The Rest Is Classified - 64. Terror Strikes London: The Al-Qaeda Mastermind (Ep 3)
Episode Date: July 13, 2025He left a video for his daughter before he vanished to Pakistan. A quiet farewell, wrapped in the language of faith and finality. What no one knew was that in the mountains near the Afghan border, he ...would meet the man who would change everything. In the penultimate episode of our series on the 7/7 Bombings, Gordon and David uncover how two young British men - Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer - crossed a hidden threshold. From idealistic jihadist sympathisers to suicide bombers in waiting. In the lawless tribal belt of Pakistan, they were recruited, trained, and transformed - not by force, but by belief. Listen as we track their journey through the shadows: covert meetings, bomb-making lessons, and the chilling promise that paradise lies after death. This is the moment the 7/7 plot was born - not in London, but in the borderlands of a broken state, under the guidance of a quiet figure with deep ties to al-Qaeda. ------------------- To sign up to The Declassified Club, go to www.therestisclassified.com. To sign up to the free newsletter, go to: https://mailchi.mp/goalhanger.com/tric-free-newsletter-sign-up ------------------- Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restisclassified It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ------------------- Order a signed edition of Gordon's latest book, The Spy in the Archive, via this link. Order a signed edition of David's latest book, The Seventh Floor, via this link. ------------------- Email: classified@goalhanger.com Twitter: @triclassified Assistant Producer: Becki Hills Producer: Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series,
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Declassified Club at TheRestIsClassified.com. Breaking news we're getting from the PA Newswire that there's been reports of an explosion
outside Liverpool Street Station. So, moving back please!
Most Londoners actually are not going to be afraid by this. I think they're going to continue their daily business.
We considered the attack last week on British soil, an attack on the civilised world.
And what we are confronting here is an evil ideology.
It is not a clash of civilizations.
All civilized people, Muslim or other, feel revulsion at it.
Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.
We are at war, and I am a soldier.
Now you too will taste the reality of this situation.
Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people and
your support of them makes you directly responsible.
Until we feel security, you will be our target.
Until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop
this fight. Well, welcome to The Rest is my people. We will not stop this fight.
Well welcome to the Rest is Classified, I'm David McCloskey.
And I'm Gordon Carrera.
And that was the video testimony of bomber Mohammed Sadiq Khan, MSK, released after he
died, killed himself, in the July 7th attacks, which killed 52 people in London in 2005. And last time Gordon, we looked at who the bombers were,
how they had appeared in another MI5 counterterrorism investigation, albeit kind
of obliquely. And we left with MSK and his accomplice Tanweer involved in jihadist activity
in the UK, but really not, it seems, planning an attack in London.
They, when we last left, were headed off to Pakistan, and they are going to go there in
late 2004, and everything is going to change.
Mason Hickman That's right. And I think the Pakistan connection is crucial
to understanding 7.7 and to understanding really what was going on in terrorism in the UK
in that period. Because it is out in Pakistan that the plot that's going to become 7-7 comes
to fruition. It's where Mohammed Sadik Khan and Tamwar are going to meet the key figure who's
behind not just 7-7 but also a series of other attacks not just that year but into the future, some
of the biggest actually that were planned in the post-9-11 period. So it is significant
and it's going to show that link really to al-Qaeda which took a while to become clear
I think at the time. So yeah, the two Brits Tanweer and Mohammed Siddiquan are going to
go out in November 2004. Worth saying, I think we touched on this last time, Mohammed Sadiq Khan actually
leaves a video for his young daughter suggesting he's never going to see her again. So he is
going out there with the expectation he's going to kind of fight and die probably in
Afghanistan but not come back.
And his wife, Asina Patel, is witting that he may not return.
Well that seems to be the implication, yeah.
So she sees the video and sort of understands that he's gone.
The video is being left basically saying, I'm not coming back.
Now it is interesting because we also touched on this last time that it's
not his first time out there to the camps.
And it's worth saying, isn't it, that these camps have existed.
And we talked about them in our Bin Laden episodes, didn't we?
That these were there from the nineties, Bin Laden and others.
