The Defence of the Realm (154 page)

Dissident Republican violence continued during the early months of 2010. In January a thirty-three-year-old Catholic PSNI officer was seriously injured by an under-car bomb in County Antrim, and the Real IRA
opened fire twice on police stations in County Armagh. In February forty families had to be evacuated from their homes after a pipe-bomb attack on a Belfast police station, and a large car bomb exploded outside Newry Courthouse in County Down, while police were evacuating the area. The PSNI said that it was a ‘sheer miracle' that no one had been killed or injured. It seemed only a matter of time before one of the dissident attacks ended in tragedy.

By 2008–9 three-quarters of Security Services resources were devoted to countering Islamist terrorism (up from two-thirds in 2007–8).
¹¹⁹
In 2005 the Service had identified five key elements in the radicalization process: attendance at a mosque linked to Islamist extremism; the influence of Islamist friends and associates; the role of an extreme spiritual leader; the influence of Islamist propaganda; and attendance at jihad training camps. Operation OVERT helped to modify the Security Service's view of the problem of Islamist radicalization. By 2007 the Service placed less emphasis on the mosque:

Extremists are moving away from mosques to conduct their activities in private homes and business premises . . . We assess that radicalisation increasingly occurs in private meeting places, be they closed prayer groups at mosques, self-defence classes at gyms or training camps in the UK or overseas.

Social networks, MI5 now believed, could sometimes be more important than Islamist preachers: ‘In the case of Op OVERT, it is assessed that friendships from school and universities were the initial basis for many of the relationships of those involved.' The most effective Islamist propaganda was increasingly spread in cyberspace rather than by radical mosques:

Recent study has also raised the importance of the internet as a vehicle for extremist propaganda, which may be of particular importance to younger individuals, for whom access to more conventional meeting places (and the radicalising influences therein) may be restricted. Chat rooms, message boards and forums provide opportunities for extremists to establish contacts and radicalise each other.
¹²⁰

The Security Service was well aware that its own operations could do no more than contain the threat from Islamist terrorism. The success of a broader government strategy, summarized as Prevent, Pursue, Protect and Prepare, was vital:

•  preventing terrorism by tackling the radicalisation of individuals

•  pursuing terrorists and those that sponsor them

•  protecting the public, key national services and UK interests overseas

•  preparing for the consequences

In an address to Security Service staff early in 2009, Jonathan Evans added a fifth ‘P': Perseverance to underpin the other four.

In the two years from January 2007 to January 2009 eighty-six people (almost half of whom pleaded guilty) were convicted of Islamist terrorist offences. Among them, in December 2008, was Bilal Abdulla, a twentyeight-year-old doctor at the Royal Alexandria Hospital, Paisley, described as ‘a religious extremist and bigot' by the judge who sentenced him to life imprisonment with a minimum term of thirty-two years. With a fellow Islamist, Kafeel Ahmed, Abdulla had staged unsuccessful attacks on London nightclubs and Glasgow airport, using cars loaded with explosive material. Ahmed died from severe burns sustained in the Glasgow attack before he could be brought to trial. After the arrest of Abdulla, two further vehicles were discovered, together with gas cylinders and petrol cans, which, it appeared, were intended for a further series of attacks designed to cause mass casualties.

