The Ever-Changing Story of 7/7

Writing in the Times, Matthew Parris gives a perceptive account of the increasing number of apparently erroneous stories that have been reported by the media, as to the truth behind the 7/7 London bombings. He says, "The media betray a sort of sheepish wish to 'move on' from an erroneous report, hoping that their audience will not notice. Rather than acknowledge this, they publish a new report, leaving us to compare it with what had previously been said -- and draw our own conclusions."

For example:

Immediately after July 7 it was prominently reported that the explosions "bore all the hallmarks" of the use of a type of high-grade military explosive whose presence would indicate a sophisticated international dimension to the bombings. We were alerted to a likely al-Qaeda link. Then the news went silent. Then it was announced that tests showed the explosive to be of a home-made (or home-makeable) kind that al-Qaeda were known to know about from the internet. Then that story, too, seemed to fizzle out.

What was going on here? Parris comments, "I have seen no explanation of how the initial assessment of the type of explosive could have been the reverse of the truth, and no acknowledgement of error from those who made it. Nor has the al-Qaeda/internet angle been followed up." He goes on to list yet more of these stories that we have all heard, about who and what was behind the attacks, that are quickly found to be incorrect, yet no explanation is given for the error:

• Immediately after the first bombing, a report was splashed that two people had been arrested trying to leave Heathrow. The later report that they had been released without charge appeared as little more than a footnote.
• A few days after that, much was made of the arrest in Egypt of a British Muslim whom the less-scrupulous news reports called a "chemist" (he is a biochemist). There was talk of British agents attending (or joining) his interrogation in Cairo. A statement from the Egyptian authorities denying that they had linked him to the bombing or that he was on their list of al-Qaeda suspects, did receive momentary attention -- and then the story seemed to die. I do not know what has happened to it, or him.
• Then there were some big headlines about an alleged "al-Qaeda operative" who had "slipped" into Britain, and slipped out -- just before the bombings. But it transpired that he was low on our counter-terrorist services' lists of security threats -- and that story, too, has disappeared.
• Then there was an arrest in Pakistan of an alleged "al-Qaeda mastermind", about which reports have become increasingly confused, dropping from their early position as leading news items. I do not know where we are now on these reports. If I understood them correctly, what helped to trace this mastermind were records of calls made to him by all, or some, of the four July 7 bombers from their mobile phones.

Herein lies a crucial question, though. As Matthew Parris asks, "why did the bombers not take the elementary precaution of phoning the mastermind from a telephone box? Just how master was this mind? Is it not a curious way of operating a terrorist network, if the terrorists are to call their mastermind on their mobile phones, then take the phones with them on their bombing spree?" One might wonder whether these supposed "bombers" really were members of a terrorist network. Could it be that they were somehow being set up to leave a trail of evidence that, in retrospect, would make it appear as if they had been members of such a network?

What is also noticeable is that "[e]ach report, when first we read it, accentuated the impression that we face a formidable, capable, extensive and well-organised terrorist movement, with important links abroad, and that is almost certainly being masterminded from abroad." Then the report turns out to be untrue, and is quickly and discreetly forgotten.

Is it just me, or does anybody else feel that we are being subjected to a propaganda operation ... and a cover-up?

Survivor Account Casts Doubt Upon Official 7/7 Story

What seems at first like just another eyewitness account by a survivor of the 7/7 London bombings actually calls into question the entire official story.

An article in the Cambridge Evening News describes how Bruce Lait--a dance teacher from Cambridge--and his dance partner Crystal Main, were sitting nearest to the bomb that exploded in a train near Aldgate East station at the time it went off. Lait recalls that the carriage he was in had about 20-25 people in it. He says, "I remember an Asian guy, there was a white guy with tracksuit trousers and a baseball cap, and there were two old ladies sitting opposite me." However, no description of any Arab with a rucksack.

What is most interesting is Lait's description of being helped out of the carriage after the blast. A police man pointed out to him where the bomb had been: "The policeman said 'mind that hole, that's where the bomb was'. The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train. They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag."

To summarize, then:

• The metal was pushed upwards as if the bomb was underneath the train.
• They seem to think the bomb was left in a bag, but I don't remember anybody being where the bomb was, or any bag.

Now, if Bruce Lait is being honest and his memory serves him correctly, then this account pretty much disproves the official theory about Arab suicide bombers. So what really happened?

Multiple Bombings in London on 7 July, 2005

On Thursday 7 July, 2005, four bombs were detonated across London, three of them going off almost simultaneously on underground trains at around 8.51 a.m. The fourth exploded on a double-decker bus at around 9.47 a.m. At least 55 people were killed and 700 injured in the attacks. The attacks are being blamed on al-Qaeda.

However, within a few days of the attacks, several oddities about the events of that morning had already been identified by various websites and blogs. Questions were already being asked about who was really responsible for the attacks. Was it al-Qaeda, or was it something more sinister?