And it's not just Bin Laden, they're running these camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Jihadist
camps. And the lure of the camps is quite strong for people who are Jihadist sympathizers.
It's that idea you can go out there and you can fight and be involved in the struggle
in some different way.
And we should say that this period when he goes to Pakistan, I guess the mental model
maybe for listeners would be
there are settled areas of Pakistan where the Pakistani government, which is a sort
of frenemy of the US and UK, which sort of in one sense is helping us in the counterterrorism
fight and in another sense is sort of double dealing.
But there are settled areas in which the Pakistani government actually has control, where its
security forces can operate.
And then there are tribal areas, for example, in Northwest Pakistan, where it's essentially
ungoverned.
And that's where you can get into Pakistan, you can then be brought up to these tribal
areas.
The mental model here is where these guys are headed eventually, is going to be a completely
ungoverned space on the globe.
And it is interesting because some of those jihadist groups which are operating there,
there is al-Qaeda, but there are also other groups. So for instance, Pakistani jihadist
groups who are being trained to go fight in Kashmir, which is a big cause for people.
So the first thing which has attracted Mohammed Tadeed Khan to this cause is the Kashmiri
cause which is a big one for Pakistanis.
And he's gone out there pre-911 to get involved with those camps rather than if you like Al-Qaeda.
Then 2003, he's out there at the same time as we looked at last time with some of these
crevice plotters.
But again, he's at some of these jihadist camps, but not necessarily being trained to
carry out attacks to the UK. And now this would also be before the tempo of that conflict really increases.
So a lot of these spaces would be relatively safe for al-Qaeda members.
And going back to your frenemy point, of course, to some extent, some of those
groups are quite closely aligned and used by Pakistani intelligence in the Pakistani
state, like the ISI, the Kashmiri groups always thought to have a kind of relationship with them. are quite closely aligned and used by Pakistani intelligence in the Pakistani state.
Like the ISI, the Kashmiri groups always thought to have a kind of relationship with them.
So you know, it's complicated how far this is something which the Pakistanis know about
and have got a grip on.
I don't think it's easy to say.
So he's gone out there.
Now, what changes out there?
And the crucial thing is he basically meets one person.
And this person is really significant in our story.
And it's a person called Rashid Ralph.
Best detail on this comes from Raffaello Pantucci's book, We Love Death As You Love Life, which
looks at this.
Now Ralph is a really interesting, significant figure because he's an example of the kind
of close links between the UK and Pakistan,
which have become a feature of this period. So he's born in Pakistan in a place called
Mirpur around 1981 and then his father brings him over to Birmingham as a child. Now Mirpur
is a really significant part of the kind of Kashmiri region over which India and Pakistan
have fought these wars, including recently. It's a large number of people displaced and lots of them make their way to the UK.
Actually, at one point there are estimates that something like 60% of the Pakistani community
in the UK is somehow linked to Meirpur. So it's got really strong connections with the
UK. So what that means is that the issue of Kashmir, the Kashmiri fight and jihadist struggle
against India, has more purchase in that UK community.
And so what you see is, I mean, from the eighties, but especially from the
nineties, it's really impacting on that community and you're starting to get
people going back and forth from the UK to Pakistan and Afghanistan, to training
camps.
And is MI5 obviously is cognizant of this dynamic, but is it just an issue of,
well, 99.9% of the people who were going between the UK and Pakistan are doing so
because they're extended family is there?
Yeah.
400,000 visits a year around this time to Pakistan.
400,000.
So, you know, you've got, that's too many to kind of investigate who they are.
And yeah, tiny, tiny, tiny proportion might be going to these camps.
But of course, until you get to this period, there's no sense that that's a particular threat.
But you're also getting then jihadists coming to Britain, places like Birmingham in the 1990s,
raising money for Kashmir and jihadist groups. So it's starting to have an impact in the community.
And Rashid Rauf, this figure is in that community where kind of radical jihadist thought is pretty normal. But then
he's also a bit of a black sheep in his family. And in spring 2002, he flees Britain back to
Pakistan with a friend. Now, the reason is, is interesting that he and the friend are implicated
in the stabbing to death of one of his own uncles. Nice guy. Was he a black sheep before the stabbing?
