Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Dick Cheney 'Put Airline Bomb Plot Case in Jeopardy With Arrest Order of Rashid Rauf'
Dick Cheney, the former US Vice President, nearly destroyed Britain's efforts to bring the airline bomb plotters to justice, police and intelligence experts said today.
Former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in Washington in this file image from May 21, 2009. (REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/Files) By ordering the early arrest of Rashid Rauf, the bombers' link man in Pakistan, Washington forced British police to detain the suspects in the UK before all the evidence had been gathered, it was claimed.
Yesterday three British Muslims - Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Tanvir Hussain and Assad Sarwar - were finally convicted of plotting to blow up seven transatlantic airliners in mid-air in a co-ordinated attack intended to surpass the horror of 9/11. But the plotters were arrested before they had bought the airline tickets that would have been the ultimate proof of their intentions. Police fear that several key figures of the plot have remained free.
Andy Hayman, who was the Metropolitan Police's Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations at the time of the plot, said he believed that the White House had grown jittery as the British updated them of the mounting evidence of a plot targeted at American cities.
Although Britain was running the investigation, including a massive round-the-clock surveillance of 200 suspects, the UK was not warned that Rauf - the al-Qaeda facilitator who kept the English plotters in touch with bomb experts and terrorism trainers in Pakistan - was going to be arrested.
"We believed the Americans had demanded the arrest and we were angry we had not been informed," said Mr Hayman, writing in The Times today.
"We were forced to take action, to arrest a number of suspects, which normally would have required days of planning and briefing... Two of the ringleaders were picked up as they met to discuss plans, and throughout the night and the following morning officers were bursting through doors in East London and High Wycombe.
"The arrest hampered our evidence-gathering and placed us in Britain under intolerable pressure."
MIchael Clarke, the director of the Royal United Services Institute, said he gave "great credence" to the theory that US interference was to blame for Rauf's arrest. He described how the decision appeared to lead straight back to the White House and to Mr Cheney.
"We know that Tony Blair briefed George Bush on July 28, that he told them that the plot was hatching, but it wasn't quite ready yet," said Mr Clarke.
"Mr Bush didn't seem to commit anything to paper, but Vice President Cheney despatched a man called Jose Rodriguez to Pakistan in secret. The British didn't know he was there.
"And after Mr Rodriguez's arrival in Pakistan, Rashid Rauf was picked up. The British were hopping mad about that, because it meant that on August 10 they had no choice but to move in on this plot before all the evidence was as mature as possible.
"There is a general belief in British security circles that the despatch of Mr Rodriguez to the White House came straight from the White House."
Mr Hayman said that his suspicions of America had grown even before Rauf's arrest, as meetings with US intelligence to keep them informed of the progress of the investigation had grown sour.
"Fearful for the safety of American lives, the US authorities had been getting edgy, seeking reassurance that this was not going to slip through our hands. We moved from having congenial conversations to eyeball-to-eyeball confrontations," wrote Mr Hayman.
"We thought we had managed to persuade them to hold back so we could develop new opportunities and get more evidence to present to the courts. But I was never convinced that they were content with that position.
"In the end, I strongly suspect that they lost their nerve and had a hand in triggering the arrest in Pakistan."
Mr Clarke added that the airline bomb plot trial had brought home the extent to which the myriad of terrorist cells and plots in Britain were connected and aided and kept in touch through key figures such as Mr Rauf, who was also in contact with the 7/7 bombers on London transport, the failed 21/7 London bombers, and the fertiliser bomb plotters picked up by Operation Crevice.
Mr Rauf's fate is unclear. After his arrest, he managed to escape from Pakistani custody under suspicious circumstances. Late last year the Americans reported that they had killed him, along with several other key al-Qaeda figures, in a barrage of Hellfire missiles fired from a Predator drone at a bungalow in Pakistan's tribal territories on its border with Afghanistan.
Mr Rauf's DNA was never retrieved from the bombing however, leaving open the possibilities that he is either still on the run or is secretly in custody and under interrogation.
