125. Al Qaeda’s Deadliest Plot: How MI5 Stopped Another 9/11 (Ep 1)

for exclusive interviews bonus episodes ad-free listening early access to series first look at live show tickets a weekly newsletter and discounted books join the declassified club at the rest is classified.com a terrorist plot to blow up transatlantic airliners that could have been worse than the 9-11 attacks, killing thousands, and the reason why ever since you've not been able to take liquids on planes. It's all run out of a flat in East London and stopped by MI5, but not before a major row with the Americans and the CIA. Well, welcome to The Rest is Classified. I'm David McCloskey. And I'm Gordon Carrera. Did I say I pronounced row correctly, right? Yeah. Yes, that's a fight for our Yankee listeners. Is that not an American fight? You know, we're recording this on the tail end of me having been in your fair country for the last couple of weeks. Exactly. We're in person together. I fear I might be a going native with my correct pronunciation of Rao. We are starting a very interesting four part series on what I think is probably one of the most audacious terrorist plots ever conceived. And this is a story that I think actually not many people are aware of because this is about an attack that didn't happen. This is a plan to simultaneously bring down multiple airliners flying between the UK and North America. And it happened 20 years ago. If you're wondering, as I was today when I was stopped on my flight to Heathrow coming from Dublin and forced to dump out contact solution that was in my carry on. And if you're wondering why you can't take liquids on planes ever since and you're forced to put those in your carry-on bags, this story is exactly the reason for that. It is a really significant story. It is about what was assessed by Britain's security service, MI5, as the most dangerous terrorist conspiracy in British history. And it's a real insight as well into how MI5 works, because MI5 got deep inside the conspiracy to prevent it. And through the series, we're going to look, I think, in really interesting detail at what an MI5 surveillance operation looks like. Not just how they watch people on the streets, but even how they get into people's houses without anyone seeing and plant bugs so that they can listen in. And it was a terrorist plot that followed on from the July 7th, 2005 attacks with the same mastermind behind it in Pakistan, but this time using the UK as a launch pad for attacks on the US. And stopping the plot does involve the Americans who nearly, David, wreck it for everyone. Allegedly. We might have a debate about that. And the role that the Americans played in this, I think it's also, I mean, this is a, I think, great case study in the mechanics of the intelligence piece of the special relationship, because we really actually, in incredible detail, see some of the tension amid the cooperation between MI5 and the CIA in particular. And frankly, I mean, it's such a big conspiracy, isn't it, Gordon, this potential attack? I mean, at the time, then President Bush, Prime Minister Blair, I mean, they're in close touch about it constantly, right? Yeah, brief every day. This is like an Oval Office and 10 Downing issue every day. But the CIA- Throw their weight around? Could you throw their weight around a little bit? as a good intelligence service should do to support its own national objectives. But it's very upsetting. It does. It really pisses off, to use a British phrase, the Brits in this case. And I think it shows how counterterrorism liaison really works and intelligence sharing, but also when you've got a bigger partner than the other, how they can throw their weight around. So I think that is a really interesting aspect of the story, which comes to light from this. But the flip side of that, we're talking about the tension, and there's going to be a lot of it in the story between London and Washington. It also shows the value of the liaison relationship at the same time, because I think this is going to principally be an MI5 investigation. But you do see, I think, in this story how both parties bring something to the table. and frankly, I mean, how the sort of some of the parts adds up to a lot more than the individual pieces, right? In this relationship, especially given what's going on right now, Gordon in the world, a great reminder, I think, of the value inside this relationship. Or the reality of it. Or the reality of it, yeah. Now, a reminder that if you want to hear all four episodes right now, go ahead and join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. and people who sign up will get something a little bit extra special, won't they? Yeah, they will. Because to mark this series, we've actually been inside MI5, haven't we, David? We went into Tim's house. I was let in. They let you in, which I was kind of slightly surprised at, given the state of the special relationship. But no, they let you in. And we were able to record inside MI5, which is pretty unusual, and speak to Jonathan Evans, who had a big role overseeing the busting of this plot. He was the number two at MI5 at the time, later on becomes their head of MI5. And we spoke to him inside and were able to actually look at some of the artifacts, I guess, MI5 have got marking this operation. And so members will be able to hear that as part of two special bonus episodes that we've got. So with that, here's a word from our sponsors, HP. 