Comment, By CRAIG MURRAY
I
appear to have hit a nerve with my call for a sceptical view of the
alleged "bigger than 9/11" plot. In the UK, at least, the more serious
wing of the mainstream media is beginning to catch up with the idea
that all is not well here. Still, after eight days of
detention, nobody has been charged with any crime. For there to be no
clear evidence yet on something that was "imminent" and "Mass murder on
an unbelievable scale" is, to say the least, rather peculiar. The 24th
person, who was arrested amid much fanfare yesterday, has been quietly
released without charge today. Breaking news, another "suspect" has
just been released too.
The drip, drip of information to
the media from the security services has rather dried-up. The last item
of any significance was that they had found a handgun and a
rifle--neither of which could have been in any use in the alleged plot.
If you were smuggling undetectable liquid explosive onto a plane, you
would be unlikely to give the game away by tucking a rifle into your
hand baggage. As with the murder some years ago
of the uncle of the suspect held in Pakistan, it remains a possibility
that there could be some criminal activity here involving a few of the
suspects, which is not terrorist linked.
As the Police immediately told the
press about the guns, it is a reasonable deduction that it remains true
that they still have found no bombs or detonators, or they would have
told us, particularly as they haven't charged anyone yet. They must be
getting pretty desperate to announce some actual evidence by now. This brings us to one particuarly sinister aspect of the allegations--that the bombs were to be made on the plane.
The idea that high explosive can be
made quickly in a plane toilet by mixing at room temperature some nail
polish remover, bleach, and Red Bull and giving it a quick stir, is
nonsense. Yes, liquid explosives exist and are highly dangerous and
yes, airports are ill equipped to detect them at present. Yes, it is
true they have been used on planes before by terrorists. But can they
be quickly manufactured on the plane? No. The sinister aspect is not that
this is a real new threat. It is that the allegation may have been
concocted in order to prepare us for arresting people without any
actual bombs.
Let me fess up here. I have just
checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports drinks, and
a variety of household cleaning products. Also MP3 players and mobile
phones. So the authorities could announce--as they have whispered to
the media in this case--that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb,
and potential timing devices, have been discovered. It rather lowers
the bar, doesn't it? This has a peculiar resonance for me. I spoke at
the annual Stop the War conference a couple of months ago. I referred
to the famous ricin plot. For those outside the UK, this generated the
same degree of hype here two years ago. It was alleged that a flat in
North London inhabited by Muslims was a "Ricin" factory, manufacturing
the deadly toxin which could kill "hundreds of thousands of people".
Police tipped off the authorities that traces of ricin had been
discovered. In the end, all those accused were found not guilty by the
court. The "traces of ricin" were revealed to be the atmospheric norm. The "intelligence" on that plot had
been extracted under torture in Algeria--another echo here, as the
"intelligence" in this current case has almost certainly been extracted
under torture in Pakistan. Another police tip-off to the media was that
the intelligence had been stored in plastic jars, and they had indeed
found plastic jars containing a suspicious substance. It turned out the
containers in question were two Brylcreem tubs. What was in them? In
the first, paper clips. In the second, Brylcreem.
I told the story in my speech, and
concluded with a ringing "So we must congratulate the government for
saving us from a dastardly Islamic plot to take over the World using
hair styling products." I fear the government may have taken me seriously!
I do not discount the
possibility that there is a germ of something behind the current
alleged plot. Will it be anything like the hype? No.
The
hype scarcely lowers. On the flagship ten o'clock news last night, the
BBC reported breathlessly on the United flight diverted from Washington
to Boston last night, and its fighter escort. We had very earnest
besuited security experts terrifying us about the dangers. The extraordinary thing was that,
by this stage, we knew definitely that this was a 60 year old woman
with claustrophobia, who had a few loose matches and some Vaseline
intensive care hand lotion in the bottom of her handbag. The facts
reported were totally at odds with the whole manner of the "be
terrified" report and the analysis being built on it. But that didn't
stop them.
It has, of course, worked. When did you last see Iraq on the news? Where is Liebermann's defeat now on the news agenda?
Craig Murray served as the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004. He can be reached at: http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/index.html
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