Yeah, I think he was.
Okay.
So do we know why he was a black sheep?
No, I think the proclivity towards stabbing.
Yeah, he's maybe not, maybe one side of it.
And it isn't quite clear.
I don't think everyone's quite worked it out.
If the stabbing was kind of jihadist related, or if it's just family politics, arranged
marriages, some kind of clash.
So he's left Britain and that community for Pakistan.
And there he gets even deeper into this jihadist world.
So he marries into a radical circle of preachers
and he starts to come into contact with Al-Qaeda.
So he's stabbed his uncle.
Yeah.
Is MI5 or is anyone in the UK interested
in getting him back from Pakistan?
Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you?
But there was no attempt to sort of extradite him?
Doesn't seem like it.
And I think he's then gone to the tribal areas.
He's effectively fled and he's moving around actually.
So he's not just in the tribal areas, because we'll see he's in Ralpindi as well.
But he is in that period after he flees, then coming into contact with Al-Qaeda.
Now he's quite low level, but his role becomes connecting Britons who are coming over to Al-Qaeda. So he is putting them in touch with the right
people. He's almost like a kind of talent scout who's spotting Britons coming over
who are interested in maybe getting involved in jihadism somehow and going, you're potentially
useful to Al-Qaeda. And of course it makes sense because he knows Britain's enough to kind of vet them, to check
them and work out that they're not, for instance, spies.
And he's trusted by the kind of Al-Qaeda block because he's married into that world and he's
part of it.
So he is this kind of bridge.
So he is looking for Brits.
And then in late
2004, Mohammed Taddecan and Shahzad Tamwair arrived. Now Rashid Rauf is given their phone
numbers, but he waits a couple of weeks before making contact to kind of watch them, observe
them, you know, see if they're being followed.
How does he get their numbers?
That's not clear.
Interesting.
One of a lot of mysteries. Again, I think the feeling when you read about this and when
you look into it is that there is a kind of, there are the feeling when you read about this and when you look into
it is that there is a kind of, there were other people involved in this. There's a wider
community of jihadists and extremists who are connecting people up and doing things
and who've never been publicly identified. So eventually after a few weeks, he calls
them, Ralph meets them in a car, which is owned by Tanweer, one of the two who have come out, uncle, and he's got a driver which suggests they're reasonably well off.
The music is turned up loud so that the driver can't hear what they're talking about as they're in the car.
And Mohamed Sidi Khan apologises about the loud music, saying Tanweer's family would disapprove if they found out about this conversation.
So Ralph is effectively recruiting them and then he takes them to the tribal areas and he's going to introduce them to someone called
Haji, now who we think is Abu Ubaid al-Masri, an Egyptian operational commander and part
of al-Qaeda and someone who's going to be involved in plots. Now, he seems to be the
one who persuades them that rather than fighting and dying out there, he's going to attack
the UK. Do we have any sense of how he made that argument?
Because it does seem to be a pretty significant jump.
Maybe not, but I think from the mentality of MSK or Tanweer that there would seem to
be a pretty big difference between going, for example, into Kashmir.
Yeah.
Or Afghanistan.
And being part of an actual battlefront, right? Versus
going back to London and killing fellow Britons. I know they don't really see themselves as Britons,
but yeah, it seems like that wouldn't happen overnight.
No. I mean, it's a good question. I think, of course, we don't know what happened inside
their heads. I guess they're totally isolated.
Yeah, they're totally isolated. I mean, you could imagine a few things.
I mean, one is to some extent being taken to the tribal areas and
meeting these Al-Qaeda leaders.
There's a sense of like, this is a big deal and you're being kind of told
this is a big deal and you're being introduced into this, this world where
suddenly you're being told, no, you can have a mission to do something bigger
than you thought, rather than just going and being a random soldier there. The context is interesting. So this is, you know, you
read a bit at the start from the video that Mohammed Sadiq Khan is going to record, and
he's going to record that out there at this time, we think. And you get a bit of a flavour
for the arguments that have infected him. He is saying Western governments are responsible for invasions
of Muslim lands and the people, ordinary people, are legitimate targets because they've elected
those governments. That's the argument. I think it's worth saying Iraq has just happened
in 2003. Iraq war has just started. So I think that as a factor and he and others refer to that and that context.