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Podcast listeners benefit from a 10% discount on all business PCs, printers, and accessories using the code TRIC10, Terms and Conditions Supply. So Gordon, we are going to look at how MI5 got onto the plot. I mean, so I think it's actually worth starting at an airport. It's Heathrow Airport. It's the 24th of June, 2006. And a passenger called Abdullah Ahmed Ali is disembarking on a flight from Pakistan to London. That's right. Ali is getting off the flight. And what he doesn't know is that while he's waiting to get his passport checked and waiting to pick up his bags, a team from MI5 have secretly taken his luggage into a special room at Heathrow, and there they are searching it before resealing it and then sending it back onto the carousel for him to pick up. He will have no idea that it's happened. It probably didn't happen to you on the way back from Dublin this morning. Well, it did. I have no idea. That's the point. They left all of my tang alone. Let's get to the tang, because inside Ali's luggage, MI5 are going to find some very odd things. Batteries and drink powder, this thing called tang, which we'll come to. It is not exactly dangerous stuff though, is it? You're allowed to have batteries and drink powder. So it's a bit of a mystery as to why these things are in the luggage. But it's going to kickstart an investigation, which in just six weeks is going to go up to the top reaches of MI5, the White House, Downing Street, and Islamabad. And so who is Abdullah Ahmed Ali? He's born in London, October 1980, to a middle-class family with close links to Pakistan, goes back and forth to Pakistan in early life, before he settles in Walthamstow, which is in East London. Teenager in the 1990s, begins to get more religious than his family, but not really political or extremist, does a degree in computing. But then after 9-11 is when things start to change. There are charities which had helped Kashmiri refugees in Pakistan, which are now switching to help refugees fleeing the conflict in Afghanistan, where the Taliban was overthrown by the US and UK and others. And around 2002, Ali gets involved with these charities, collecting money, clothing, blankets, milk, canned food for those refugees. Now, he's becoming more involved as well in anti-war movements, protesting also against the looming war in Iraq. By 2003, start of 2003, the charity wanted people to travel to Pakistan to deliver aid, and Ali is going to be one of those who volunteers. And so it is around this time that he first does come onto the radar of MI5, the security service. And the reason, it seems, is that he's suspected of fundraising for extremists in Pakistan. Now, he's not seen at this point as planning any attacks. So he's kind of on the periphery, not the kind of person you'd prioritise for an investigation. Back in London, though, he's articulate, charismatic, building a group of local friends, mainly, but not all of Pakistani and Kashmiri heritage. One is a guy who will come back to, Asad Sawa. He's the only one who doesn't live in East London. He's based out of London, in High Wycombe, which is a fair bit out of town. So Ali and Asad Sawer are going to go out to Pakistan 2003, visit refugee camps. They drive an ambulance filled with aid to people living in terrible conditions. They're blaming the US and UK for this. Ali comes back, he gets married, slightly complicated relationship with his wife. So he's going back and forth, back out again 2004. And it's a time when it's worth saying lots of people are going out to Pakistan. And most of them are people going to see family because of the family links. a small subset of those might be going out to get involved in jihadist violence. And then an even smaller subset of that might be planning to do something back in the UK afterwards. It the job of MI5 G branch or G1 specifically which investigates these Islamist networks to find out who are the ones who are actually dangerous And so by about 2005 Ali is on MI5 radar for sending money to extremists And they're kind of looking at some of those connections out in Pakistan and some of the people who he might be meeting, who they're worried about. So that's the kind of context of their worry, which brings us to that search in 2006 of his luggage when he's on his way back. So the question you get inside MI5 is why is he bringing back 30 cheap Pakistani AA batteries? Well, I mean, maybe price arbitrage. Are they cheaper in Pakistan? And why the Tang? Because you can buy batteries here. So it's not like you need to import them. So it is a bit of a mystery why he's bringing back these specifically Pakistani batteries. And then this thing called Tang, which I didn't know about, but it's like a powder and you add it to water to make an orange drink. Is it not here? I don't know. I've never come across Tang. So I think the myth was that it was actually developed for the US space program, which I believe is actually not true. I think it predates the space program by a bit, but it got popularized because it was sort of provisioned to astronauts on space flight in the 60s and 70s. And I think Buzz Aldrin, second man to walk on the moon, famously commented on Tang. He said, it sucks. He's not a fan of tech. So again, slightly odd thing to be bringing back from Pakistan. A little bit, you'd have thought? Yeah. Buzz Aldrin doesn't like it. I don't know