Were the London Bombers "Drug Mules"?
Xymphora puts out a reasonable theory:
I think the most likely scenario is that they were tricked into thinking they were involved as drug mules in the movement of drugs from Leeds to London (see also here). They would have no need to be concerned about the video cameras, as they would have no fear of being seen together and leading authorities back to their 'cell' (which of course doesn't exist). The rucksacks too big for the bombs inside might have been filled with stuffing intended to feel that they were filled with drugs. Their instructions would have been to meet with someone either on a particular subway car or bus, or at the end of a particular subway or bus route, and hand over the rucksack. Then they would all assemble at a central location in London to receive their payments.It is an attractive theory, however, a comment here makes several good points:
No Islamic will or video celebrating suicide, no public celebration of the 'martyrs', unsatisfactory assumption of responsibility, overly large rucksacks, happy-go-lucky bombers with no concerns about being videotaped together or leaving behind identification that would lead back to the 'cell' which supposedly had plans for future attacks, uncharacteristic candidates for suicide bombers - it all adds up to one thing. Someone tricked the four into believing they were drug mules. Once we accept that fact, we have to accept that there is absolutely no reason to believe the Official Story that this violence was connected to Islamic terrorism. It could have been set up by anybody, including the intelligence organization of any country. Of course, the fact that four Muslim men were chosen as the patsies gives us a clue as to who might have been involved.
Somebody's already made this point but a 30 year old special needs teacher with a young family doesn't fit the the drug runner profile either. Aside from being Muslim, the only other thing that appears to connect these guys is a love of sport - if you wanted to work up an alternate story I'd start with that angle.Another commenter at the same place also has some interesting points:
But I personally wouldn't
The drug mule scenario seems to be gaining ground on certain blogs that doubt the official explanation for the London Bombings.
This is really dangerous.
The consequences are that it will divide those who are sceptical and the alternate explanation may also serve as a 'straw man' that the authorities can knock down and discredit all those who doubt.
There's plenty wrong with the current story being told by the authorities. We would all be better advised to keep the ball in their half of the field, and pick at what's wrong in what they're saying, rather than setting up speculative alternate explanations that they can attack and serve as a distraction.
Don't repeat the mistakes of the past, please...
I note the good advice to concentrate on the endless flaws in the Official Version. The pattern of some of these flaws I do find suggestive, however.Yes, many suspicious things here and I'm glad to see British skeptics thinking about this.
Has anyone else wondered if the rucksacks and those carrying them are what Alfred Hitchcock called a "McGuffin"?
The circumstances of the blasts suggest they were unlikely to be hand-delivered - their simultaneity and all going off in trains. This seems even less credible performed by dupes and in a tight 20 minutes from Kings Cross. What if the bombs were put under or in the trains overnight? Like Madrid. Each bomb in a different carriage 1-2-3 from front to look random. Getting everyone to focus on these 4 individuals and their motivation has dragged attention from the blasts themselves. 2 eyewitnesses in bomb carriages on BBC site described a hole ripped in the floor and inspection covers blown out. Observer report on 10 July included hole ripping through floor as one of the features of their reconstruction. Very unlikely with bomb placed on floor, surely?
The 4th guy gets connected to the bus bomb, an odd event which is intended to be suggestive of the non-existent rucksack bombs. Another apparently random, "human error" touch. This bomb too has been pre-placed. Look at the bombed bus photos and recall what the police have been saying about where it went off. Have a look at the back of one of those same London buses. The bus blast serves as proof of the rucksack bombs and it gives a focus for the visual appetite of the media. Compare number of images of bus to Tube. I've only seen one long shot of a train. Another big distraction is the notion of small bombs, let alone home-made. These bombs don't really seem small to me, knocking down a wall next to one train and damaging the tunnel above another. Stops people thinking about big bombs, professionally placed, unchallenged, like Madrid.
People will notice that it would be hard to steer these 4 guys into the right carriages in the right trains and onto the 30 bus. Who says they were in these places? The police seemed satisfied that them recording the presence of ID at the bomb sites is quite sufficient. No DNA tests for example. (The Sun reported the Jamaican guy's wife demanding DNA proof.) The 4 were 4 of the first 5 dead identified, weren't they?
The wealth of CCTV evidence is a bit conspicuous by its absence, isn't it? The bus is already written off. Just one of those things, it seems, from police reaction. Bomb on bus and out-of-action CCTV can not possibly be connected in Scotland Yard's mind, like possible signs of a criminal having been on the vehicle overnight. Where is the film from the various bombed trains? Have we seen even the much-cited Kings Cross footage, come to that? No footage showed any rucksack bombers at Madrid, ditto the 9/11 hijackers. We must await revelations.