So you can see why that argument that Al Qaeda is pushing has more purchase at that time.
I think it's an extension of the bin Laden argument.
Yeah.
Because the West has sort of attacked and invaded the Islamic world.
The West needs to be attacked at home to sort of feel that pain and pull back.
I guess we also have, we mentioned it, I think in the last episode that we also have the
example of what happened in Madrid where attacks on civilian infrastructure led to a change
in government that then withdrew the Spanish contingent from the Iraq war.
The other thing that I think we talked about this a bit in the Bin Laden series that I
don't think listeners should forget is that what these guys think they're signing
up for, which to us looks like a death cult, to them is worship.
They don't believe that they're killing innocent people.
They believe they're worshiping God.
And so what they're doing here is a sort of intimate religious act that is going to get them immediately taken to paradise.
Which I think we should not forget this, this is the mentality here of these guys, I think,
when they leave the tribal areas.
I mean, you must have looked into these videos and the kinds of people who did that in your
CIA time to try and understand it.
I mean, it's hard to understand.
It's hard to understand.
I think I still kind of struggle with the mentality of what's actually in these
guys' heads when they do this. But I really do think the mentality is worship and it's
worship through death, which is why I think the Raffaele Pentucci book title is great.
We love death as you love life. There's this sort of connection between death and worship
in this part of the jihadist world
that is really powerful.
I think hard for us to understand. Out there, he's going to record this tape, which is going
to emerge later. From something that emerges, Ralph leaves some notes, which are later found.
Ralph is supposedly annoyed because it's hard to film the video. There's no natural light
and they're reluctant to make the recordings because they were supposedly shy, but agreed because Haji had ordered them to. So it's
kind of, again, you get that sense in which, not suggesting they were coerced in any way,
but you know, this is a powerful figure who is, who is you telling them you need to do
this, this is what you should be doing. This is your duty if you like.
Yeah.
And you should do.
It's some measure of coercion, even if it's unstated, I think is often part of these stories
too of like, you're up there in the tribal areas.
Are you going to say no?
Yeah.
Are you really able to say no?
Yeah, it's a good question.
I'm not saying that they're, I mean, they're doing this at their own will.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But there is something hanging over here, which is you're sort of isolated.
We al-Qaeda can do things to you if you don't want to.
I would think even recording the video here, and part of the reason why I'm speculating, they're
reluctant, is you're kind of boxed in.
There is some history of people going out there, recording videos or being told to do
stuff and then go back and go, I don't want to do this, you know, and chickening out.
Maybe because they feel that pressure.
But in this case, of course, they go ahead with it.
So Ra'af also takes them around the tribal areas and interestingly enough, introduces
them to a Syrian bomb maker. And that is also
a crucial part of the story because that Syrian bomb maker is going to teach them how to prepare
the hydrogen peroxide devices. And you remember from our earlier episodes that these are unique
devices. When they go off in Britain and they recover the parts, the Metropolitan Police
Bomb Squad have never seen devices like this. So that is an important part of the stories. How did they get to understand how to make
these bombs? Well, the answer is they're being taught by a bomb maker in the tribal areas.
I would imagine that they've picked an explosive device for the fact that you could source
the material in the UK. For a lot of these external operations planners in Elkhart, I
mean, this is the trick is
how do you find people who have passports to get you into the West?
And also how do you create a situation in which they also have the bomb making, not
just the expertise, but the ability to source those materials in a way that's not going
to draw the attention of the authorities.
We saw with the crevice plot in the last episode, the fertilizer.
So you want to find things you can buy without raising
attention.
