Vyacheslav Nikonov, a leading Russian political scientist and the president of the Moscow-based Polity Foundation, says during a news conference in Moscow that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is resetting its priorities and that curbing US influence in Central Asia has become one of the organization’s central objectives. “The SCO is now emerging as something of an interest club,” he says. “The member countries are coming to share an interest in the possible restriction of American influence in Asia.” [Novosti Russian News and Information Agency, 6/29/2005]
Late June 2005: French Government Says Britain Is Likely to Be Attacked by Al-Qaeda, Using Pakistani-Britons
The French government secretly warns that Britain could be attacked by al-Qaeda. The Renseignements Généraux, or DCRG, France’s equivalent of Britain’s Special Branch, concludes in a report on the Pakistani community in France that Britain “remains threatened by plans decided at the highest level of al-Qaeda.… They will be put into action by operatives drawing on pro-jihad sympathies within the large Pakistani community in [Britain].” Three of the four suicide bombers in the 7/7 London bombings less than one month later (see July 7, 2005) will be Britons of Pakistani origin. The report is shared within the French government, but British and French officials will later refuse to confirm or deny if it is passed to the British government as well. This report comes about one week after the British government concluded that “at present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack” inside Britain, and lowered the general threat level (see Mid-June 2005). [Guardian, 8/9/2005]
Late June-July 7, 2005: Alleged British Intelligence Informant Said to Mastermind 7/7 London Bombings, Calls Suicide Bombers
According to an article in the London Times, Haroon Rashid Aswat is the mastermind of the 7/7 London bombings. Aswat’s family comes from India, but he was born in the same West Yorkshire town as one of the 7/7 suicide bombers and has British citizenship. He is said to be a long-time al-Qaeda operative and also the right-hand man of radical London imam Abu Hamza al-Masri. He arrives in Britain about two weeks before the bombings from South Africa, where he was being monitored by British and US intelligence. He orchestrates the final planning for the bombing, visiting the towns of all the bombers as well as the bomb targets. “Intelligence sources” also will later claim that there are records of up to twenty calls between Aswat and two of the bombers, lead bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan and his friend Shehzad Tanweer, in the days before the bombings. A senior Pakistani security source will tell the Times, “We believe this man had a crucial part to play in what happened in London.” Khan telephones Aswat on the morning of the bombings. He flies out of Britain just hours before the bombings take place. Pakistani officials will also say that a total of eight men in Pakistan were in telephone contact with Khan and Tanweer, and that Khan, Tanweer, and Aswat were all at the same madrassa (religious boarding school) at the same time when Khan and Tanweer went to Pakistan for training in late 2004. [London Times, 7/21/2005] A later Sunday Times article will confirm that Aswat and some of the bombers talked on the phone. Some of the cell phones used by the bombers will be found and some data will be recovered from them, even though they are badly damaged. This will confirm that at least several calls were made from Aswat’s phone to the bombers in the days before the bombing. British investigators will not deny the phone calls took place, but will “caution that the calls may have been made to a phone linked to Aswat, rather than the man himself.” There is speculation that US intelligence may have been monitoring the calls (see Shortly Before July 7, 2005). [Sunday Times (London), 7/31/2005] It will later be alleged that Aswat is an informant for British intelligence. Furthermore, the imam he has worked for, Abu Hazma, is also a British informant (see Early 1997).
July 5, 2005: Asian Alliance Calls on US to Set Withdrawal Date from Afghanistan
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), meeting in Astana, Kazakhstan, calls on the US to set a withdrawal date for US military forces in Afghanistan. “As the active military phase in the anti-terror operation in Afghanistan is nearing completion, the SCO would like the coalition’s members to decide on the deadline for the use of the temporary infrastructure and for their military contingents’ presence in those countries,” the organization says in its declaration. [Associated Press, 7/5/2005] The declaration also advocates limited outside interference in a country’s internal affairs, while at the same time the organization asserts its right to work with Afghanistan on security matters. “We have to make every effort to step up security cooperation or else all our talks about stability will be pointless,” says Chinese President Hu Jintao after the conference. [Eurasia Daily Monitor, 7/6/2005]
July 6, 2005: British Intelligence Tells Politicians There Is No Imminent Terrorist Threat, One Day before 7/7 Bombings
Eliza Manningham-Buller, director general of the British domestic intelligence agency MI5, tells senior members of British parliament (MPs) that there is no imminent terrorist threat to London or the rest of Britain. This takes place less than 24 hours before the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005). Manningham-Buller’s comments are made at a private meeting of about a dozen leading MPs from the ruling Labour party at the House of Commons. Such meetings have been held on an irregular basis since the 9/11 attacks, although it was unusual for the head of MI5 to attend. The Guardian will later comment, “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 7/7 bombings].” [Guardian, 1/9/2007]
Shortly Before July 7, 2005: US Intelligence Possibly Monitoring Calls between Alleged 7/7 London Bombings Mastermind and Suicide Bombers
It will later be reported that Haroon Rashid Aswat, the possible mastermind of the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), talks on the phone about 20 times with two of the suicide bombers involved in the attack in the days before the bombings (see Late June-July 7, 2005). The Sunday Times will later note, “It is likely that the American National Security Agency—which has a powerful eavesdropping network—was monitoring the calls.” British investigators will not deny the phone calls took place, but will “caution that the calls may have been made to a phone linked to Aswat, rather than the man himself.” [Sunday Times (London), 7/31/2005] A book about the Mossad by Gordon Thomas will later claim that the Mossad learns by the early afternoon of the day of the 7/7 bombings that the CIA has a “strong supposition” Aswat made a number of calls to the bombers in the days before the bombings. [Thomas, 2007, pp. 519] This would support the theory that the NSA was tracking the calls. US intelligence had discovered Aswat’s location several weeks before the bombings, but then supposedly lost track of him again (see Early June 2005). If these calls were tracked, it is not clear why action was not taken against the bombers.