At shortly after 5 p.m. on the day of the attacks, BBC Radio 5 Live interviewed a man named Peter Power, who is a former senior Scotland Yard official and now the managing director of a security firm called Visor Consultants. Here is what Power said:

POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing upright.
HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?
POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don't want to reveal their name but they're listening and they'll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.

You can listen to a clip of this interview here.

Peter Power also discussed the training exercise that day on ITV. You can watch the clip here.

And a couple of days later, he again mentioned it when he appeared on Canadian television. (Clip here.)

This is certainly an extraordinary coincidence, to say the very least.

Furthermore, it has been reported that just three months ago, at the start of April 2005, a massive international training exercise was held, called "Atlantic Blue." On the day of the bombings, the Scotsman reported one official saying, "One small positive is that we ran a scenario almost exactly like this one just a few months back." The article continued: "That exercise, codenamed Atlantic Blue, involved planning for terrorist attacks on transport networks that coincided with a major international summit."

As it happens, the London bombings coincided with a major international summit: the G8, which was taking place in Gleneagles Scotland.

The Observer describes more details of Atlantic Blue: "A massive anti-terror exercise [was] carried out last April to find out how safe London's transport systems were from attack." Amongst other situations, this exercise included "'bombs' being placed on buses and explosives left on the London underground."

Another remarkable coincidence.

In his book 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Webster Tarpley makes the following claim:

Staff exercises or command exercises are perfect for a rogue network which is forced to conduct its operations using the same communications and computer systems used by other officers who are not necessarily party to the illegal operation, coup or provocation as it may be. A putschist officer may be working at a console next to another officer who is not in on the coup, and who might indeed oppose it if he knew about it. The putschist’s behavior is suspicious: what the hell is he doing? The loyal officer looks over and asks the putschist about it. The putschist cites a staff maneuver for which he is preparing. The loyal officer concludes that the putschist’s activities are part of an officially sanctioned drill, and his suspicions are allayed. The putschist may even explain that participation in the staff exercise requires a special security clearance which the loyal officer does not have. The conversation ends, and the putschist can go on with his treasonous work.

(Webster Griffin Tarpley, 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA. Joshua Tree: Progressive Press, 2005, pp. 204-205.)

Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson make a similar allegation:

The exercise fulfils several different goals. It acts as a cover for the small compartamentalized government terrorists to carry out their operation without the larger security services becoming aware of what they're doing, and, more importantly, if they get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence they can just claim that they were just taking part in the exercise.

Anyone who has researched the events of 9/11 will also know that there were a number of military training exercises taking place over the northeast U.S. at the exact same time as the attacks occurred. What a coincidence that such a similar thing appears to have happened in the UK when it too suffered an "al-Qaeda" terrorist attack.

There are other oddities about the 7/7 bombings. For example, early on in the day, the Associated Press reported:

British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said. Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had planned to attend an economic conference in a hotel over the subway stop where one of the blasts occurred, and the warning prompted him to stay in his hotel room instead, government officials said. Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom said he wasn't aware of any Israeli casualties. Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy to say they had received warnings of possible attacks, the official said.

Unsurprisingly, this was quickly denied. According to the Jerusalem Post:

The Foreign Ministry, and Israeli embassy officials at the highest levels, totally rejected the report. What one source did note, however, was that Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu received a call from British police soon after the first explosion, but before the full extent of the attacks was known, because it had occurred by the site of a conference at which he was to speak and for which he was about to depart. After the call from the police to his security staff, Netanyahu stayed put.

Interestingly though, this report also states: "In the aftermath of the attacks, The Prime Minister's Office instructed Israeli officials not to give interviews to the foreign media." Supposedly the reason was, according to an Israeli government source, that "It's not a story with anything to do with Israel. It's a story of international terrorism in Britain and therefore we should be quiet."

Despite the official denials, another news report had similarly stated:

Terrorism expert Tommy Preston of Preston Global in Frankfort, Kentucky, said sources in the intelligence community reported that at least one person in London, England was warned of Thursday morning's terrorist attacks moments before the initial blast. Preston, citing sources in the intelligence community, said former Israeli Prime Minister and current Finance Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was in London this morning for an economic forum. 'Just before the first blast, Netanyahu got a call from the Israeli Embassy telling him to stay in his hotel room. The hotel is located next to the subway station where the first attack occurred and he did stay put and shortly after that, there was the explosion,' Preston said.

Furthermore, the Stratfor Consulting Intelligence Agency reported:

[U]nconfirmed rumors in intelligence circles indicate that the Israeli government actually warned London of the attacks 'a couple of days' previous. Israel has apparently given other warnings about possible attacks that turned out to be aborted operations. The British government did not want to disrupt the G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, or call off visits by foreign dignitaries to London, hoping this would be another false alarm. The British government sat on this information for days and failed to respond. Though the Israeli government is playing along publicly, it may not stay quiet for long.

So was 7/7 really a "terrorist attack," or were the real culprits behind it all a network of rogue individuals working within our own governments, militaries, and intelligence services? It is time for us all to start asking this difficult question and investigating the truth about what happened on 7/7, wherever this may take us.