Bombing Bluewater
As tends to happen when you have worked with the security services, the secrets you know and are meant to guard soon become outdated. This is certainly the case with what I was told about ‘bombing Bluewater’. Today I feel like an ancient Number Six, wandering around The Village long after his extraordinary rendition has served any useful purpose.
As the trial of the seven alleged terrorists continues at the Old Bailey, I see the prosecution has started to talk about their possible targets including the Bluewater complex. I wonder how much more is going to come out. As it stands, the security service either gave me a very misleading briefing or the prosecution is presenting a lot less information to the jury than it made available to me.
Of course, this case is always going to be something of a sore point with me as it was the plan to bomb Bluewater and Lakeside that saw my name on the front page of the Sunday Times on November 30th, 2003. I was spinning when I was quoted as saying: “They are a potential target. There are lots of potential targets. In terms of soft targets, anywhere the public gathers could be a potential.” Yes, I knew which shopping centres terrorist planners wanted to attack when I said that we had not been given any warnings over specific targets. That was pushing it. We had not been given specific warnings only because the security service operation would prevent any attack. It was not a direct lie, but I always felt it was a lie of omission. I always felt terible over mangling the truth like that.
I had been asked to take that line by the security services because: “Unnecessarily alarming the public is a terrorist victory.” As there was nothing to suggest the public were at any immediate risk, I kept my mouth shut.
MI5 of course did not. It arranged for the leak about Bluewater being on the bombers list. According to some of my contacts within the organisation, this was done purely to increase the level of fear in order to gather support for unpopular restrictions on civil liberties, such as ID cards.
To wake on a Sunday morning to find your name on the front page and realise that you are better at keeping secrets than MI5 – but nowhere near as good at lying – is an odd experience. Even to a world-weary former journalist such as myself, it was out of the usual range.
It was a classic security service butt-fuck. I did what I was asked to do and they used that to hang me out dry whilst they pushed forward a hidden agenda. What did I expect? I was stupid and naïve to think that playing by their rules was the right thing to do. I thought I was playing their game to try to prevent the terrorists getting a fear victory. I believed that not panicking people when the security services were clearly able to prevent the planned Bluewater bombing operation from ever happening was serving the public good. I forgot that Five and SIS do not always play their games with the same purpose.
As the trial of the seven alleged terrorists continues at the Old Bailey, I see the prosecution has started to talk about their possible targets including the Bluewater complex. I wonder how much more is going to come out. As it stands, the security service either gave me a very misleading briefing or the prosecution is presenting a lot less information to the jury than it made available to me.
Of course, this case is always going to be something of a sore point with me as it was the plan to bomb Bluewater and Lakeside that saw my name on the front page of the Sunday Times on November 30th, 2003. I was spinning when I was quoted as saying: “They are a potential target. There are lots of potential targets. In terms of soft targets, anywhere the public gathers could be a potential.” Yes, I knew which shopping centres terrorist planners wanted to attack when I said that we had not been given any warnings over specific targets. That was pushing it. We had not been given specific warnings only because the security service operation would prevent any attack. It was not a direct lie, but I always felt it was a lie of omission. I always felt terible over mangling the truth like that.
I had been asked to take that line by the security services because: “Unnecessarily alarming the public is a terrorist victory.” As there was nothing to suggest the public were at any immediate risk, I kept my mouth shut.
MI5 of course did not. It arranged for the leak about Bluewater being on the bombers list. According to some of my contacts within the organisation, this was done purely to increase the level of fear in order to gather support for unpopular restrictions on civil liberties, such as ID cards.
To wake on a Sunday morning to find your name on the front page and realise that you are better at keeping secrets than MI5 – but nowhere near as good at lying – is an odd experience. Even to a world-weary former journalist such as myself, it was out of the usual range.
It was a classic security service butt-fuck. I did what I was asked to do and they used that to hang me out dry whilst they pushed forward a hidden agenda. What did I expect? I was stupid and naïve to think that playing by their rules was the right thing to do. I thought I was playing their game to try to prevent the terrorists getting a fear victory. I believed that not panicking people when the security services were clearly able to prevent the planned Bluewater bombing operation from ever happening was serving the public good. I forgot that Five and SIS do not always play their games with the same purpose.
posted by David at 10:04 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home