In the wake of the July 7 2005 London underground bombings, the British security aparatus told the public and Parliament that there was no way the bombing could have been prevented. The bombers were "clean skins", men with no previous record of terrorist associations, and therefore not on MI5's radar.
They lied. Two of the bombers had been under surveillance in connection with a plot to detonate a large fertiliser bomb in 2004. He was bugged, photographed, and listed as a terrorist associate in MI5 databases. But with 52 dead bodies on their hands, it seems to have been considered awkward to mention that fact, in case it raised embarassing questions about the security services' competance. Those questions are likely to be asked now, if not by the government then by an increasingly suspicious public. And unless MI5 has some good answers, they need to be held to account for their failure.
Incompetence? Failure? How about chronic under-resourcing and recruiting problems?
ReplyDeleteMI5, at the time, were investigating at least 50 terrorist cells in Britain, some with highly advanced plans of attack, and keeping surveillance on the hundreds or thousands of suspects involved would have taxed any organization. Especially one designed to deal with foreign espionage and Irish terrorism, which had been significantly downsized since the end of the Cold War and the worst of the PIRA campaign. MI5 have to succeed constantly, the terrorists need only succeed once.
I/S, I've never seen you argue in favour of increasing funding or support to intelligence organizations, or relaxing the red tape and regulations which may hamper their operations. For you to then question their incompetence and accuse them of failure, while never acknowledging their successes, is hugely unfair.