Fascinating as the repellent Downing Street spin and defamation scandal involving Gordon Brown and his Labour party apparatchik henchmen is, it is not the only scandal to have emerged last week.
There was also the resignation of Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, who was the head of the Counter-terrorism Command of the Metropolitan Police Service. after his extraordinary breach of security, in Downing Street, which was technically a criminal offence under the Official Secrets Act 1989 section 8 Safeguarding of information
Arguably, this was an even worse breach of security than that involving the Top Secret Joint Intelligence Committee briefing documents left on a commuter train scandal:
See: Official Secrets Act prosecutions and media spin - Richard Jackson has been treated more leniently than Corporal Daniel James
These high level summary reports are meant to be carefully sanitised so as not to reveal clues which might compromise a live tactical intelligence or police operation, which is exactly what Bob Quick managed to do with Operation Pathway.
Why are documents which are Protectively Marked as Secret or above, ever even printed out and carried in transit, rather than being sent on ahead to a secret briefing, electronically, protected securely through encryption ?
There have been reports in the media that this investigation was not really intending to arrest the suspects in dawn raids last Thursday morning, but that this was just an option, and that the plot , if there is one, should have been kept track of until there was some actual evidence of bomb making or weapons procurement etc.
The weekend media leaks that some or perhaps all of the Pakistani students will simply be deported,
See The Times Pakistani 'terror plot suspects' to be deported rather than charged
and today's stories that there no explosives have yet to be found, also lends credence to the view that the "must cover our backsides" precautionary bureaucratic principle played as much in the minds of those involved, as any real threat to national security did.
See The Times - Terror arrests: police granted more time for 'al-Qaeda plot' interviews
The rushed arrests last Wednesday afternoon, certainly did put innocent bystanders and passers by at much more risk than dawn raids would have:
- Stopping a vehicle on the motorway is fraught with risk at any time, and even more so when guns are involved.
- At least one of the people who were jumped on and threatened with guns, and made to lay on the found for over half an hour, at John Moores University in Liverpool was not even actually arrested.
One of those arrested has already been released without charge (into the hands of the immigration bureaucracy).
There are even suggestions that some of the alleged plotters were under surveillance before and after they got into the country as bogus students.
Does that mean that one or more of them is a double agent or even an agent provocateur in a US style entrapment plot ?
There are also suggestions of a lack of coordination and clear leadership between the various police forces and intelligence agencies involved, something which, if true, seems to make a mockery of the North West regional anti-terrorism offices set up by both ACPO and MI5 the Security Service.
Will this end up as another "thought crime" plot which did not actually pose as much of a threat as the authorities have been spinning to the media ?
To me there is just so much wrong with this whole sorry episode. Such an unusual trigger event, being either conveniently-timed or a handy springboard for a number of things.
I dare say many of these are easily explained, and some are simple opportunism, but it doesn't remove the general unease at this. Split for clarity rather than necessarily being separate points.
1) a loose page, neither stapled nor fastened
2) only one or two other pages being carried
3) the folder being carried looks rather empty
4) gov: look a terror plot, lucky we caught them before anything was in progress
5) gov: see the importance of ID-for-foreigners
6) gov: see the need for e-borders
7) gov: look we are tough we will deport them
8) resignation just a few days before the report on the Green affair
9) nice diversion from all sorts of other media items
10) hard to say is the departure was surprisingly rapid given the unusual circumstances
11) falling back to visa irregularities sounds like desperation
12) no logo, no date, nothing - what would be normal for this kind of document?
13) if an entire operation can be invalidated by the exposure of a single page, why is that page even printed, let alone being carried around so carelessly?
There's more but really that's plenty for now...
Do those who get deported get refunds for their college fees? If nothing of substance comes from this, how many people will end up being turned against britain? Being forced to move early and an apparent result of 'nothing' has seriously damaged our couter-terror credibility as well. The consequences (direct, indirect, potential) are huge.
An interesting question is why did this document even need to be discussed with politicians. It is my understanding that the executive and legislature pass the laws and the police enforce them.
Why are police operational matters being revealed to politicians in such a fine detail?