Yeah. So this is all in this period from November 2004 to February. And it's interesting at
one point, Mohammed Sadiq Khan suddenly tells his wife who thinks he's not coming back that
actually he's coming back and she records that in a diary. Ralph says he was actually
eager to return to the UK with Mohammed Sadiq Khan and Tanwar, but it was too difficult for him to re-enter because he's wanted for that murder and he can't get
a clean passport. But Mohammed Sadiq Khan and Tanwar themselves do return to the UK
on February 8th, 2005.
So I'll be there with MSK and Tanwar headed back to the UK. Let's take a break. When we
return, we'll see how they get on and stay under the radar when they return from Pakistan.
Well, welcome back.
MSK and Tenweer are back in the UK from Pakistan.
And I guess Gordon now with this idea planted,
this plot hatched to actually conduct the
7-7 attacks, they're now trying to fly under the radar as much as possible.
Yeah. And that's a very deliberate decision by them and they're going to change their
behaviour. So we've had the arrests of the Crevice plotters, which was March 2004, so
about a year earlier. And of course, Mohammed Sadiq Khan and Tamwair know that
they were linked to them and that therefore there is a risk that they might be somewhere
in the databases. So they are worried about surveillance, the signs are, and they actually
start acting in a slightly different way. They do stuff like going to the cinema, things
they wouldn't normally do, just to not look like radical jihadists. So they
are trying to go dark. They also start to use 15 operational phones. Now these are
separate from their normal mobile phones and they just use these for contact
between them. They change them regularly so only used for their kind of closed
group as that group comes together of four people and for planning the attack
which seems to be quite good security in some ways.
And I think probably reflects when I'm thinking back to the Bin Laden series here of in the early
2000s, this set of successes that we had, the UK had, the Pakistanis had in Pakistan,
disrupting sort of Al Qaeda senior leadership that was living in the cities.
A lot of it had to do with cell phone management.
So I think there's probably been some lessons learned in how you manage phones.
This is where the threat comes from people going from the UK to then get this training
in Pakistan is that they come back with some tradecraft that they would not have had before.
I mean, you see when they're dealing with the crevice plotters, they're getting in and back with some trade graft that they would not have had before.
You see when they're dealing with the crevice plotters, they're getting in and out of the
car with them.
There's a connection that MI5 potentially could have made.
Now it's going to be a lot harder to sort of draw patterns out of their behavior.
It probably is worth a refresher for our listeners on what does MI5 actually know about these guys?
Yeah, because we did look at that last time, but it is worth just thinking about it in
those terms. Good question. Because I think MI5 do not know they've been to Pakistan.
They know that there were some people on the edges of crevice who, if you like, on their
list to look at, but not as top targets, but they are still kind of unidentified males, you know,
D and E.
MFI would not have their names connected
to that investigation.
And you remember they've followed some cars
which have suggested a Sadiq Khan,
but also Hasina Patel, his wife.
So they've got these little bits of traces,
but none of them connect back to this trip to Pakistan
or the previous trip, because you'll
remember Junaid Babar, this guy in American custody, has seen pictures, but he didn't
identify them.
So badly cropped pictures of MSK that he's shown and he says, basically, I don't know
these guys.
Right.
MI5 know that there were some people on the margins of Crevice who were talking about
doing stuff in Pakistan, Afghanistan, but they haven't linked it fully to either the name, the other
traces of Mohammed Saddiq Khan, or the fact that they've now gone to Pakistan.
So they've got pieces of the puzzle, but they're not there together.
And presumably somewhere in the British system, there would be their names attached to a flight
manifest that went to Pakistan.
But again, that's happening in the context of half million people a year who are going back and
forth. And at this point, there's nothing to flag those two, Tanweer and MSK, as being particularly
of interest. So you've got, I guess in theory, dots that you could connect that are scattered
throughout the British system, but there's no sort of like red flag that would exist to sort of connect these guys to Al Qaeda or to a plot in the UK.
Now it is true. If MI5 had started surveillance of them now, they might have caught the plot. But the question is, what would it have taken for MI5 to put them under surveillance now?
Were there enough of those red flags to do that? Well, only if you put
all those things together and maybe had a lead that they were doing something.
If they had not shown Junaid Babar, the jihadist in US custody, a picture that had MSK cropped
out of it, he might have said, oh, he was in the camps in 2003.
