Operation Overt: systemic vulnerability and investigative primacy

By Roderick Jones

Yesterday three British Muslims – Abdulla Ahmed Ali, Tanvir Hussain and Assad Sarwar – were convicted of plotting to blow up seven transatlantic airliners in mid-air in a coordinated attack intended to surpass 9/11. The coverage of the case in the British press is highly informative and there is little to add to the overall commentary here. The main points highlighted have been:

• The importance of securing a conviction using the Rule of Law rather than extra-judicial means, which have been a key feature of American Counter-Terrorist policy.
• The need to change UK law to allow intercept evidence. Email’s from the plotters were introduced into this trial via the legal mechanism of obtaining a warrant in California to re-produce data from Yahoo!’s archive.
• The fact that the UK investigation into the plot was de-railed by suspected US action in forcing the Pakistani authorities to arrest the key facilitator in Pakistan – Rashid Rauf. This claim has been made most forcefully by Andy Hayman who was ACSO at the time of the plot before leaving his post in controversy following an investigation into his expense claims and Michael Clarke, Director of the Royal United Services Institute.

There are of course other ways of looking at this. There is little doubt that the work of the Police in investigating and preventing this plot was first rate. However, the claim made that the White House 'got edgy' and therefore jeopardized the investigation, doesn’t quite ring true. This assertion relies on the claim that the US government sent Jose Rodriguez to Pakistan in order to facilitate the detention of Rashid Rauf. If this did indeed occur it is worth pausing to consider what the potential benefit of this may be. The obvious line of questioning would have been to ask Rauf if there were any other plots running and who exactly was involved in the UK conspiracy. The US would then have been able to determine if the UK authorities had indeed got the full coverage of the plot they claimed and if similar action was being planned elsewhere. To paraphrase former Sec. Def. Rumsfeld – were there any unknown unknowns? While this certainly didn’t do the UK Police any favors, as they had to move quickly to then round up the plotters -- potentially damaging the evidential chain. It has to be considered that bringing Rauf into custody was a risk worth taking in order to potentially grab a fuller intelligence picture of a global plot that could have had simultaneous action in diverse national jurisdictions [what happened to Rauf in Pakistani custody and subsequently is in stark contrast to the fate of his co-conspirators in the UK]. It is surprising that given the clear knowledge that Islamist terrorism is transnational in nature that none of the UK reporting is considering that the alleged US action may have had this clearly in mind.

An important final point is to consider how this plot will be viewed in the proverbial cave in Afghanistan [a phrase I would accredit to Brian Jenkins]. While the attack did not succeed it certainly had a large psychological and economic impact on transatlantic travel. Air-travel was disrupted and new security procedures had to be implemented to combat the threat of liquid bombs – all of this along with the costs of the surveillance and investigative commitment comes out with a large price-tag [some estimates claim $160M in the UK alone]. Not many countries could pay for this scale of terrorist event on a consistent basis. The fact of an open trial and a talkative former Assistant Commissioner of Police have revealed a large amount of operational detail from the investigation of the plot, from covert searches of luggage, bugging of residences, email interception, monitoring of Islamic bookshops and the mechanics of counter-terrorist work. This will be examined closely to adjust terrorist operational security for the future as well as to assess potential vulnerabilities. Finally, not all of the individuals associated with this plot were convicted – their success in avoiding justice will similarly be examined so it can be replicated. Therefore, a strategic observer would regard this as a score draw.

Therefore, while it is a matter of great satisfaction that the main plotters were convicted – there are systemic issues, [outside of the obvious need for intercept evidence] which should be considered. The most interesting being the issue of primacy when investigating a global terrorist plot. The US currently simply assumes de facto primacy but it may benefit from a international arbiter – a UN terrorism co-coordinator – this seems unlikely, but the ability to present a transnational picture of unfolding terrorist plots may prevent the knee-jerk ‘The Americans got edgy” kind of commentary. A harder fix will be trying to stem the flow of information about counter-terrorist operations, disaffected former senior police officers are one thing but the use of an open trial is quite another. One of the aims of using the rule of law to prosecute terrorists is that the evidence is also seen in the court of public opinion in order to justify state security action. How far this goes is always a question of risk management. There is little doubt western governments need to continue to evolve their counter-terrorism response, sadly the conclusion of trials such as these do not provide an end but they may suggest a means to an end.