Category Archives: 9/11 & Aftermath

Ryan Air’s CEO is threatening to sue the UK government if it doesn’t relax air-security hysteria:

TERRORISTS are “rolling around the caves of Pakistan, laughing” at Britain’s response to the terror threat, an airline boss said last night as he gave the government a seven-day deadline to relax restrictions or face legal action.

Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary described some of the security measures as “farcical, Keystone Kops-like and completely insane and ineffectual”.

Pilots also attacked the measures, which ban them from taking toothpaste on to aircraft, and said subjecting flight crews to the same restrictions as passengers made “no sense at all”.

An estimated 800,000 passengers have been disrupted by the chaos caused by new measures, which resulted in massive queues at airports and led to the cancellations of about 1,800 flights.

Ryanair demanded the government return passenger-search requirements to pre-alert levels. It also wants the government to restore the hand-luggage allowance for passengers leaving British airports, and an assurance that military and police personnel would be released to help with airport security checks next time there is a major alert.

Mr O’Leary yesterday gave the government a seven-day deadline to make the changes or face legal action, arguing that some of the security measures had been stupid and it was “completely untenable” to expect airport staff to continue working flat-out to cope with the new regulations.

But at least Ryan Air has a sense of humor about the situation. Here’s their graphic — very graphic — take on the absurdity of new airport security procedures.

Digby: “This is for real, apparently. The government is actually spending money doing simulations of potential terrorist attacks by peace activists.”

Kevin Drum has the round up on The Incredible Shrinking Bomb Plot.

When my spouse suggested a similar theory over breakfast the other day — noting the odd coincidence between the Lamont victory and the news that Terrorism Is Back — I was skeptical, noting that the investigation had, after all, been going on for a year.

I have got to get more cynical in time for the next election.

Source: U.S., U.K. at odds over timing of arrests. NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.

A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

… At the White House, a top aide to President Bush denied the account. … Another U.S. official, however, acknowledges there was disagreement over timing.

John S. Quarterman has a typically intelligent essay, Perilocity: What can We Do about Terrorism?,

Well, for one thing, [we] can continue to discourage use of methods that have little promise of working, such as blanket scans of all telephone numbers or electronic mail, which just increase the haystack without making finding the needle more likely, or national ID cards such as the British government has been pushing lately.

…

As to what could [we] encourage, how about more Arabic and Farsi-speaking intelligence people, more intelligence and law enforcement agents who understand the cultures that are producing the terrorists and what their grievances are; maybe even agents who can infiltrate them.

And there’s more…

[Bonus update: TSA Insanity by George RR Martin (via Making Light)]

It looks as if the Bush administration's outing of an intelligence source last year, during the week of the Democratic National Convention, may have undercut the British intelligence efforts aimed at preventing the recent London bombings.

ABC News reports that, a year ago, U.S. and British authorities learned of plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway system (as well as on financial buildings in the U.S.); the plans were on the laptop computer of al Qaeda operative Naeem Noor Khan. The British, ABC News continues, responded by arresting a bunch of young men of Pakistani descent in Luton linked to al Qaeda. The story, though, turns out to be a little more complicated. DHS used the laptop information to justify a heightened terrorism alert, publicizing it at a press conference. Those actions seem to have led directly to the public disclosure of Khan's name — though it's not clear whether the name was leaked by U.S. officials, or by Pakistani officials responding to questioning by reporters following up press conference leads. This was a problem because Khan had continued, after his arrest, to communicate with Al Qaeda contacts, allowing Pakistani authorities to monitor the communications; once the fact of his arrest became known, those contacts scattered. British authorities had to scramble to make arrests; according to Juan Cole and others, the leak caused the British to have to move hastily against the Al Qaeda cell Khan had been in contact with. Five members got away entirely; others couldn't be charged. The British were furious at all of the information becoming available on this side of the Atlantic; Chuck Schumer was quoted by CNN at the time as explaining that Home Secretary Blunkett “expressed displeasure in fairly severe terms that Khan's name was released, because they were trying to track down other contacts of his.”

So when the British attempted to move against the Luton cell last year, who weren't they able to arrest, thanks to the Administration's at best incompetent and “seriously unclever,” at worst crass and politically motivated August 2004 actions?

Links courtesy of AMERICAblog