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Parliament’s 7/7 Bombing Report is Inadequate
The British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee issued a report yesterday on the July 7, 2005 bombings in London. The report concludes that no one was asleep at the wheel, suggests that MI5 and MI6 are in over their heads nonetheless, and that a few million pounds would help. The report merely proves that a fully public inquiry is necessary.
One part of the report reads, “The story of what was known about the July 7 group prior to July indicates that if more resources had been in place sooner the chances of preventing the July attacks could have increased.” That stands to reason; more resources usually mean more work gets done, in this case investigating possible terrorists.
However, the report also says,
55. It is also clear that, prior to the 7 July attacks, the Security Service had come across Siddeque Khan and Shazad Tanweer [two of the bombers] on the peripheries of other surveillance and investigative operations. At that time their identities were unknown to the Security Service and there was no appreciation of their subsequent significance. As there were more pressing priorities at the time, including the need to disrupt known plans to attack the UK, it was decided not to investigate them further or seek to identify them. When resources became available, attempts were made to find out more about these two and other peripheral contacts, but these resources were soon diverted back to what were considered to be higher investigative priorities.
56. It is possible that the chances of identifying attack planning and of preventing the 7 July attacks might have been greater had different investigative decisions been taken in 2003–2005. Nonetheless, we conclude that, in light of the other priority investigations being conducted and the limitations on Security Service resources, the decisions not to give greater investigative priority to these two individuals were understandable.
So the committee is arguing that the lack or resources forced certain decisions on the spymasters. This is, of course, nonsense of the highest order. In espionage, there are always choices. Instead of blaming a lack of resources (which applies to everything), the real culprit was the decision to lower the terror threat level in May of 2005 from “severe general” to “substantial” (at least, the Brits don’t use the Crayola system). If there was a diminished threat, then surely resources should have been freed up to use in investigations that remained.
It is easy to nitpick through a 54-page parliamentary committee report, but this one leaves open some substantial questions about Britain’s ability to fight homegrown terrorists, who don’t mind killing the innocent (unlike the Provisional IRA, which usually provided warnings before bombs exploded). A full public inquiry, like America’s 9/11 Commission is the best way to put these doubts to rest. There will be other attacks on British soil someday, but getting things right now may reduce the number and severity of those attacks. It’s a matter of fixing problems, not blame.
© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.
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