July 7, 2005: 7/7 Bombings Were Simultaneous With Terrorism Exercise, Reveals Security Consultant Peter Power
On July 7, 2005, and the following days, consultant Peter Power reveals that his company, Visor Consultants, a private security and crisis management firm, was staging a terrorism exercise involving explosions in the exact same three London subway stations at the same time that real 7/7 London bombings occurred (see July 7, 2005). He says his company’s client is a City firm but does not otherwise identify it. Power insists it is a coincidence, but many are incredulous.
First Account – On the afternoon of July 7, Power tells BBC Radio 5: “At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.… [I]t was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don’t want to reveal their name but they’re listening and they’ll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they’d met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision, ‘this is the real one‘….” [BBC Radio 5, 7/7/2005]
Second Account – Later in the day, Power appears on ITV News and gives a similar account: “Today we were running an exercise for a company—bearing in mind I’m now in the private sector—and we sat everybody down, in the city—1,000 people involved in the whole organization—but the crisis team. And the most peculiar thing was, we based our scenario on the simultaneous attacks on an underground and mainline station. So we had to suddenly switch an exercise from ‘fictional’ to ‘real’.… And we chose a scenario—with their assistance—which is based on a terrorist attack because they’re very close to, er, a property occupied by Jewish businessmen, they’re in the city, and there are more American banks in the city than there are in the whole of New York—a logical thing to do.” [ITV, 7/7/2005]
Third Account – Power also tells the Canadian television program CBS: Sunday Night that it was a “spooky coincidence,” adding: “Our scenario was very similar—it wasn’t totally identical, but it was based on bombs going off, to the time, the locations, all this sort of stuff. But it wasn’t an accident, in the sense that London has a history of bombs.” Colman Jones, an associate producer for the show, later claims in his blog that after the show was over, he asked Power “why there had not been more media coverage of this.” “They were trying to keep it quiet,” Power allegedly responds, with what Jones called “a knowing smile.” [Channel 4 News (London), 7/17/2005]
Fourth Account – The following day, the Manchester Evening News publishes an interview with Power in which he says, “Yesterday we were actually in the City working on an exercise involving mock broadcasts when it happened for real. When news bulletins started coming on, people began to say how realistic our exercise was—not realizing there was an attack. We then became involved in a real crisis which we had to manage for the company.… During the exercise we were working on yesterday, we were looking at a situation where there had been bombs at key London transport locations—although we weren’t specifically looking at a scenario where there had been a bomb on a bus. It’s a standard exercise and briefing that we carry out.” [Manchester Evening News, 7/8/2005]
Theories on the Internet – Theories spread on the Internet that, as ITV describe them, “simulated attacks were, whether Power knew it or not, intended to act as a cover for the real ones.” The Al Jazeera satellite network boldly asserts that Power’s “exercises were used as the fallback cover to carry out the attack.”
