Original source URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/13/world/europe/13disrupt.html August 13, 2006 Tracing Plots, British Watch, Then Pounce By PHILIP SHENON and NEIL A. LEWIS WASHINGTON, Aug. 12 ‹ The disclosure that British officials conducted months of surveillance before arresting 24 terrorism suspects this week highlighted what many terrorism specialists said was a central difference between American and British law enforcement agencies. The British, they say, are more willing to wait and watch. Although details of the British investigation remain secret, Bush administration officials say Britain¹s domestic intelligence agency, MI5, was for at least several months aware of a plot to set off explosions on airliners flying to the United States from Britain, as well as the identity of the people who would carry it out. British officials suggested that the arrests were held off to gather as much information as possible about the plot and the reach of the network behind it. Although it is not clear how close the plotters were to acting, or how capable they were of carrying out the attacks, intelligence and law enforcement officials have described the planning as well advanced. The Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have suggested in the past that they would never allow a terrorist plot discovered here to advance to its final stages, for fear that it could not be stopped in time. In June, the F.B.I. arrested seven people in Florida on charges of plotting attacks on American landmarks, including the Sears Tower in Chicago, with investigators openly acknowledging that the suspects, described as Al Qaeda sympathizers, had only the most preliminary discussions about an attack. ³Our philosophy is that we try to identify plots in the earliest stages possible because we don¹t know what we don¹t know about a terrorism plot,² Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said at the time. ³Once we have sufficient information to move forward with a prosecution, that¹s what we do.² The differences in counterterrorism strategy reflect an important distinction between the legal systems of the United States and Britain and their definitions of civil liberties, with MI5 and British police agencies given far greater authority in general than their American counterparts to conduct domestic surveillance and detain terrorism suspects. Britain¹s newly revised terrorism laws permit the detention of suspects for 28 days without charge. Prime Minister Tony Blair¹s government had been pressing for 90 days, but Parliament blocked the proposal. In the United States, suspects must be brought before a judge as soon as possible, which courts have interpreted to mean within 48 hours. Law enforcement officials have detained some terrorism suspects designated material witnesses for far longer. (The United States has also taken into custody overseas several hundred people suspected of terrorist activity and detained them at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as enemy combatants.) At the same time, Britain has far stricter contempt-of-court laws intended to prevent the prejudicing of trials. Anything that is said or reported about the suspects rounded up this week could, the police contend, prejudice their trial and prevent their prosecution. Andrew C. McCarthy, a former terrorism prosecutor at the Justice Department, said he believed that British authorities were willing to allow terrorist plots to progress further because, if an attack appeared imminent, they could immediately round up the suspects, even without formal criminal charges. ³They have this fail-safe,² he said. ³They can arrest people without charging them with a crime, which would make a big difference in how long you¹d be willing to let things run.² He said F.B.I. agents, who are required to bring criminal charges if they wanted to arrest a suspect, had a justifiable fear that they might be unable to short-circuit an attack at the last minute. There is a difference, too, in how information is shared, with American law enforcement officials typically communicating much more fully with the news media and other agencies than their British counterparts do. In one case in particular, last year after the London bombings when New York police officers traveled there to pitch in, the different working style created tension. British police and intelligence officials complained to the F.B.I., C.I.A. and State Department after the New York officers, used to speaking more openly, gave interviews to the press in London and sent information on to their headquarters in New York, where officials then held a news conference with some details about the investigation, according to one senior American official involved in the relationship with British agencies. While American officials say they do not believe there were any serious compromises of the investigation, the British were extremely upset. ³They don¹t want us to share so widely,² the senior American official said. A senior federal law enforcement official said MI5 also had a distinct advantage over the F.B.I. in that it had a greater store of foreign-language speakers, giving British authorities greater ability to infiltrate conspiracy groups. The F.B.I. still has only a handful of Muslim agents and others who speak Arabic, Urdu or other languages common in the Islamic world. Justice Department officials and others involved in developing American counterterrorism strategies, however, say it is wrong to suggest that the F.B.I. always moves hurriedly to arrest terrorism suspects, rather than conduct surveillance that may lead to evidence about other conspirators and plots. On Saturday, as news reports surfaced describing significant disagreements between British and American officials over the the timing of the arrests in the bombing plot, Frances Fragos Townsend, the president¹s homeland security adviser, said in a statement: ³There was unprecedented cooperation and coordination between the U.S., U.K. and Pakistan officials throughout the case and we worked together to protect our citizens from harm while ensuring that we gathered as much information as possible to bring the plotters to justice. There was no disagreement between U.S. and U.K. officials.² John O. Brennan, a former official of the Central Intelligence Agency who set up the government¹s National Counterterrorism Center two years ago, said in an interview that he had been involved in a number of recent cases ‹ most of them still classified ‹ in which the F.B.I. had placed suspected terrorists under surveillance rather than rounding them up. He said the bureau¹s willingness to wait reflected a new sophistication as supervisors adapted to the rhythm of terrorism investigations. ³Especially given the history of 9/11, of course the bureau wants to move quickly and make sure there is no risk of attack,² he said. ³But over the past two years, I think the bureau has become much more adept at allowing these operations to run and monitor them.² But others are less certain that the bureau has overcome its traditional desire to make quick arrests. Daniel Benjamin, a counterterrorism specialist in the National Security Council in the Clinton administration, said the apparent success of the British surveillance operation ‹ and the failure of the F.B.I. to identify and disrupt any similar terrorist cell in the United States since Sept. 11 ‹ argued for creation of an American counterpart to MI5. ³The F.B.I. has still not risen to the domestic intelligence task,² he said. But MI5, others note, may have benefited from the longer experience of dealing with domestic terrorism in connection with the Irish Republican Army. And it has its own critics who question its strategy by noting that it had some of the suspects in last summer¹s bombings in the London subway and on a bus under surveillance before the attacks. British security officials have publicly acknowledged that two of the London bombers ‹ Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer ‹ had been observed in connection with a different terrorist plot that was subject to heavy surveillance. But when they dropped out of sight ‹ well before the London bombings ‹ intelligence agencies did not pursue them because the other conspiracy seemed a much greater priority. John Timoney, the Miami police chief who also has run the Philadelphia Police Department and served in the No. 2 post in the New York Police Department, has worked extensively over the years in Britain on policing matters. He said comparing the two country¹s approaches was difficult. ³First and foremost, the policing systems are completely different,² said Chief Timoney, noting that in Britain the Metropolitan Police is the dominant national law enforcement agency and is served by MI5. In the United States, on the other hand, there is intense competition between various federal agencies and between some federal agencies and some state and local forces, he said. But neither approach is guaranteed to succeed. In June, about 250 police officers stormed an East London row house looking for chemical weapons and arrested two brothers, Abul Koyair and Mohammed Abdul Kahar. Mr. Kahar was shot and wounded during the operation. But the two men were later released without charge after the authorities failed to find any evidence linking them to terrorist activities. David N. Kelley, a former United States attorney in Manhattan who has overseen a range of international terrorism cases, including prosecuting the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, said, ³The real challenge in law enforcement when you have a plot like that is when do you pull the trigger.² He also said that the longer investigators waited to take down a case, the risks that they might lose track of suspects increased, even if the plotters were under 24-hour surveillance. ³People think when you have someone under surveillance, it¹s a fail-safe, but losing someone is a real fear in these things,² he said. ³It¹s not like television. It¹s a real juggling act. You¹ve got to keep a lot of balls in the air and not let any of them drop.² Lowell Bergman contributed reporting from Berkeley, Calif., for this article, Alan Cowell from London, and William K. Rashbaum from New York. 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