe Pakistani Linked To Plot in Oregon
Washington Post, 22 July 2005

"[Aswat] is from the area around Leeds, close to where three of the other suspected bombers came from.....What makes him of particular interest is he does seem to have very strong ties with al Qaeda...... Aswat [is] also linked with the radical cleric in London, Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Mazri. Al-Mazri is in a British jail at this time. Aswat believed to be his right hand man. Sheikh Hamza al-Mazri believed to have been involved in sending young Muslim men to al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and Yemen.....There was wide speculation in the days after the bombing that somebody high on a watch list, somebody that U.S. officials had told British officials was high on their watch lists, arrived in Britain two weeks before the bombing and that for some reason he wasn't closely followed while in Britain. It is speculated, and it's not known. The police are very tight-lipped on what they know about this investigation. It is speculated that this could have been Aswat, but he left just before the bombing happened, indeed, the morning that the bombing happened. So it appears that he may well have come in the country, was on a watch list, then left without being followed during that time in Britain."
More Blasts Hit London; British, Australian Leaders Denounce Terror
CNN, 21 July 2006

"The failure of Messrs Bush and Blair and the neo-cons to understand Arab grievances has been translated into a 'clash of civilisations' and a threat to Western values 'by people determined to destroy our way of life', as the Prime Minister put it. But there is no clash of civilisations unless we are determined to create one. We are not going to live under a universal caliphate. Osama bin Laden and his gangsters have not the faintest chance of destroying our way of life, unless we do so ourselves..... The misconceived 'war on terror' has made the world a much more dangerous place.... America and Britain should leave Iraq as soon as possible. There are no other options. .... it is the American occupation of Iraq, like the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, that has become the magnet for the international jihadis....."
Lord Norman Lamont, British Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1990-93
America and Britain should quit Iraq as soon as possible
Daily Telegraph, 10 November 2006

"Almost 450,000 requests were made to monitor people’s telephone calls, e-mails and post by secret agencies and other authorised bodies in just over a year, the spying watchdog said yesterday. In the first report of its kind from the Interceptions of Communications Commissioner, it was also revealed that nearly 4,000 errors were reported in a 15-month period from 2005 to 2006. ..... He said it was time to lift a ban on tapping the phones of MPs and peers....."
Privacy row as checks on phones and e-mails hit 439,000
London Times, 20 February 2007

"The huge Commons majority he [Blair] enjoyed, the craven pusillanimity of his party, the implosion of the Conservatives and the consequent absence of opposition, other than in the Lords – and, to an extent, in the courts – conspired with a genuine, though irrational, fear of terrorism and rising street crime to let the State take greater control over the citizen than it has enjoyed before in modern peacetime..... Maya Evans found this out when she stood by the Cenotaph to recite the names of Britain’s Iraqi war dead. For this she was arrested, arraigned and left with a criminal record. It is hard to conceive of a police officer a generation ago taking any notice of her since she was causing no public order problem at all. But Ms Evans had fallen foul of a clause in the Serious and Organised Crime and Police Act which established a one kilometre zone around the Palace of Westminster, within whose boundaries political criticism can be voiced only on application to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.... recent research has uncovered 266 separate powers under which the police and other state agents can enter your home, often using force to do so.... As Peter Lilley, the former minister who led the Cabinet revolt that resulted in the abandonment of the last ID scheme, observed: 'There is no policy that has been hawked, unsold, around Whitehall for longer than identity cards. It was always brought to us as a solution looking for problems.' September 11 and the threat from international terrorism was the problem it had most been looking for.... There are people who remember carrying the old wartime ID cards, scrapped in 1952, and cannot see what all the fuss is about. It is about the database, not the card. This is not about protecting our identities but about placing them at the disposal of the state and sundry other organisations that will have access to them. .... this extension of state control through the unfettered and unthinking deployment of modern surveillance technology and databases for which the Blair years (and those of his successor, unless he does something dramatic to change course) will most be remembered. Our children, and theirs, will be perplexed as to why their forebears came so easily, and with so little public debate, to allow the State to manipulate their lives."
Philip Johnston, home affairs editor and assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph
The Charles Douglas-Home Essay, 2007 - 'Are we a free country any more?'
London Times, 20 July 2007