why. Yeah. Abdullah Ali is using it then. But I guess the point is that they are starting to worry, well, could this be something to do with bomb making? I mean, but it's not really not clear what these things could be used for. I guess the context here is important, isn't it? Because, you know, we're now in 2006 and it is that period after the 2005 bombings. You have those two sets of bombings, one that succeeded and one that didn't in July 2005. I mean, and when we were in MI5 talking to Jonathan Evans, I mean, he was telling us a bit, wasn't he, about what it felt like at that time, the intensity of it. And yeah, I mean, you could tell just in the conversation with him that Jonathan can still kind of imagine himself in that position. I think it seemed like a very stressful time to run the security service or to be a senior sort of operational leader in it. Yeah, because I think it was just that feeling that something had happened, they hadn't been able to stop it. There were questions about should they have been able to stop it. We looked at that in the series we did on 7-7 last year. But now that it's happened, it's just starting to see more and more people traveling, more plots, more leads are coming in. and there was that feeling I think you get, and he talks about it, that things were running away from them, MI5 almost. There was almost a feeling like, is this too much? Can we cope with the volume? And so the question is, you've got to try and work out which leads you follow and which ones are genuinely dangerous. And you come out of this search of Ali's luggage and it's not clear how dangerous he is, but it is suggestive, I guess, and enough for them to start a surveillance operation. And they give him a codename? Yeah. Lion roar. We discussed this, didn't we, with Jonathan Evans, because I felt like, I think you agreed, that this is a really positive codename to have for a guy who's being investigated at this point under suspicions of at least funding, if not now planning a terrorist operation. And Jonathan Evans insisted that the codenames are generated randomly, but that there is some ability, if a particular codename is egregiously awful, to then go in and edit it. But no one edited Lion Roar, I guess. Which I feel like they should have. Yeah, I feel like they should have. I feel like it gives them too much credit. So Lion Roar, Ali, is going to be put under surveillance. So MI5 start doing what's called mobile surveillance. And this is done by, we talked about G branch being the counterterrorism branch. A branch is the technical branch and the surveillance branch. And so A4 is the part of A branch who are what you might call the watchers, the kind of surveillance teams, people who can blend into any part of society and life, so they're young, old, every ethnicity, so that they can effectively follow someone on the streets without being noticed. Yeah. And we should say that is definitely a sort of trait or theme, I think, of surveillance work in general is, as we'll see in the story, having many, many teams following, watching a target, it's really important that none of those people or teams sort of make sense when you put them all together. Hence why you have, you have, you know, people with kids, you'd have a mix of ages, you'd have a mix of sort of races and ethnicities. You don't want it to appear like there's a team following you. You want this to feel like a fragmented group of individuals and families and couples and things like that. And equally, you need people here who are going to be able to follow people on the streets of Walthamstow. So they're going to start watching him. He's married, he's got a young child. Interesting enough, Ali seems suspicious, doesn't he, that he's being watched. And he's kind of surveillance, at least aware or conscious. So they see him doing stuff like look around, turning suddenly, trying to watch over his shoulder using mirrors and things like that. Yeah. So movie stuff, basically, right? Yeah. Slightly amateurish because it gives away that you're worried about surveillance, doesn't it? I would guarantee you that all of that immediately raises suspicion through the roof inside MI5. Why do you care? Or why do you suspect that you'd be under surveillance? And as they watch, Ali is doing a couple of things which are interesting. He's starting to buy a lot of odd supplies and he's trying to bring together a group of people around him. So on June 30th, he and Tanvir Hussain, who's kind of his lieutenant, is number two and is going to be very involved in this, they go to a Maplins electronics store. Now, I think actually Maplins has since closed down. I could be wrong. But it's, what's the American equivalent? Best Buy? Best Buy. Best Buy. Yeah. And they purchased a multimeter, which I checked, and is used to test electrical circuits and voltage. They buy a 1.6-volt bulb. Ali also orders some more light bulbs, like three dozen light bulbs, which is kind of weird. And again, MI5 has seen these in previous kind of bomb-related plots. It's suspicious, but not really telling. Tanvir Hussain is kind of lieutenant, walks into a branch of Barclays Bank, asks for a loan of £8,000. Another of their friends also asked for a loan to take an IT course. So they kind of get money together. It's hard for the surveillance teams, I think, to know which of Ali's friends in Walthamstow are contacts and significant and which aren't. July 6th, Ali is out