Friday, August 11, 2006; Posted: 3:33 p.m. EDT (19:33 GMT)
"...British and Pakistani authorities teamed up to thwart the attacks (click here), and 24 men were arrested in overnight raids in Britain, authorities said.
An undercover British agent infiltrated the group, giving the authorities intelligence on the alleged plan, several U.S. government officials said....
The only aspect of the USA's response that mattered was cooperation in supplying the British with whatever information they wanted and supplying Sky Marshalls for British flights bound for the USA. What programs was Cheney talking about in his 'ego driven' interview with King? Cooperation?
Three US airlines are believed to have been targeted....(click here)
..."There has been an enormous amount of co-operation with the US authorities which has been of great value and underlines the threat we face and our determination to counter it," he said in a statement....
...A spokesman for Number 10 said Tony Blair had briefed US President George Bush on the situation during the night...
Police at the scene of one of the raids, on Forest Road, Walthamstow, London. (click here)
...Of the approximately 24 suspects who were arrested in and around London on the night of 9 August 2006, eleven were charged with terrorism offenses on 21 August, two on 25 August (subsequently discharged on 1 November), and a further three on 30 August.
Eventually, only 8 men (Ahmed Abdullah Ali, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain, Oliver Savant, Arafat Khan, Waheed Zaman, Umar Islam, Mohammed Gulzar) were charged in connection with the plot. The trial began in April 2008.
On 8 September 2008, after more than 50 hours of deliberations, the jury did not find any of the defendants guilty of conspiring to target aircraft. The jury found Ali, Sarwar and Hussein guilty of conspiracy to murder charges but was unable to reach verdicts on charges relating to the alleged plot to blow up aircraft in respect of them.
The jurors were unable to reach verdicts on those charges or conspiracy to murder charges as well on conspiracy to detonate explosives on aircraft against Oliver Savant, 27, of Stoke Newington, Umar Islam, 30, of Plaistow, and Waheed Zaman, 24, and Arafat Waheed Khan, 27, both of Walthamstow, all London. Mohammad Gulzar, 27, of Barking, east London, was found not guilty on all counts....
In an emergency statement, Home Secretary John Reid said police had disrupted a "major threat to the UK". (click here)
...CHENEY (click here): John, I've seen a report that was written based upon the intelligence that we collected then that itemizes the specific attacks that were stopped by virtue of what we learned through those programs. It's still classified. I can't give you the details of it without violating classification, but I can say there were a great many of them. The one that has been public was the potential attack coming out of Heathrow, when they were going to have several American planes with terrorists on board, with liquid explosives, and they were going to blow those planes up over the United States.
Now, that was intercepted and stopped, partly because of those programs that we put in place....
He hasn't learned a darn thing. SO, Dick when you want to diss the new administration you might want to remember exactly why people didn't listen to you in the first place ! You are the boy that cried "WOLF" one to many times !