But they're going to show him another picture later and he still doesn't recognize him. I'm slightly
suspicious whether he wanted to recognize him. So they do come back and they do try and fly below
the radar. They rent one flat then another, the one in Alexandra Grove we talked about previously
where they're going to build the bombs. Not going to get into the bomb making, it's best not to kind
of give away the details on how to build the bombs.
But I think, you know, going to your point earlier, what's crucial is they can purchase
most of the raw materials from hairdressing supply shops. So it's kind of hydrogen peroxide
base. And actually during this time, people notice that their hair is kind of discoloured
and that's because they're cooking up this hydrogen peroxide in the flat. And you know, they come up with other stories about swimming pools.
Now interesting enough, and this is also important, Mohammed Sadiq Khan is still in contact with
Rashid Rauf on his operational phone, so separate from his normal mobile, multiple times. Now
Rauf seems to call from a phone booth in Raupindi. There's text, other messages, they use code words to avoid detection. Now, crucial
this that Rashid Raouf is giving Mohammed Sadiq Khan advice when he's struggling with
aspects of the bomb making, particularly on the concentration of the hydrogen peroxide.
And the last call is thought to be just five days before the bombing. And this is important
that he is able to kind of remotely guide him on what's going on.
And I guess at that point, they're not under surveillance and Rashid is not under surveillance.
In a way, that's the more interesting question is if you'd had Ralph under surveillance
by MI5, MI6 and Pakistanis or someone, that would have been the way to kind of spot this.
Because if you're seeing him making calls to the UK and you know, he's a jihadist in a
way, I think that's the point of weakness on this perhaps.
Which would have been particularly challenging if he's using phone booths.
Yeah.
It's not like our friend Abu Ahmed al Kuwaiti in the bin Laden, who's actually got his
mobile that he's using to call his family.
So in this case we've got, I mean, he's literally showing up at different phone
booths and not calling on a mobile phone. So even if GCHQ had had his selectors, in
this case, it might not have helped.
So these calls are going back and forth. The bombers are making the bombs. It looks like
they do a recce reconnaissance run about a week before the bombing, thought about the
Bank of England or even going up to the G8 at Gleneagles in Scotland at one point, but they picked the transport system.
That probably wouldn't have worked out if they'd gone up to…
No, I think a lot of security there.
Yeah. Who picked the targets?
That's a good question. We don't know the answer to that. There's some suggestion
they might have wanted to hit the transport system on the 6th, which is the opening day
of the G8 summit, but possible that it got delayed for a day. But they've clearly decided
to hit the transport system and it does look like it is tied to be with this the g8 summit going okay part of the message part of the message you got all these western leaders in the UK.
Where is time to the kind of olympics announcement which they knew was on the sixth and a bit less clear and of course you don't know which way that's going.
So they all head to London in the early morning of July 7th with these rucksacks, which weigh about 14 kilos and they've got ice packs which are required to keep the bombs cool.
We talked earlier about the day itself, but one interesting point at four minutes past two on the day of the blast. So after the bombs are detonated, there is one further phone call made to Mohammed Sadiq Khan's operational phone, which comes from Raoul Pindi in Pakistan.
So that looks like it's Rashid Rauf. I mean, that's thought to be who it is.
It's hours after the attack.
Yeah. So whether he's trying to find out what's happening or what's going on, it's not clear.
It had always been planned that it was a suicide bombing. Right?
Yeah.
Interesting.
Yeah. It's interesting, isn't it? Why you'd make the call, maybe just to check.
I suppose at that point, maybe you're wondering if your Rashid Rauf has someone backed out. Yeah. Yeah. Why you'd make the call, maybe just to check. I suppose at that point, maybe you're wondering if your Rashid Ralph has someone backed out.
Yeah. So you just make the call to check. It's interesting, isn't it? That is not the
end of the story, particularly when it comes to July 2005, because that takes us really
back up to the bombings where we started. But just two weeks after 7-7, something's going to happen.
There's going to be another attempted terrorist attack.
So July 21st, 2005.