Another advantage of dead men is that you can say and write whatever you like about them. If these guys' ID hadn't been found on those trains and they were not presumed dead, none of this stuff about them could be put in media releases or placed in the media, could it? And what might people be thinking in that absence?
posted by spooked at 11:15 PM
2 Comments:
Stratfor presented this analysis regarding the "theories" and Debka is reporting that the investigation is looking not towards Egypt and Pakistan but Morroco....London Bombings: OPSEC Errors or Intelligence Failure?
Stratfor has introduced a weekly article written by Fred Burton, Stratfor vice president for counterterrorism and corporate security, that takes a tactical approach to analyzing terrorism and terrorist groups, the motivations and methods of various movements and the impact on security and public interests in the United States and abroad. We believe you will find this supplement to our geopolitical analysis timely and relevant to your intelligence needs. Please watch for details in the coming weeks on how you can register to receive this mailing on a regular basis. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing your feedback.
By Fred Burton
Nearly two weeks after the London bombings, investigators have established a critical mass of forensic and other evidence, and it is now certain that all four bombers died at the scenes of the explosions. The identities of the bombers have been established, timelines of their movements recreated, and revelations that at least one of them previously had been under MI5 surveillance for a time have emerged. It also is strongly suspected that the four-man cell was operating under the guidance -- or at least was in contact with -- a shadowy fifth operative or a handler of some type in Pakistan.
All in all, it seems unquestionable that the July 7 bombings were well-planned, well-coordinated, trademark strikes by al Qaeda.
Yet in reviewing the growing mass of evidence, there is still something that doesn't add up. It's the kind of thing that seems innocuous enough, but sticks in a detective's brain -- a clue to which he returns again and again, trying to make it fit with the rest of the puzzle. And in this case, it's the image of all four bombing suspects together, captured by closed-circuit television cameras, entering a train station at Luton early on the day of the bombings.
For anyone with a background in intelligence and tradecraft, it's hard to downplay the significance of that image. One of the first rules learned in Intelligence Officer Training 101 is that operatives working together on a mission should not travel together or engage in noticeable contact, for fear of providing leads to anyone who might be conducting surveillance. For al Qaeda, the risks of putting live operatives together in the same place and time -- at any point, but particularly on the day of a suicide mission -- would be enormous. And those risks would be amplified in a place like Britain, which is blanketed with CCTV cameras that, as we know from evidence gathered in the past, would have been systematically noted by al Qaeda operatives conducting their own pre-operational surveillance.
This leaves us with two possibilities: Either al Qaeda is not as slick and as smart as the world -- and particularly the intelligence agencies that have failed to prevent its strikes -- would like to believe, or the 7/7 operatives were unwitting bombers who might have been duped into carrying out a suicide mission.
Let's consider the facts supporting an "unwitting bombers" theory for a moment.
First, we know from materials gathered in connection with arrests made since 9/11 that al Qaeda conducts extensive and detailed pre-operational surveillance. This means that before any strike, someone is sent to check out existing security measures and other details at possible targets, and along the routes that cell members would travel on the day of the actual mission. These all must be countered or else somehow factored into the plans in order for an operation to succeed.
Certainly, the 7/7 cell members -- or at least their handler -- would be aware of the presence of security cameras at the train stations and realize that this footage would be carefully scanned in the aftermath of the explosions. If the bombers were aware of the true nature of their mission, it would hardly be difficult to spread their movements out -- arriving at the train station at staggered times and thus throwing at least some complications into the post-attack investigation.
Moreover, all four men were carrying their actual identification documents at the times of the explosions, which have become part of the forensic evidence gathered. This would be extremely foolish, assuming they actually knew they were on their way to their deaths -- again, since it would greatly speed certain aspects of the investigation that easily could be dragged out, helping the trail grow cold before authorities could close in on their handler or other operatives with whom they potentially had contact.
Finally, it's not beyond the pale that al Qaeda would use unwitting operatives. The informant who led U.S. authorities to Ramzi Yousef, who planned the first World Trade Center bombings, was initially called into service to test out a plan involving explosives planted inside baby dolls -- and realized at some point along the way that he might in fact be a suicide operative who wasn't prepared to die. Rather than carry out his mission, he reported it to authorities instead.
