A new ITV documentary reveals nail-biting insider details of how MI5 and Counter Terror Police launched the UK’s biggest-ever covert operation to smash a plot to kill thousands of Brits. For the first time, serving MI5 spies reveal the truth of how they broke into homes and bugged would-be mass murderers’ homes as a terrifying plot to blow up multiple planes unfolded.
Plot Could Have Exceeded 9/11 Death Toll
Twenty years ago, British authorities uncovered a terrorist plan to smuggle liquid explosives onto transatlantic airliners and destroy multiple passenger jets bound for North America. MI5 officers and counter terror police discovered the evil Islamist extremist plan could have killed more people than 9/11. Jonathan Evans, then MI5's Deputy Director, says Britain "would not have recovered fully" adding the eventual death toll could have exceeded that of 9/11. Michael Chertoff, then US Homeland Security Secretary, believes the impact could have been so profound that "you might not even have civil aviation now."
Operation Overt: The Biggest Counter-Terror Operation
Operation Overt, led by MI5 and Scotland Yard, became the biggest counter-terrorism operation ever carried out in the UK. More than 800 officers and staff followed suspects, tracking movements, analysing intelligence and building a picture of the potential threat. Investigators gathered evidence they believed showed the conspirators were building devices designed to evade airport security. Hidden inside an East London flat, MI5 surveillance equipment allowed officers to watch preparations unfold in real time.
One MI5 officer, codenamed Dan in the film, recalls secretly entering the flat to install the surveillance equipment. He reveals: "There was an imperative to get in there and find out what these guys were doing. I have worked on hundreds of operations, lots of terrorist properties mainly. Sometimes you're breaking into someone's house, you're standing in a terrorist living room, and they have no idea. It feels like the clock's ticking but we're through that door very quickly. When the door opened and you're looking up into the darkness and you're not quite sure if there's anyone in there and you think God, ‘if I f*** this up, this is going to bring to an end maybe the biggest counter terrorism (CT) investigation in the country's history’. There is a degree of pressure and obviously there's a potential consequence of, not just f****** up an operation, but being hurt. You're using almost no lights. You're not giving the game away. There were a row of bottles lined up sort of neatly equidistant, they all seem to be empty. This box contained, different glass jars. There was one that was full of batteries there was big, jar, full of some white and gloopy liquid in in the middle. At the end, we put the things back I said to the locksmith, ‘sometimes I f****** love my job!’"
Political Pressure and Arrests
John Reid, then Home Secretary, was under pressure to raise the threat level to aviation and warn the public. But MI5 feared that doing so would alert the plotters that the security services were on to them — compromising the operation. Reid recalls in the documentary: "The more you thought through the nature of this plot, which was to bring down airliners, sitting like ducks in a row over the Atlantic, that they wanted to do it that way, because then you would not have the proof of how it had been done. If as a result of delaying we miscalculated and the conspirators murdered two, three thousand people, my judgement was that no government could have sustained that. The government would've been in grave danger of falling."
After intelligence led to the arrest of Rashid Rauf in Pakistan, security services feared the conspirators in Britain could be triggered into early action. Hundreds of officers were mobilised, and suspects were arrested across the country in coordinated overnight raids in East London, High Wycombe and Birmingham. Arrests in August 2006 stopped the plot and airports across Britain introduced emergency security measures, thousands of flights were cancelled and stringent restrictions imposed on what travellers could carry onboard. Many of those changes, including limits on liquids in hand luggage, remain in place two decades later.
Convictions and Aftermath
Although the plotters had not yet purchased airline tickets and their devices were not yet viable, prosecutors argued the conspiracy was moving towards execution. Following a series of trials, Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Assad Sarwar and Tanvir Hussain were convicted for their roles in the plot to bomb transatlantic airliners, receiving life sentences. Five other members of the network were found guilty of conspiracy to murder, while two more were convicted of terrorism preparation offences. American intelligence officials believe that Rauf was killed in a US drone strike in November 2008.
ITV Exposure: 'Terror in the skies: Stopping the liquid bomb plot' airs at 10.20pm on Sunday July 26 on ITV1 and ITVX.
