[1. I've mentioned this Wade thing before but feel it needs its own, expanded entry. 2. I've come to think of the July 7th bombs as the 'G8 bombings', for they appear to have been timed to coincide with start of the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland.]
On Thursday 3rd November, 2005, the Daily MIrror ran an important story.
FEARS were last night growing over the ability to stop terror attacks after the security blunders that let the London bombers slip through the net. [sic]The four men who brought carnage to streets of the capital on July 7 were watched by intelligence officers a year before they killed 52 people on Tube trains and a bus.
But security chiefs called off the operation after it was decided the gang posed no threat. Last week the Mirror revealed how 30-year-old ringleader Mohammed Sidique Khan was filmed with a terror suspect last year and spotted chatting to an al-Qaeda fixer. No action was taken against him.
And last night a police source said the other three bombers - Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Jermaine Lindsay, 19, and Hasib Hussain, 18 - were also being tracked.
They were on a list of up to 100 people throughout the country feared to be Islamic fanatics.
A fifth man, thought to be an al-Qaeda operative, was being watched. He is on the run, believed to be in Pakistan, and could return to attack Britain again.Field agents kept an eye the men's behaviour for several weeks but decided there was nothing out of the ordinary and pulled the plug.
The police source said the four "did not fit the preconceived terrorist profile". [my emphases]
So, all four (or five) G8 bombers were under surveillance by MI5 as potential terrorists until about July 2004. Then, Able-Danger-like, MI5 loses all interest in and stops watching them. Of all the fewer-than-100 fanatics under MI5's surveillance, it's those very four (or five) who will bomb London 12 months on. The Mirror's story, if true, looked very bad for MI5 - MI5 was shown to be utterly incompetent, or worse. It was a story that ought to have got a lot of attention. But then the Rebekah Wade affair happened.
Even I, who would never read buy the Sun and have never watched an episode of Eastenders, was transfixed by the 4am arrest of the Sun's editor for spousal abuse. I had glanced at the Mirror's scoop on the web that morning, and had thought it important, but then my mind was so distracted by the unfolding Rebekah Wade drama that I forgot even to bookmark the story. As things got ever more surreal, when Ross Kemp's - Mr Wade's - on-screen brother's ex-girlfriend slapped the latter around, a la Wade, thoughts about MI5 incompetence and/or skullduggery were nearly banished completely. As Max Clifford said: "You couldn't make it up. One story like this is big, but two stories on one day about two actors who play brothers on one of the country's biggest TV shows is massive."
Wade and Kemp had been, the previous evening, consoling David Blunkett on his second resignation from the Cabinet in a year. That afternoon, at his parting press conference, Blunkett had been asked if he believed he had ever been bugged. He sighed and smiled and said, "On my walks in Derbyshire I have even suspected at times that the birds in the trees were wired up." I don't think he was referring only to the press when he made his remark - I suspect Blunkett suspects that MI5 had a hand in his downfall. Be that as it may, Wade and Kemp returned home after midnight.
Sometime around 3am, a 999 call is placed from within their house. The cops arrive, Kemp has a minor facial wound, and Wade is nicked. Who placed the call? Kemp has a split lip and he calls 999 to get his wife, the Sun's editor, arrested for spousal abuse? Did he fear for his life? If not, why wasn't he arrested for wasting police time? Why would Kemp want to ruin his wife's public reputation? The story of how Wade came to arrested doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
If my theory holds, MI5 pulled the Rebekah Wade stunt in order to distract attention from the Mirror's embarrassing scoop. I wonder what Wade may have done to piss off MI5 - was it her friendship with Blunkett, or something that she had previously published, or was her record irrelevant compared to the burning need, perhaps at only several hours' notice, to create a diversion from the Daily Mirror exclusive that morning? And I also wonder at the role of Max Clifford, his part in Blunkett's, and others', downfall, and his role on November 3rd, 2005 - might there be more to Max Clifford than meets the eye?
Posted by: Harry | 2006.05.31 at 13:24