London terrorists "planned to blow up airliners over U.S. cities to maximize casualties"
By Jeff Emanuel Posted in Featured Stories | National Security — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The plot to commit "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" with liquid explosives on planes just got a whole lot bigger
Twenty-five people were arrested in Britain this past August when authorities learned that they were plotting to smuggle liquid explosives aboard airliners bound for the US, with the intention of detonating the planes in-flight. Eleven of the detainees have since been charged with Conspiracy to Murder and Preparing Acts of Terrorism.
At the time, it was thought that the plan was to blow up the fuel-and- passenger-laden jets over the Atlantic Ocean.
Now it appears that the plot, which was originally called "an attempt to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale" by a London police chief, was far worse.
According to Mark Mershon, head of the FBI's New York field office, the terrorists had actually planned "to blow up airliners over U.S. cities to maximize casualties."
"U.S. and British intelligence officials now think that the airliner plot was aimed at maximizing the potential loss of life and economic effect," Mershon continued.
Mershon's statements were made on October 24 at the Infosecurity 2006 conference in New York, according to Government Security News, which first reported them in a newsletter this week.
According to the Winston-Salem Journal,
Mershon told those attending the cybersecurity conference that representatives of MI5, the British intelligence service, had briefed the FBI on the liquid-explosives case in recent weeks. "It would make your hair stand up to be in the room to hear that presentation," Mershon said, according to GSN.
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert and Georgetown University professor, said the case indicates that Islamic extremists remain focused on attacking U.S. cities."They were clearly desirous of exceeding 9/11," Hoffman said. "The loss of life in the air and on the ground would be significant."
The British legal system provides their officers far more more power and latitude than ours have with the Patriot act.
I hope we did not infringe on thier privacy or civil rights by using wiretaps to learn these details. And I especially hope that they didn't cause these terrorists any discomfort when questioning them.
Now that would be criminal.