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Reports highlight UK intelligence failings

The full extent of the intelligence failures which allowed the July 7 bombers to strike emerged on Friday in the wake of publication of two reports into the terror attacks. A pattern of disagreements and failures of communication between law enforcement agencies is laid bare within sections of the reports, which examine the events surrounding the bombings which claimed 52 lives.

It also emerged that the UK's Security Service (MI5) possessed evidence that Mohammad Sidique Khan, the acknowledged ringleader of the four suicide bombers, was intent on violence, despite the agency's subsequent assertion that it believed him to be involved largely in fraud.

Some months before the bombings, Khan, 30, had been covertly recorded talking about his plans to wage jihad and discussing whether to say goodbye to his family before leaving the country, suggesting he was seeking martyrdom. He was also present during a meeting of other terror suspects during which their bomb-making plans were discussed.

One of the reports, by the cross-party intelligence and security committee (ISC), shows there was friction between MI5 and the police, who disagreed about the extent of the threat posed by radicalized young British Muslims.

It has also emerged that Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch and MI5 had sharply different assessments of the nature of the threat to the country. Senior anti-terrorist branch officers had concluded by March last year, four months before the bombings, that the country was likely to be attacked by "home-grown'' terrorists. One senior officer predicted that an attack could be mounted by Britons with bombs in rucksacks, who would blow themselves up on the London Underground.

Yet the same month, the government's joint intelligence committee (JIC) concluded that such suicide attacks would not become the norm in Europe.

After July 7, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of MI5, told the ISC she had been surprised that the first major attacks against the UK for many years had been carried out by suicide bombers. She added that she thought the JIC's assessment had been a "reasonable judgment." The JIC has since changed its mind, and now says that more suicide attacks are possible.

Damaging tension between MI5 and the police, and thinly veiled criticism of police special branches, is reflected in the ISC report, which points to variations in the "size and competence" of special branches and their failure to adequately identify targets and objectives.

It notes that MI5 "hopes to be able to work more closely" with special branches in the future.

The committee also says it hopes that MI5 will be more sensitive to the failings of police special branches, adding: "There appears, rightly, to be more determination post-July for problems or areas of weakness to be identified and resolved."

Khan and a second bomber, Shehzad Tanweer, came to the attention of MI5 several times, more than a year prior to the attacks, when they met other terrorism suspects who were under surveillance. The identities of the two men were unclear at that time, although Khan was covertly photographed and the meetings were recorded.

A decision was taken not to investigate the two men more fully because they were not deeply involved in the other group's plot, and MI5 decided it had insufficient resources to pursue them.
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