- Posted in
21 Comments so far
Show AllTake these three extracts of the article:
…the plot was hatching, but it wasn't quite ready yet…..
…..Mr Clarke added that the airline bomb plot trial had brought home the extent to which the myriad of terrorist cells and plots in Britain were connected and aided and kept in touch through key figures such as Mr Rauf, who was also in contact with the 7/7 bombers on London transport, the failed 21/7 London bombers, and the fertiliser bomb plotters picked up by Operation Crevice.
…..Mr Rauf's fate is unclear. After his arrest, he managed to escape from Pakistani custody under suspicious circumstances. Late last year the Americans reported that they had killed him, along with several other key al-Qaeda figures,
Am the only one to feel that this whole business of people without passports and tickets blowing up airliners, was a plot of entrapment played out on the gullible by agents of CIA and MI5, just to prove that terrorists are for real and we should all be “afraid” no we should be “very afraid” and do what big brother tells us. Is Mr. Rauf not just the perfect agent provocateur, and how convenient that he can just disappear?
I hope one day the truth may be known and I’m sure it has nothing to do with these silly people found guilty who are hardly the backbone of international terror. I’m sure if all the truth be known the evidence against them would collapse. They’ll then have to have terminal cancer to be released on humanitarian grounds in order to drop proceedings for a retrial, I guess!
9-11, 7-7, Madrid Blair and Cheney, who are the real terrorists and when can we put them on trial with hard evidence that does not need to be hidden.
Lucitanian September 8th, 2009 1:00 pm...........Are you the only one? Where you been, friend?...there are millions who believe the way you do.
ae911truth.org
911sharethetruth.com
911weknow.com
stj911.org
911blogger.com
physics911.net
911research.com
infowars.com
wtc7.net
informationclearinghouse.info
rockcreekfreepress.com
IdahoObserver.com
BrasscheckTV.com
TrueWorldHistory.info
Another piece to the puzzle.
The jerky reaction/Rodriques/Pak escape marks a spot where it almost got away from them in the covering of the trail that would lead back to the perps...
snydly September 8th, 2009 8:54 pm............You can spin a web, but if you are not a spider, you will eventually entangle yourself. Just a few more strands and they will hang themselves.
Yup, sounded like entrapment when it was first disclosed/reported.
He gets uglier every time I see him.
Nietzsche September 8th, 2009 1:24 pm....................Please, someone....microwave that sneer off his rotting face!
That Dick Cheney is an incompetent fascist is truly beyond scary.
The photo above is the absolute best visual representation of Cheney yet! He looks mad, as in insane, but it is the madness of the wholesale killer, the steamroller of democracy, the Charles Manson of American politics. All he needs is the swastika carved into his forehead.
Good picture. His mouth is open = he's lying.
Send this psychopath off to jail.
Sometimes I think editors must spend a long time trying to pick out just the right picture to support the message they are trying to get across, or when they do not like someone they choose one where the subject is caught in an embarrassing pose. Cheney makes it easy for them: any picture of him will do and there are no good ones.
A couple of points:
1) There was no way those idiots would have successfully made that bomb on an airplane. The time needed to dry the ingredients and the lack of a suitable laboratory added to the stench and scrutiny from hundreds of passengers and crew make that a stretch even Hollywood couldn't manage.
2) Stop giving Cheney air time. It might seem that nothing should stand in the way of his treacheries being aired but it is just plain counter productive in the long run.
Cheney has never, since being visited on us by the Nixon empire, been able to distinguish fact from his 'reality'. He has been instrumental in the doctrine of increase of Executive power. He fully and firmly believes that the US can and MUST dictate terms of EVERYTHING to the rest of the world. He has never listened to reason, had patience to adequately assess a situation fully, understood nuance and subtlety, nor can he accept responsibility for the failures of his actions and policies. If this is not the textbook description of a narcissitic, megalo-maniacal psychopath, I don't know what would be.