driving in his Citroen car, goes to a hardware shop B&Q. It's like a, I don't know what the American equipment is for that. Home Depot. Home Depot. But is it that big? Yeah, B&Q is a big warehouse where you buy paint. Home Depot. Home Depot. Menards. Yeah. Now I'm remembering little hamster wheels turning, Gordon, that when we did the Bulgarian Minions episode, you did not know back in the spring of last year what Best Buy was. Yeah. Remember? Yeah, maybe. But now you're up on it. Now I'm up on it. I've been learning. Other days they see them going to Ikea or Ikea. Do you call it Ikea here? I can't remember. There's a weird pronunciation to it. Other homeware stores. That's right. At one point they're in Tesco's, which David is a supermarket, and a surveillance team from A4 see Ali and Hussein check out, and this is the next weird thing, check out plastic bottles of water and Diet Coke and they're examining the caps and the seals around the caps for quite a few minutes. It's kind of weird. That isn't it. Yeah. That's unusual. 15th of July, mid-afternoon, Ali meets someone they hadn't seen before. The two men, now this is also really weird, they go into Lloyd Park, which is in Walthamstow, and then the two men lie down on the grass facing each other with their hands kind of cupped over their mouths and talked to each other. And obviously, this is their thinking, is to avoid A, surveillance, kind of directional surveillance, and B, I guess, lit readers maybe by kind of putting your hand over your mouth? I suppose. Well, and it works, doesn't it? Because the surveillance teams don't pick up any audio from that. And they spend like half an hour with it. I mean, it is a weird... It's very weird. Again, it is... It's unsettling to see that happening in a park. Yeah, exactly. So just from the standpoint of another person, that arrangement would be bizarre. Yeah, just lying and talking to each other. Yeah. But it's, again, the slightly weird bit of them where they are trying to avoid surveillance, and they're clearly aware they might be under surveillance, but they're also taking steps which suggest- Which attract surveillance. Which attract surveillance. So it's kind of, I don't know, I find it really interesting, a way of acting. But that other person, they're going to identify as Asad Sawa, the person I mentioned, the friend who lives in High Wycombe. And they can also see MI5, that he's just returned from Pakistan. He's been there also June into July. He gets a code name, which is Rich Food. I mean, that's kind of just a weird one. It is weird. Yeah. I don't know. I think they need to generate these not randomly. Yeah. These need to be... You need to pick this based off of how the guy looks or how he acts or something like that. I think if you're in the middle of an operation, you don't want to spend an hour of your planning meeting. Give it to one of the interns. Give it to one of the interns. Don't even have interns the way you do. They're going to start watching Sawa. He is purchasing small amounts of hydrogen peroxide, which is used by hairdressers. This is another big warning sign because that was what the 7-7 bombs were made of. You have to concentrate it to make it useful. He's buying tiny amounts at the moment, but also some equipment which he could use with it. He's also trying to clearly stay under the radar by buying these small amounts. Now amusingly, at some point he tries to bury some of the stuff he's buying in a nearby wood. This is such a weird detail. He seems to have struggled to be able to dig a hole in the wood. The ground was too hard. It wasn't from a conceptual problem. No, I think he had his fade. But at one point, they see him and he goes and tries to dig a hole. It doesn't work. So he goes home and takes a nap And then he Googles on the internet how to dig a hole. He Googled that. One of the things I think we should say that we should all be very grateful for in this story is not only the effectiveness of MI5, which is impressive as we'll see, but also the fact that Al Qaeda sometimes doesn't attract the best in rights. He ends up buying a home-based easy dig soil cultivator, which I had to look up on the internet what it was. Is that a shovel? It's a digging tool. It's got prongs. Anyway but supposedly that what you use Do you know though Gordon that I actually really good at digging holes Oh you really That another thing you really good at So my jobs before I joined the Central Intelligence Agency so the first one was I worked at Wendy Yeah. Flipping burgers. Right. And then the second job was I was a hole digger for a sprinkler system company. Wow. And so in a single summer, I dug, I think I ended up counting it was over 10,000 holes. Wow. If only assets are working. I have no sympathy for this guy. For this guy. Also for the terrorism. But you should know how to dig a hole. But they're going to watch him digging holes. They also see Tanvir Hussain is buying syringes, really large syringes. They're buying drills, glue, latex gloves, all of this weird shopping list. Now, things are going to get more interesting when they see that Ali, on July 20th, 2006, gets keys to a Maisonette flat at 386A Forest Road, Walthamstow. First time MI5 sees this new property. It had been just bought a few weeks earlier for £138,000. It had been repossessed. It's not in great condition. So I think ostensibly the idea is they're going to do it up. Now, the day he gets the