"The multibillion-pound identity card scheme could be used to carry out surveillance on millions of people, a Commons select committee said yesterday. MPs added that they were seriously concerned at the way that local councils and other agencies were using spying powers to deal with low-level crimes such as dropping litter. In a 117-page report on surveillance, the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee urged the Government to make it easier for the public to challenge decisions to keep their DNA on the national database. Keith Vaz, its chairman, said: 'What we are calling for is an overall principle of ‘least data, for least time'. We have all seen over the past year extraordinary examples of how badly things can go wrong when data is mis-handled, with potentially disastrous consequences.' He added: 'The public don't have much choice over the data held on them by public bodies so they must be confident about how it is being collected, stored and used, otherwise we are in danger of becoming a surveillance society.' The report, entitled A Surveillance Society?, said that it accepted assurances from ministers that surveillance was not part of the current plans for the ID card scheme, but it sought guarantees that no expansion would take place without MPs' approval. The committee expressed alarm at the extent to which surveillance operations under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act are being used for minor offending. Recent figures show that local councils have been using the Act to conduct surveillance to deal with flytipping, littering, dog fouling and the sale of alcohol to those aged under 18. Yesterday's report said that at the end of last year 656,000 of the 4.2 million samples on the DNA database were replicas and that thousands more were samples taken from people who were arrested but not charged subsequently with an offence."
MPs fear ID cards could be used for spying
London Times, 9 June 2009

"....[After the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait] President Bush was hesitant about how America should respond. His foreign policy alter ego, Secretary of State Jim Baker, and his Defense Secretary, Dick Cheney, were reluctant to act. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, however, thought that Iraq had just changed the strategic equation in a way that could not be permitted. So did British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The two argued that nothing stood between the advance of units of the Iraqi army in Kuwait and the immense Saudi oil fields. If we did nothing in response to Iraq's seizing Kuwait, Saddam Hussein would think that he could get away with seizing the Saudis' eastern oil fields. If that happened, Baghdad would control most of the world's readily available oil. They could dictate to America. Reluctantly, Bush and his team decided that they needed to defend the Saudi oil fields, and do so quickly. They needed Saudi permission for the defensive deployment, but there were some in the Pentagon and White House who thought U.S. forces needed to protect the Saudi oil with or without Saudi approval. The mission to persuade the Saudi King to accept U.S forces was given to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. He assembled a small team, including Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Central Command head Norman Schwarzkopf, Sandy Charles of the NSC, and me, then the Assistant Secretary of State for Politico-Military Affairs... Cheney concluded the presentation, promising that U.S forces would come only to defend the Kingdom. President Bush wanted the King to know that he had the President's word that the U.S. forces would leave as soon as the threat was over, or whenever ordered to do so by the King. ..... Unknown to the Americans at the time, the intelligence chief, Prince Turki, had been approached by the Saudi who had recruited Arabs to fight in the Afghan War against the Soviets, Usama Bin Laden........ When Kuwait was invaded, he offered to make them available to the King to defend Saudi Arabia, to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. After we left the palace, perhaps bin Laden was told of the King's decision. His help would not be required. He could not believe it; letting nonbelievers into the Kingdom of the Two Holy Mosques was against the beliefs of the Wahhabist branch of Islam. Large numbers of American military in the Kingdom would violate Islam, the construction magnate's son thought. They would never leave."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Chapter 3, Unfinished Mission, Unintended Consequences
'Against All Enemies' - Edition first published in Great Britain by The Free Press in 2004

"America began a historic reshaping of its presence in the Middle East yesterday, announcing a halt to active military operations in Saudi Arabia and the removal of almost all of its forces from the kingdom within weeks. The withdrawal ends a contentious 12-year-old presence in Saudi Arabia and marks the most dramatic in a set of sweeping changes in the deployment of American forces after the war in Iraq. Withdrawal of 'infidel' American forces from Saudi Arabia has been one of the demands of Osama bin Laden, although a senior US military official said that this was 'irrelevant'.... Behind the dry talk of rearranging America's military 'footprint' in the Gulf, the great imponderables were bin Laden and Muslim radicals' complaints about the presence of 'infidels' in the birthplace of Islam. That presence was cited as one of the main justifications for the September 11 attacks. Despite American insistence that the withdrawal had not been 'dictated' by al-Qa'eda and that bin Laden was 'irrelevant', there can be little doubt that undercutting a central plank of al-Qa'eda's platform is one of several advantages offered by withdrawal from Saudi Arabia."
America to withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia
Daily Telegraph, 30 April 2003

"America's announcement of its intention to withdraw its military bases from Saudi Arabia [following the moving of US troops into Iraq] answers Osama bin Laden's most persistent demand. More than any other cause it was the presence of 'crusader' forces in the land of Islam's holiest sites - Mecca and Medina - that turned bin Laden from Afghan jihadi [and US ally] into an international terrorist [and US opponent]. A wealthy Saudi with royal connections, bin Laden fell out with the House of Saud largely because it permitted US bases in the country. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, bin Laden offered his own forces to the Saudi regime to help expel the Iraqis from the Gulf. He was enraged when the Saudi royal family turned instead to Washington and more than 500,000 US troops were sent. The same year the Americans arrived, bin Laden fled Saudi - where he faced house arrest - and established his base in Sudan. He and his al-Qa'eda forces moved to Afghanistan in 1996, issuing the first of his international fatwas through the London-based Al Quds Al Arabi newspaper. After railing against the persecution of Muslims around the world, bin Laden stated: 'The latest and greatest of these aggressions incurred by Muslims since the death of the Prophet … is