1.The leaked report speaks volumes as to the adequacy of our security.
2.There remains a total lack of understanding as to the amount of resources our security services need – just compare the manpower resources the Israelis allocate to YAMAM and Shabak (see the link below)
These articles examine the purported aspects of the leaked report.
Security services 'not to blame' for London bombings
Leaked London bombings report prompt new calls for full inquiry London, IRNA
Intelligence lessons of 7/7
See also
MI5, Britain's security service, is steeling itself for criticism over London's July 7 bombings in a long-awaited report from the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, writes Richard Norton-Taylor.
Leaks are beginning to emerge - the latest was to the BBC today. Under a headline on its website proclaiming "Security 'not at fault on July 7'", the BBC said MI5 could not be blamed for the attacks. But it is not as simple as that.
MI5 has told the committee, which meets in private, that there was an intelligence gap - which is obvious - but not an intelligence failure. MI5 argued that, given the resources at its disposal, it could not have watched Mohammed Sidique Khan, leader of the July 7 suicide bombers. He had come to the notice of MI5 but was suspected of fraud, not considered a serious a threat.
A key point is that neither MI5 nor any other part of the security and intelligence world was prepared to believe home-grown Islamist extremists, or disaffected young Muslims, would ever carry out suicide bombings in Britain.
This is not to say a more imaginative approach, and better intelligence, would necessarily have prevented the July 7 attacks. There is no such thing, certainly not in a democracy, as complete security and blanket intelligence cover.
But in its report due to be published next month, the intelligence and security committee is certain to point to terrorist threat assessments that those responsible for our security got completely wrong. A month before the July 7 bombings, they lowered the terrorist threat level. Moreover, they were planning to lower it again on the morning of the July 21 failed suicide attacks in London.
"This underlines the need for an independent inquiry to show us where things went wrong," Patrick Mercer MP, the Conservative party's homeland security spokesman, told me today.
He is unlikely to get it. We will have to rely on the committee's report - which is read by Tony Blair and his security and intelligence advisers, who will decide what passages should be seen by the public.
MPs have concluded that the intelligence and security services could not be blamed for failing to prevent the July 7 attacks, it was reported today.
But the cross-party intelligence and security committee has questioned why the lead bomber, Mohammad Sidique Khan, was not fully investigated despite being known to security officials, the BBC said. The committee also criticised the quality of information on the activities of British militants in Pakistan before the attacks on London's transport network.
The Tories said the leaked findings raised "serious questions" about the monitoring of terror suspects. David Davis, shadow home secretary, said: "The government should now answer our call for an independent inquiry so that the lessons of the July bombings can be learnt." However, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg welcomed the committee's decision to avoid "finger pointing and apportioning blame."
Fifty-two people died and some 700 were injured when four suicide bombers struck three tube trains and a bus on the morning of July 7 2005.
A spokeswoman for the committee refused to comment on the BBC report, or say when the committee's findings were due to be published. According to the BBC, the eight MPs and one peer who made up there committee, were critical of the "secretive and complicated" system of alert and threat levels. The national threat level was lowered from "severe, general" to "substantial" shortly before July 7. Committee members doubted whether this made any difference to the bombers' plans, but they said that the public needed to be better informed.
Khan, 30, carried out the attack at Edgware Road station by detonating a rucksack full of explosives. Counter-terrorism officials said he was suspected of petty fraud but not terrorism, and was considered a low priority to whom it was not worth diverting resources, the BBC said. However, the committee, which reports directly to the prime minister, has questioned why he was never fully investigated. The MPs spent six months interviewing security officials and examining their work to see if the July 7 attacks could have been prevented.
Frank Gardner, the BBC's security correspondent, said: "Could they have been prevented with better intelligence? Yes. Could they have been prevented given the resources that the agencies had? They think probably not." "They are not pointing the finger of blame at anybody," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
The committee report accepted that gathering intelligence on the activities of British militants in Pakistan was extremely difficult prior to July 7. But there had been a "sea change" since the attacks, with Pakistani authorities becoming more cooperative, the BBC said.
The MPs also said they were aware that MI5 and MI6 had a shortage of staff with the language skills needed to confront the terrorist threat. Terrorism expert Lord Timothy Garden said Britain's intelligence services have been hampered by their traditional recruitment methods. "I think there has been in the past a degree of concern that the recruitment pool for the intelligence services has not been representative of the diversity of the UK and if it had been we would have been better placed," said Lord Garden, of the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College London.