And we're going to look at that partly because there is a connection to 7-7.
I think it's really interesting to understand that connection.
It wasn't always understood, I think, particularly at the time.
And the connection goes back through Pakistan and through Rashid
Rauf as we'll learn. But yeah, two weeks after 7-7, London's trying to get back on its feet
almost immediately. There were lots of security alerts, as you'd imagine. The smallest thing
would lead to a station being evacuated or suspicious packages, suspicious sightings.
It was happening all over the place at that point. But after two weeks, I think there was a feeling at that point, just got over the shock of
it, just getting back to normal.
And then suddenly reports come in of something strange happening again on the tubes.
This time lunchtime, around 12.25, the first reports of a bomb scare at Shepherd's Bush
tube, which is in West London.
And it was actually just a few hundred yards from where I was kind of working at the time. More reports then come in the next few minutes
of incidents on the tube. And of course, you know, immediately you're like, it's happening
again. It's eerily similar. There are three devices in rucksacks on the underground and
the fourth on the bus. What is different though, this time, and this is important part of the
link and understanding it, is that the devices don't go off properly. So there's a bang and smoke, but not a large
explosion. And then some people see a kind of bubbling, fizzing, popping yellow substance
coming out of the rucksacks and four people who actually look surprised that they are still alive.
And it's worth remembering, we talked about this a few episodes ago, the bubbling stuff in the bathtub, like pizza, you know,
pizza being taken out of the oven. It's similar stuff. It looks the same. Now one person actually
confronts one of these attempted bombers and, you know, also emerged that there was a fifth
plotter who abandoned his bomb. But I think what's noticeable talking to people about it is that
there was just total shock in MI5 and the police. I mean, just total shock. Because
7-7, they will say, was awful emotionally because people had died. But this is almost
professionally more of a shock.
You should have been able to stop this.
Yeah. Well, I think it's two things. One is I think they thought that they got their
hands around what the 7-7 plot was. I think they felt like we now know who the plotters
were. They'd identified the four bombers. And then suddenly you're like, are there
more out there? And the fact it's exactly two weeks later and it looks very similar,
you know, tubes and bus, you're immediately thinking how many more? Is this
going to be every two weeks? I think that is the feeling which is really rocking people
in MI5 when you talk to them, is like, did we miss it? Is it copycats? Is it connected?
How many waves? Can we cope with this if it's going to be every two weeks? How many more
teams are there out there and do they know each other? I think that professionally, if you're a security service, is really, really
profoundly disturbing.
Well, and if you have a gigantic population of second generation Pakistanis who are your
potential population to be radicalized, even if a very, very, very
small number are sort of making this transit back and forth or going, you know, getting
this kind of training and bomb making or whatever.
MI5 at the time, we're talking about tens of people devoted to counter-terrorism.
I mean, it's not a large security service at this stage.
So you wouldn't have the resources to deal with this if there is going to be kind of
a wave.
Wave after wave after wave.
Yeah. And so MI5 start a new operation, it's called Operation HAT.
Also a terrible...
Another bad name, I think.
And they have to create another one of these security service emergency rooms.
They have to pull in more people.
They've already brought in people who are working on Northern Ireland, on counter espionage.
And now they're basically bringing people straight off the induction courses.
Absolute newbies are just being brought in because they're stretched.
And of course, the bigger problem this time is that they know that there are people who
wanted to be suicide bombers, who are willing to kill others and to die, but who've escaped.
Who've gotten out.
Who've gotten out.
They've fled the scenes.
So effectively, you've got a manhunt.
And maybe they're Gordon with a manhunt on in London after July 21st, 2005.
Let's end, we come back next time for the last episode in the series on 7.7, 2005. And it's aftermath.
We'll look at the attack.
We'll look at this manhunt.
And I think we'll also come back to this big question of whether MI5 could have prevented
all of this from happening.
But of course, listeners don't want to wait for that last episode.
You don't have to.
You can go to therestisclassified.com, join our Declassified Club, get access to everything
early.
If not, that's also fine.
We won't hold it against you.
We'll see you next time.
See you next time.