Our longstanding assessment of al Qaeda has been that it is an extremely resource-scarce organization -- for operational security reasons, if no others. The fewer people who know about or are part of a plot, the safer they and their plans are. We also believe it to be an extremely risk-averse and security-conscious organization; otherwise, it could not have achieved the success it did with 9/11, the Madrid attacks and other operations.
This assessment remains firmly intact -- and the implications for the future spin forward in terrifying ways if it can be assumed that the 7/7 operatives were unwitting bombers. Speaking from the standpoint of a professional who has trained operatives in the past, it makes perfect sense to me for all four bombers to be seen traveling together if they believed their purpose was to conduct a training run. For a handler, it's just easier to keep the group together in tow.
Of course, we must speculate here, but suppose the handler -- who might have been Mohammed Saddique Khan, the elder statesman of the four-man cell, or a shadowy fifth operative who may or may not have visited Britain prior to the attacks -- had called the group together under the guise of testing them. Perhaps the goal was to plan "another Madrid," or simply -- in the cell members' minds -- to determine what was possible and where the risks in an operation lay. In this scenario, the training run would be most easily carried out if they departed from a central point, timed their runs and then met again afterward to report their findings.
However, they would have been -- without their knowledge -- carrying explosive devices with pre-set timers, and only their handler would have been aware that the cell members would not live to possibly change their minds or tell tales. In that case, the presence of the cameras or other security measures could be more easily discounted, and al Qaeda's operational security (OPSEC) would remain intact.
If we stand by this argument, there are several potential aftereffects that would play in al Qaeda's favor. Not the least of these is the fact that the bombers were British-born citizens who carried out an attack on their home soil. It is extremely difficult for many to accept that native-born citizens could be al Qaeda sympathizers, and this tends to amplify the terror effect of the strikes.
That said, we must examine the other possibility -- that the bombers knowingly undertook a suicide mission. The tale then follows a standard pattern: a four-man cell of hard-core militants, intent on death and destruction.
There is plenty of evidence to support this case as well -- particularly as more details emerge about the operatives' movements in the days prior to the attack.
For instance, it has been confirmed that three of the bombers visited Pakistan last year -- two of them, Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, arriving and departing together from Karachi
-- and authorities believe they might have been radicalized while attending madrassas there. Furthermore, there are now reports that the suspects themselves purchased many of the materials used in the attacks -- including the large rucksacks each of the bombers carried aboard the trains -- in Leeds in the days prior to the strike.
Perhaps most damning is word that, with forensics well in hand at this stage, there is "no evidence" of any timing devices having been used, authorities have said. Now, that is not the same thing as saying there is direct evidence the devices were command-detonated, and this has been a matter of some conflicting reports since the bombings occurred. However, the latest revelations from British authorities strongly suggest that the bombs would have been manually -- and purposely -- detonated.
Assuming that the London strikes were a standard suicide mission, all the aftereffects mentioned above remain; only the belief in al Qaeda's reverence for operational security is cast into doubt.
And it well could be that -- as painful as this is for intelligence and security agencies around the world to stomach, looking back over the history of successful attacks -- the network's tradecraft really is that lousy.
Consider Ahmed Ressam, whose behavior as he crossed the border from Canada was so suspicious that he attracted the attention of authorities and the Millennium Plot was unearthed. Ahmad Ajaj, traveling in the company of Yousef, was stopped at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 1992 carrying a suitcase full of manuals on bomb-making techniques. The Madrid bombers all boarded the trains they blew up from the same station. Mohammed Atta left pocket litter and documents detailing the 9/11 plot behind in a rental car. And Zacarias Moussaoui applied to a training school to learn how to fly -- but not land -- airplanes. The list goes on.
As evidence continues to mount, the balance seems to be tilting in favor of the traditional suicide mission. The bitter pill for intelligence agents and analysts is that al Qaeda actually can be that sloppy and yet still be effective. It's almost like a contradiction in terms.
There is, of course, a third and final possibility -- that all of the bombers' movements were carefully planned and calculated, with all of the clues they left behind for investigators intended as a final, brazen thrust.
In some respects, it would be more comforting to believe the London bombers were duped into carrying out their mission. But any way you slice it, something about the 7/7 operation is going to be very hard to swallow.
Send questions or comments on this article to analysis@stratfor.com.
Just found this posting - You mention my comment. I humbly suggest I was the originator of the whole story - see original of xymphora who takes you to postmanpatel.
4 weeks on and I have no reason to change the basis of the plot - who was controlling it? - probably we will never know.
Billy Bowles who I initially discussed it with and he did a joint pce on williambowles.info about it goes rather srtong on gents based in the Eastern end of the med somehwere inland from the port of Jaffa.
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