The success in bringing Islamist terrorists to court paradoxically made MI5 operations against them more difficult. What they learned from court cases about operational methods also increased their ability to take evasive action. The Security Service believed that the core Al Qaida leadership on Pakistan's north-west frontier continued to plan major attacks in Britain, using British nationals and residents. Seventy-five per cent of the British Islamists investigated by the Security Service in recent years had links with Pakistan.
¹²¹
In January 2009, Jonathan Evans publicly acknowledged that, if another attack took place, the Service would probably discover, as after 7/7, that some of the terrorists responsible were already on its books. ‘But the fact we know of an individual and the fact that they have had some association with extremists doesn't mean we are going to be indefinitely in a position to be confident about everything that they are doing, because we have to prioritise.' In the summer of 2009 as the Security Service approached its centenary it was engaged in almost 200 major investigations of Islamist terrorism, over 15 per cent of which, it concluded, represented ‘a high level of threat'.
¹²²
Almost none of the 2009 investigations were publicly revealed. A rare exception was Operation PATHWAY. Late in 2008 the Security Service began investigating intelligence reports that Al Qaida attack personnel were present in the north of England. By the spring of 2009 its investigations focused on Abid Naseer, a twenty-three-year-old Pakistani living in Manchester and studying for a BSc in computer studies at John Moores University Liverpool, who was believed to be linked to Al Qaida. On 3 April Naseer was seen seated at a keyboard in an internet
café in Cheetham Hill, Manchester. An unsigned email (subsequently recovered) sent while he was at the keyboard, and believed to be from him, included what was thought to be a coded reference to attack planning:

My mates are well and yes my affair with Nadia is soon turning to family life. I met with Nadia family and we both parties have agreed to conduct the Nikkah [Muslim marriage ceremony] after 15th and before 20th of this month. I have confirmed the dates from them and you should be ready between these dates. I am delighted that they have strong family values . . .

Surveillance and investigation of Naseer and other students in Manchester and Liverpool with whom he was in contact (all but one of them Pakistani) had found no sign of Nadia (or of Naseer's involvement with any other woman) and no evidence of wedding preparations. In two previous Islamist terrorist cases which had led to convictions similar coded language had been used to indicate attack planning. It thus seemed possible that the reference to 15 to 20 April (in the Islamic calendar the Easter-holiday period) referred to the planned timing of a terrorist attack, and it was decided to go ahead with the arrest of Naseer and ten of his alleged associates in Manchester and Liverpool. All but one of those arrested worked as security guards.
¹²³
At the time of their arrest, two of the Pakistani students were working for a cargo firm with access to secure areas at Manchester airport.
¹²⁴

On 8 April Jonathan Evans took part in a Downing Street meeting to brief the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, and senior ministers. Unlike Security Service staff, senior police officers sometimes entered Number Ten by the front door. Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, a key counter-terrorist officer, did so when arriving for the briefing meeting. Unhappily, he had in his hand classified documents relating to the pending arrests which should have been concealed inside a briefcase or folder; some were visible in pictures taken by press photographers. The editor of the
Evening Standard
, Geordie Grieg, responded to an appeal from the Security Service not to publish the photographs until the following day. As a result of Quick's indiscretion, for which he resigned the next day, the arrests had to be brought forward and began at 5.30 p.m. rather than taking place at night as had been intended.
¹²⁵

Some of the arrests took place in full public view rather than more discreetly at the homes of the suspects, as would have happened during night-time arrests. Though none of those arrested offered any resistance, a number were forced to the ground before being handcuffed. Merseyside
police said later that they had to take into account the possibility that those arrested might include a suicide bomber or someone with a mobile telephone capable of detonating explosive devices (as had been attempted in failed terrorist attacks against a London nightclub). Police also had in mind the murder of Detective Constable Stephen Oake during the arrest in Manchester of an Algerian Islamist in 2003. An inquiry by the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Lord Carlile of Berriew QC, later made the curious comment that ‘the arrests lacked visual subtlety', but concluded that ‘it is probably right that in such circumstances no chances should have been taken by the police'.
¹²⁶

Gordon Brown announced on the day after the arrests:

We are dealing with a very big terrorist plot. We have been following it for some time. There were a number of people who were suspected of it who have been arrested . . . We had to act pre-emptively to ensure the safety of the public, and the safety of the public is the paramount and utmost concern of all that we do.