keys, Ali goes to something called a spy store. Is that an actual chain? A retail chain in the UK? I'm not sure it's still there, but I remember these because he's trying to get intruder detection cameras. It's really interesting as a historical insight, because these days, everyone's got video doorbell cameras. These are kind of easy to get, and everyone's got them. Back then, you had to go to something called the spy store to get a camera. Now we're all just letting everybody and their mother spy on us willingly. We're spying on ourselves. Yeah, exactly. But it's so interesting that back in those days, if you wanted to have a camera which could watch your property and see if anyone was coming in, You basically had to go to this spy store, which sold spy and surveillance gadgetry, covert cameras. I mean, it was a weird shop. I don't know if it's still there, but it was half playing at James Bond and half for people who wanted to play at corporate espionage or probably worried about their spouse or stuff like that. Anyway, it's kind of weird. But it's gone out of business. Yeah. Since. I don't know. We'll have to check that. A lot of the retail outlets in this story are no longer around. So clearly that also sets off another kind of alarm bell for this flat. And they're seeing people going into this flat at Forest Road, but no one actually seems to be living there. A bit suspicious. July 27th, they see people go in, 444 MI5. Curtains are drawn, they're there for two hours. They leave just after seven, MI5 don't know what they're doing. Another time they see someone coming out of there and they dump a bag in the bin at the nearby park. MI5 pick out the carrier bag. Looked like some batteries. So again, now the suspicion is growing that something significant is happening at this address. And they clearly feel they need to get inside it and work out what's going on. Well, maybe there, Gordon, with the impetus for a break in upon us, let's take a break ourselves. When we come back, we will explain. how you break into a flat. See you after the break. Well, welcome back. Gordon, you've already educated our listeners in how you build nuclear weapons. All right. So now is the time for you to educate the rest of the classified audience in how you conduct a breaking and entering operation. Yeah. And maybe just before we do that, we should say that this is not an endorsement of burglary. Don't try this at home. And when MI5 do it, as we'll see, there's a kind of legal process surrounding it. So we're not endorsing burglary per se and breaking and entering, aren't we, David? Yeah. I think that's important to say for the lawyers mostly. I referred to it as breaking and entering. And Jonathan Evans did not like that. No. No. Covert entry. Covert entry or surreptitious entry, I think, which is a very British way of saying Because I guess ideally you shouldn't be breaking anything, should you? You're entering, but not breaking. Yeah, that's part of the point. A break in, but not breaking. So how do they do it? And we should say that a lot of the detail about the surveillance operations, about covert entry, a lot of this we know because, I mean, we'll come back to this at the end of the story, there is going to be a trial where a lot of evidence, quite unusually, of what MI5 does and how it does it is presented in trial. But in this case, covert entry, we talked about mobile surveillance of suspects, tailing them around, that's A4. But there's another part of A branch who are the tech ops, if you like. They're the ones who have the skills to get into places and install things. I don't think they'd be offended if we called them lawful burglars, do you? I mean, people legally authorised to do a bit of light breaking and entering? A little bit of light. Yeah, exactly. No, I think they would appreciate that. Yeah. You know, and we should say this is a capability that most spy services have. The CIA has one as well. And I don't think any of those guys would be offended to be described as lawful burglars. And I think as we'll see, there's a real love of the game among the breaking and entering crew. Yeah. You know, they're- It's a challenge. It's a challenge. It's an exciting challenge. I mean, the idea that you could get paid to legally be able to do this is kind of crazy. We should say it's more intrusive, isn't it, than following someone around in a public place. So you need all these warrants, authorizations to do it. You can't do it that much either because, as we'll see, it requires a lot of work to actually undertake this kind of action. Yeah. I think the Hollywood stereotype is it's a few people in a van. Yeah. And it's much more labor intensive than that, as we'll say. I think also in the way these kind of operations get depicted in most spy films and television shows, usually the people doing them have a criminal past and have somehow been lured into working, you know, on a contract basis for the FBI or whatever. But I've had the breaking and entering types that the agency described to me as essentially like choir boys. I mean, you cannot have a criminal record and do this kind of work for the CIA, I presume for MI5. And when we brought this up in the meeting with Jonathan Evans, one of the other gentlemen who was there was kind of nodding his head as I was describing them. So I'd imagine it's sort of a similar vibe inside MI5's breaking and entering team. I should stop saying breaking. They