What's clear to most of us at CD, is that somehow, sometime in the past our government must have merged with organized crime. I'm not sure when that actually happened (maybe it's always been ongoing, who knows?) but it's known that after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Viper's team became heavily involved with "reforming" the USSR into Western style markets. One of my friends, who worked for an aerospace company said they had purchased barge loads of Titanium for pennies on the hundred dollars because the Russians had no idea what it was worth on the world market. Previously, the State had just mandated that so much was produced for airplanes, no matter how scarce or valuable it was. During that time, Viper became very chummy with KGB and it is my contention, that in order to control the nuclear country and it's various nuclear satellite countries, our spooks worked with, and devolved into their spooks. Torture, Kidnapping and Cement Goulashes became the order of the day. It wasn't long before Viper's twisted brain decided to apply the same techniques to control us over here.
This man thinks he was a great patriot who brought down the Soviet Union, and that entitles him now, to do anything at all. But in reality, he was a mindless tyrant; a ruthless domestic enemy of American Liberty. He is a menace to us all.
All of the above, are my opinions only, and I could be wrong.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
ThomasJefferson... September 8th, 2009 8:20 PM.......................Want some interesting, blow your mind info related to the downfall of the USSR and the Bush crime family, please go to israelshamir.net and scroll to the collateral damage articles.
Yeah nevergiveup,
It's a real showstopper of an intel brief. Just too detailed to make up. The Asian Gold thing was verified by the well documented fight over the one billion dollar reclining Buddha discovered hidden by the Jap army in Bagio, P.I. Amelda Marcos probably still has it squirreled away somewhere, even though she was ordered by a court to surrender it to the surviving relatives of the poor farmer who found it. A small counterfeit of it was surrendered to the court.
Tales of thousands of native boats dropping huge rocks on ropes to find the torpedoed Japanese sub Yamimita used to escape with his loot are well known here to have been organized by Marcos himself. My friends dived on it in 1995 and it was picked clean but contained huge vaults (empty) in the center of the vessel. They said they couldn't tell if it was Japanese, since it was so corroded. I've seen the photos. Jim almost got trapped because Lees flippers kicked up so much dust he got lost and couldn't find his way out. Close one.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
ThomasJefferson... September 9th, 2009 9:21 am............You're a fast reader. Had you read this article previously?
Yes nevergiveup,
It's a popular article with many at CD. Yachtie and others pointed it out to me months ago. I printed it out because I was afraid it would disappear (I'm surprised it's still up.) I have problems with the specific offices being targeted in WTC as the aircraft was clearly in over a 45 degree bank on the south tower, probably 60 degrees, where load factor doubles (2 G's) and pitch control becomes so problematical that loss of control is more likely than even being able to hit the building if it was under human control. The autopilot will not function either at those extreme limits; it disconnects (I used to fly for a living) so I feel it's probable that it was under human control (but just barely; as evidenced by the fact that he didn't hit the building squarely and almost just clipped the corner, save for the desperate last second overbank maneuver.)
Other than that, most of it seems eerily plausible. It's so broad and encompassing, and goes into so much detail with specific names and references that unless somebody can discredit the references, I'm inclined to think that the bulk of it is true.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Someone needs to point out to the Brits that we DO have an extradition treaty with them. They can have Cheney ANY time they want his sorry butt. PLEASE come and get him. Don't you have laws against interference with the police in the course of their duties? We sure as hell do here, and I doubt that we would hesitate to grab one of their citizens over it. Especially in the "war of terror". ANYTHING is acceptable in that situation. Cheney should be rotting in one of YOUR jails, since no one in this country seems to have a ball between them to do it here.
Well they have no intention of catching anyone, for gods sake cheney & the CIA orchestrated all of this.
Will the people please arrest Cheney & all behind this.
Then we will see an end to all terror attacks & all wars.
The CIA by the way is not a US Agency.
The war in Afganistan & now Pakistan is all CIA controlled they fund the Taliban. They also oversea the drug trade.
The terrorists are all sitting up there in our government.
Connected to the Global bankers & all the real sociopathic terrorists on the planet the Bilderberg Group.
Charge them , we could all live in peace in a prosperous world as they control 98% of the worlds resources.
I find it funny that some comments here indicate that the Brits arent in cahoots with the American government.