Subsequent investigation, though generating significant intelligence, failed to produce evidence for a successful prosecution. By acting ‘pre-emptively to ensure the safety of the public', but proving unable to bring a prosecution, the Security Service and the police inevitably laid themselves open to the charge that, to quote one of those arrested, ‘It was all bullshit!' The only British citizen among Naseer's alleged associates was released soon after his arrest. No charges were brought against the other ten. On 22 April all were transferred to immigration custody and served by the Home Office with deportation notices.
¹²⁷
All maintained their innocence.
¹²⁸

The later report by Lord Carlile concluded, however, after reviewing the intelligence available to the Security Service and the police, ‘There was no realistic alternative to arresting at least some of the suspects. Arrests were necessary because of public safety concerns.'
¹²⁹

Though the total number of those with Islamist terrorist connections investigated by the Security Service in 2009 was little different from the totals over the previous few years, the Service reported a decline in the proportion of those engaged in ‘late stage attack planning'. Jonathan Evans told the Intelligence and Security Committee:

We have been giving quite a lot thought as to why that is. It's not because the people aren't here, because they very clearly are and we believe their strategic intent is the same, but I think there are a number of factors in play. One is the very large number of cases that have come through the courts and been successfully prosecuted by the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], which has had an effect on the willingness
of groups to take risks and to do things. Secondly, I think there has been a degree of disruption, particularly in the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas on Pakistan's north-west frontier].
¹³⁰

The Security Service believed, as it reached its centenary in 2009, that though a major Islamist terrorist attack would remain a serious danger for the foreseeable future, the observable threat was less acute than it had been in recent years.

¹
Threat levels assess the likelihood of attack; alert levels concern protective-security measures in place.

²
The 1988 Criminal Justice Act makes it an offence for officials of any nationality intentionally to inflict severe pain or suffering on another person in the performance or purported performance of their official duties. It would be an offence for any British official to aid and abet torture by encouraging or assisting it.

Conclusion

The First Hundred Years of the Security Service

When MI5's first and youngest head, the thirty-six-year-old Vernon Kell, began work in October 1909 in the office of a private detective at 64 Victoria Street, his only target was German spies. Today's Security Service, by contrast, is overwhelmingly a counter-terrorist agency; in 2007–8 it spent a mere 3.5 per cent of its budget on counter-espionage.
¹
So small were Kell's resources, however, that before the First World War he had less to spend on counter-espionage than the Service does today. It was not until January 1911 that he was able to afford an assistant. Even at the outbreak of war Kell had a total staff of only seventeen (including himself and the caretaker) – fewer in number than the spies whose arrest he ordered in August 1914. The keys to Kell's pre-war counter-espionage strategy – securing the co-operation of the police, using the Home Office Warrant system introduced by Churchill, establishing a state-of-the-art database – are, however, still central to Service operations in the twenty-first century. At the outbreak of war, to the fury of the Kaiser, Kell's Bureau succeeded, with police assistance, in rounding up all the German spies of any significance, thus depriving the enemy of advance warning of the despatch of the British Expeditionary Force to the Western Front. A much expanded MI5 also defeated the wartime German espionage offensive.

Gauging the full extent of MI5's achievements during its first decade, as at most other periods in its history, however, is more difficult than for most government agencies and departments. The success of a security service is better judged by things that do not happen (which are necessarily unquantifiable) than by things that do. MI5's post-war assessment of its First World War counter-espionage operations concluded: ‘It is apparently a paradox, but it is none the less true, and a most important truth, that the efficiency of a counter espionage service is not to be measured chiefly by the number of spies caught by it.' Though MI5 caught most German spies in the first half of the war, it was even more effective in the second half when the deterrent effect of its counter-espionage successes left it with few
foreign agents to catch. MI5 attributed much of its wartime success to good preventive security (later called protective security) which turned Britain into a hard target for sabotage as well as espionage. The blowing up by German saboteurs in 1916 of a huge ammunition dump at Black Tom Pier, New Jersey, destined for a Russian offensive on the Eastern Front, would undoubtedly have been replicated in Britain had protective security there been as poor as it was in the United States. The fact that there was no successful sabotage at all in mainland Britain is another indication of M15's wartime success – and a further example of how difficult it is to use the ‘performance indicators' (commonly defined as ‘numerical measures of achievement') fashionable in twenty-first-century government bureaucracies to measure that success.