TRANSATLANTIC BOMB PLOT UPDATE….I realize this has nothing to do with Mark Foley (sorry!), but a reader emailed today to ask about the latest news on the transatlantic bomb plot that prompted British and American authorities to ban liquids and gels from airplanes last August. Good question. What has been going on?
In a word, nothing. As near as I can tell, there’s been virtually no news in the past couple of weeks from either the British or American governments about the plot, the perpetrators, the state of the evidence, or anything else. I found only a single interesting article, which ran last Sunday in the Observer:
American intelligence agents told their British counterparts they were ready to ‘render’ Rashid Rauf, a British citizen allegedly linked to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and who was under surveillance in Pakistan, unless he was picked up immediately.
Rauf is the key suspect in the alleged plot to detonate explosives on up to 10 transatlantic planes that was exposed in August….A senior intelligence source has told The Observer that US agents had agreed on a plan to seize Rauf and fly him to an interrogation centre at a secret location if he remained at large.
….The intelligence source said the alleged plot had not been at the advanced planning stage.
I thought we had been promised startling revelations about the seriousness of this plot, but apparently not. Or at least not yet. All we know is that the Americans forced the British to act sooner than they wanted (possibly with good reason), and the plot itself was not at the “advanced planning stage.”
So that’s the latest.