He added that past intelligence ties with Pakistan had been difficult: "There have been in the past well documented problems with the Pakistani intelligence, because of doubts as to their loyalties to President Pervez Musharraf."
The main opposition Conservative Party Thursday repeated their call for an independent inquiry into last year's London bombings following the leaking of report that said intelligence and security services could not be blamed. According to a BBC journalist, the report by the intelligence and security committee does not accuse any agency of negligence in failing to prevent the attack on London's transport system in July 2005, given the resources that were available to them. But the MPs in the committee, which reports directly to Prime Minister Tony Blair, questioned why the alleged lead bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan, who was known to the police before the attacks, was never fully investigated.
Their report also suggested that the security services should have done better in gathering intelligence about British militants in Pakistan even though it recognized that it was particularly difficult.
Responding to the leak, shadow home secretary David Davis said that the report "raises serious questions about the monitoring of terror suspects." "The government should now answer our call for an independent inquiry so that the lessons of the July bombings can be learnt," Davis said.
Home Secretary Charles Clarke has previously rejected calls, including from Muslim leaders, for a full judicial inquiry, saying that the government instead intended to publish a `narrative of events.' Khan, who was the alleged suicide bomber behind the attack on Edgware Road underground station, was said to have only previously suspected of petty fraud, not terrorism.
A total of 56 people were killed in four coinciding attacks on London's transport system on July 7 last year. Two weeks later, no one was killed in what appeared to be copycat bombings that failed to explode.
The Muslim Council of Britain, which has been leading calls for a full inquiry, says that "we will not be able to deal with the real crisis" unless lessons are learnt from the events leading up to the attacks.
A cross-party committee of MPs investigating the intelligence failure to stop the London bombings of July 2005 has blamed it on a lack of resources, rather than on any error of judgement.
For the past few months the Parliamentary
Intelligence and Security
Committee, the ISC, has been interviewing members of the police and
intelligence agencies to establish what information they had on the
terrorist threat to Britain and how they acted on it prior to 7 July. The committee's report, which is being handed to the prime minister's office and which will likely be published at the end of April, essentially addresses the question - could more have been done to stop the bombers getting through?
The conclusion is that while there was clearly a failure of intelligence, no single agency or individual was to blame, given the resources they had.
Not investigated
The committee has questioned why Mohammad Sidique Khan, the lead bomber who killed six people when he blew himself up at Edgware Road Tube station on 7 July, was known to the intelligence services before July but not fully investigated.
The MPs have accepted the official explanation that Khan was suspected of petty fraud not terrorism, so he was not considered a high priority.
Whitehall officials have admitted that they had eavesdropped on telephone conversations made by Khan but that he was not the focus of their investigation, which was centred on an imminent terrorist plot involving others.
They say no intelligence came to light to suggest Khan was plotting an attack.
But intelligence expert Professor Anthony Glees of Brunel University believes MI5, the security service, should have done more.
He told BBC News: "The security service understands that it is the body that is charged with having good predictive intelligence and what the London attacks show is that there was no good predictive intelligence.
"They didn't look carefully enough at the sort of people who might be tempted into becoming terrorists."
Informing public
The ISC committee has made a number of criticisms.
Its members are concerned that intelligence-gathering on British militants travelling to Pakistan was not as good as it should have been.
Khan and other members of his cell are thought to have linked up there with extremist radicals, possibly al-Qaeda recruiters.
However, the committee believes it was only after the London bombings that British investigators got full co-operation from their counterparts in Pakistani intelligence.
Another criticism made by the ISC committee is over the complexity, secrecy and ineffectiveness of the present system of threat levels and alert states.
These are raised and lowered in secret according to an intricate sliding scale of terrorist threats.
The ISC believes the system needs to be simplified and the public kept better informed.
'Unprecedented' threat
Whitehall officials have told the BBC they are now facing an unprecedented number of terrorist plots in Britain.
They say the threat of home-grown terrorism has increased substantially since the Iraq invasion of 2003, and that 50% of recent disrupted plots are home-grown, involving British nationals living in Britain.
Whitehall officials have also said that in practice, counter-terrorism in this age means stopping most but not necessarily all attacks.
The intelligence services are currently undergoing a major expansion with the aim of doubling in size to around 3,000 members each, but it will take years before new recruits are vetted and trained - time which would-be terrorists are expected to exploit.
See also:
7 July 2005 London bombings
Israel Border Police: Magav: YAMAM
Shabak
Mossad
Israel Police
Response to the 2005 London bombings