MI5, Britain’s domestic intelligence agency, disbands G7, a special unit that was established in the early 1980s to monitor Islamic militants. The order to do so comes from MI5 head Stella Rimington. It is strongly opposed by some MI5 colleagues, especially since the World Trade Center was bombed by Islamic militants in 1993 (see February 26, 1993). According to Vanity Fair, “Vital continuity and experience were lost, one senior British official says, and even after al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the 1998 American Embassy attacks in Africa from a fax machine in London, nothing was done to restore the unit.” [Vanity Fair, 11/2004]
October 18, 2008: US ‘Overreacted’ to 9/11 Attacks: Former British Spy Chief
Stella Rimington, a former director general of Britain’s domestic intelligence agency MI5, says the US response to 9/11 was “a huge overreaction.” She adds, “[It] was another terrorist incident. It was huge, and horrible, and seemed worse because we all watched it unfold on television.… I suppose I’d lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life, and this was, as far as I was concerned, another one.” She says that President Bush’s successor should stop using the expression “war on terror”. “It got us off on the wrong foot, because it made people think terrorism was something you could deal with by force of arms primarily. And from that flowed Guantanamo, and extraordinary rendition, and… Iraq.” The Iraq War has motivated some jihadi terrorists to attack the West, she says. [Guardian, 10/18/2008]