Said to Be Paper-Based Only – But Power soon claims that the exercises he spoke of were purely paper-based in nature, only involving a small group of seven or eight executives in a room seeking to examine the impact on corporate decision-making of a potential crisis situation, and no actual participants in the subway system. As for coincidence of timing, Power explains that away by saying, “Every week across [Britain] there are probably about hundred exercises, tests and simulations going on to get crisis teams familiar with their roles. We certainly do this regularly for many clients, the vast majority of them paper-based.” [Channel 4 News (London), 7/17/2005]
Power’s Controversial Past – Power was a high-ranking police officer in Dorset when he left the force after an investigation into drug trafficking allegations. He was not indicted and the results of the investigation were not released. [Sunday Times (London), 8/8/1993] Power took part in a May 2004 BBC program entitled “Panorama: London Under Attack,” which staged a mock terrorist attack in London to test emergency preparedness. The sequence of events in that program also bears an uncanny resemblance to the 7/7 bombings: three subway explosions timed closely together, followed by an above ground explosion about an hour later. The main difference is the fourth explosion is a chlorine tanker while in the real bombings it is a bus. [BBC, 5/16/2004] Power will make no further significant public statements except for a 2006 blog post on a BBC web page to dismiss conspiracy claims regarding the exercise. [Power, 9/16/2006]
July 7, 2005: 52 Killed in ‘7/7’ Bombings in London; Three Subway Trains and One Bus Are Hit
England suffers its worst terrorist attack when four bombs go off in London during the morning rush hour. At 8:50 a.m. bombs go off on three London Underground trains within 50 seconds of each other. A fourth bomb goes off at 9:47 a.m. on a double-decker bus, near Tavistock Square. Fifty-six people, including the four bombers, are killed. The bombings become popularly known as ‘7/7.’ [Daily Telegraph, 7/7/2005; Daily Mail, 7/8/2005; CNN, 7/22/2005] The alleged bombers, all British residents between the ages of 18 and 30, are Mohammad Sidique Khan, Hasib Mir Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer, and Germaine Lindsay. All were British nationals of Pakistani descent, except Lindsay, who was born in Jamaica, but moved to England when he was five. [Daily Telegraph, 7/16/2005; BBC, 7/21/2005] In 2004, Khan had been the subject of a routine threat assessment by the British intelligence agency MI5, after his name came up during an investigation into an alleged plot to explode a truck bomb in London. However, MI5 did not consider him a threat and did not place him under surveillance. [BBC, 7/17/2005; London Times, 7/17/2005] According to the Independent, Tanweer had similarly been scrutinized by MI5 that year, but was also not considered a threat. [Independent, 12/17/2005] Khan and Tanweer had flown to Pakistan together in November 2004, returning together in February 2005. However, what they did during their stay is unclear. [BBC, 7/18/2005; CNN, 7/20/2005] Less than a month before the bombings, the British government lowered its formal threat assessment one level, from “severe general” to “substantial,” prompted by a confidential report by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Centre (JTAC). JTAC, which is made up of 100 top intelligence and law enforcement officials, concluded, “At present there is not a group with both the current intent and the capability to attack [Britain]” (see Mid-June 2005). [New York Times, 7/19/2005; London Times, 7/19/2005] The attacks also coincide with the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, attended by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush, amongst others. [Guardian, 7/7/2005] Consequently, 1,500 officers from London’s Metropolitan Police, including many anti-terrorist specialists, are away in Scotland as part of the force of 12,000 created to police the event. [Press Association (London), 7/7/2005; London Times, 7/10/2005]
July 7, 2005: British Allegedly Give Israelis Advanced Warning of 7/7 London Bombings; Accounts Conflict
Several hours after the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), the Associated Press reports: “British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday’s explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.… [Israeli Finance Minister and former Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said.… Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference.” [Associated Press, 7/7/2005] Israeli Army radio also reports that “Scotland Yard had intelligence warnings of the attacks a short time before they occurred,” and “The Israeli Embassy in London was notified in advance, resulting in Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu remaining in his hotel room rather than make his way to the hotel adjacent to the site of the first explosion.” [IsraelNationalNews, 7/7/2005]
Israel Denies Reports – Several hours after that, Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom officially denies reports that Scotland Yard passed any advanced warning to Israel about the bombings, and British authorities deny they had any advanced warning at all. The Associated Press withdraws its earlier report and replaces it with one containing denials from Shalom and others about any warning. It states that Netanyahu was warned to stay in his hotel room, but the warning came shortly after the first bombing. [Stratfor, 7/7/2005; Associated Press, 7/7/2005]
Stratfor: Other Way Round – Later that same day, Stratfor, a respected private intelligence agency, notes the denials, but reports “Contrary to original claims that Israel was warned ‘minutes before’ the first attack, unconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks ‘a couple of days’ previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm. The British government sat on this information for days and failed to respond.” [Stratfor, 7/7/2005]
Denial from Netanyahu – The next day, Netanyahu will call the report of his advanced warning “entirely false.” He says: “When the first bomb went off, we were departing our hotel. While we were on our way out, the security people said there was an explosion near the area I was scheduled to speak. They asked us to go back and stay put in our hotel.” [WorldNetDaily, 7/8/2005]
Call from Sharon – An Israeli newspaper also reports that “Shortly after the first explosion in London yesterday morning, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was scheduled to give a speech in the British capital, to inquire about his well-being and that of his entourage.” [Ha’aretz, 7/8/2005]
Warning Too Late – On July 11, the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag will report that the Mossad office in London received advance notice about 7/7 bombings, but only about six minutes before the first bombing. As a result, it was impossible to take any action to prevent the bombings. One Mossad source says, “They reached us too late for us to do something about it.” [Israel Insider, 7/11/2005]
Shortly After July 7, 2005: Tip from Belgian Government Informant Foils Follow-Up to 7/7 Bombings
Abdelkader Belliraj, a Belgian government informant leading a Moroccan militant group, allegedly helps foil an attack in Britain. Shortly after the 7/7 London bombings (see July 7, 2005), Belgian intelligence gives the British government “very precise” information from Belliraj about a planned follow-up attack. Arrests are made and material is seized in Liverpool, but the incident is not reported in the media at the time. (Apparently this is a different plot to a largely unsuccessful copycat bomb plot two weeks after the 7/7 bombings (see July 21, 2005)). A Belgian newspaper will say the attacks could have killed dozens of people. Belliraj had developed links to al-Qaeda in 2001 while being paid by Belgian’s internal security service (see 2001). He will be arrested in Morocco in 2008 (see February 18, 2008). [Agence France-Presse, 3/15/2008]