It's also a strange irony that Manchester United's stadium is AGAIN being hyped up in anonymous briefings as a potential target. You'd have thought they'd have learnt their lesson.
@ HMPB - the Home Secretary and Prime Minister should be briefed about Very Serious Terrorism or Espionage Plots, so that they can call in extra resources from the military special forces (SAS, SBS, SRR etc.), the other military armed forces the other intelligence agencies i.e. M16, GCHQ, or to get the Treasury to freeze terrorist financial assets etc.,
One would hope that they would actually be briefed in detail before deciding to declare a State of Emergency under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 etc.
However, none of that seems to have been relevant at the stage of the alleged Operation Pathway plot before the arrests were made.
Who exactly is mentioning "Manchester United" again, as a realistic target ? Terrorist sympathisers or propagandists, perhaps ?
The Manchester United football stadium is a potential target, but so are those of Manchester City or Liverpool or any other sporting stadia in the North West.
The one decent bit of Police media public relations during this affair, was the strong denial of the media speculation about such alleged targets, by the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police Peter Fahy:
See the Manchester Evening News :
The media are reporting that another 9 of those arrested, are being released without charge, presumably because of a lack of evidence, to be deported, eventually, by the Borders Agency.
This leaves only two of those arrested, still in custody, with hints of any actual no weapons or explosives.
In spite of this Home Secretary Jacqui Smith claimed in her almost new content free Ministerial Statement to Parliament, the details og having already been briefed or leaked to the media:
20 Apr 2009 : Column 21
Operation Pathway
3.34 pm
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Jacqui Smith): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the 12 arrests which took place in the north-west of England on 8 April under the Terrorism Act 2000.
[...]
On Wednesday 8 April, the north-west counter-terrorism unit, working with Merseyside police, Greater Manchester police and Lancashire constabulary, arrested 12 men under the Terrorism Act. Of those 12 individuals, 11 remain in custody and have had their detention extended to 22 April. Ten of the individuals are Pakistani nationals and one is a British citizen. The 12th individual, who is believed to be an Afghan, has been transferred to immigration detention. In addition to the arrests, a number of premises have been searched.
The arrests were pre-planned as the result of an ongoing joint police and Security Service investigation. The decision to take action was an operational matter for the police and the Security Service, but the Prime Minister and I were kept fully informed of developments. The priority at all times has been to act to maintain public safety.
[...]
Mr. Quick was carrying papers that contained sensitive operational detail about the investigation and some of that detail was visible in the photographs. As a result, a decision was made by the police to bring forward the arrests to a few hours earlier than had been originally planned. The fact that these papers were inadvertently made public did not make any difference to the decision to carry out arrests—it simply changed the timing by a matter of hours.
[...]
As I outlined in my statement, the press reporting was wrong. The arrests were not brought forward by weeks; as I said, they were brought forward by a matter of hours. That goes for all the planned arrests, and the police were satisfied that the operation was carried out as they would have carried it out had it happened several hours later.
[...]
20 Apr 2009 : Column 27
We have said this time and time again - "disruption" of alleged terrorist plots, before there is any hard evidence of even attempts to procure or produce weapons or explosives etc. is not good enough, and is, in fact , a propaganda victory for the terrorists which risks radicalising otherwise harmless sympathisers into active terrorists.
The Guardian reports some more about the bureaucratic blame game now surrounding Operation Pathway:
All 12 now seem to have been released without charge,
11 of them (one is British) will, eventually, be deported, unless they all end up claiming asylum because Pakistan and Afghanistan are not "safe" countries for them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8011341.stm
There is not even anything under the "catch all" Terrorism Act 2000 section 58 collection of information "thought crime" offence, with which to charge them with.
This makes a mockery of Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith's claims, and the "anonymous briefings" to the media, that this was somehow a major threat to the national security of the UK.
We hardly ever expect the arty farty classics / sociology / politics - philosophy - economics trained .Labour Government politicians, securocrats and spin doctors, to know anything sensible about science or technology, but surely even they must have heard of the Classical Greek Aesop's fable of the boy who cried wolf ?