don't like that. No, it's our entry team. So how do you do it? First of all, you need to do your homework. You can't just go in off the van off the street. And I think, in a way, the questions that you need to answer are kind of obvious when you think about it. You want to know who is there and when they're there. Are there people there all day, all night? When are they away? You've got to work that out. Which involves building a pattern of life, which involves weeks of surveillance. Potentially. But I think what's interesting is when you've got a terrorist operation like this, I think you've got to do it fast. Yeah, true. So I think there's probably a difference of intensity when you've got something where you've got maybe days. In this case, at Forest Road, no one actually lives there, as we said. They're using it, but they are visiting regularly. So the next thing you have to know is that when you're thinking of going in, which is always going to be at night, how can you be sure that none of the possible people who do visit that property, and there's a lot in this case, that they're not going to show up, which means surveillance on all of those people. So you've got to have all of them under control of surveillance, just in case one of them, even if it's the middle of the night, suddenly gets on the move from their home and is heading towards that flat, and you need to get those people out. So you actually have to have surveillance on everyone associated with that property who could turn up at the time you're going to do the covert entry rather than the break-in, which might be like 100 people that you need for your surveillance team to watch that, maybe it's half a dozen people, and to be sure what they're doing. And even if they're not there, you've got to ask yourself, are there alarms? Are there cameras? Dogs. Dogs. What are the neighbours like? Are they the type who, if they see or hear something suspicious, they're going to call the people? Are they kind of friendly in that way? So you probably need an observation post on the property. So somewhere where you can keep watch on it, have a camera, have people outside. So that's quite a big setup. And then people in A branch will come up with a plan and they'll say, this is our plan. This is where, when we plan to do it. This is how we plan to do it. This is what we intend to do. They put up a proposal and then if it's approved, the team heads in. And one of the interesting aspects of these kind of covert entry operations is there's a motto inside the CIA's group or saying, which is you don't pick a lock, you make a key. And the point is that you want persistent access to the property. Right. And obviously you can't let the person who's in the property know that you have access to it, but you don't want to be constantly going up and having to pick that lock. And presumably MI5 would have caught video or still images of what sort of lock that is before they ever approached it and may have been able in the background inside a branch to actually just make a key for it that they would then use and would be effective almost right away. And in fact, when the agency does this, they'll have in a warehouse somewhere just walls of different sorts of locks and the associated keys. Keys to be able to enter. Yeah. It's not a matter of individually figuring out the lock. It's a matter of building a key for it that will enable you to just get in and out whenever you want. Yeah, you're right. You're going to need a specialist, a locksmith effectively as part of your team. and that team is interesting because you've got to have the right mix of people you've got to have someone who knows understands locks you've got to have locksmiths you need the technical installers who are the people who are actually going to be able to place the bugs which is what we're talking about doing inside the property they need to know how to wire them up where you can put it how you could move furniture around you need a particular set of almost like building skills right you know You need to be carpentry and things like that to understand how to do that. You've also got the problem that it's potentially the worry is it's a bomb factory. So you might need a bomb disposal expert. Booby trapped, right? It could be booby trapped. You've seen that before where people have actually been blown up. Madrid, I think elsewhere, going into these apartments and they're booby trapped. So you need bomb disposal experts. You need a team, but equally you don't want too big a team, do you? Because that's going to draw attention. So you're guessing a handful of people. They're going to get dropped off, not right outside the property, because that would look suspicious, but maybe just around the corner so that they are close enough to get in, but also not to raise too much suspicion by a band or something turning up outside Before they go into the property I got to tell you my safe cracking story Do it Which I should have told you when we were talking about the locks but I am just remembering it now. So the idea that these safe crackers, lock pickers understand the mechanics of either the safe or the lock they're looking at. Before I flew over here, so I keep our family's passports in a safe in my closet. What's the combination? The combination is my fingerprint. Oh, okay. And here's the thing. That safe ran out of battery. I've had it for a long time. And I could not find the key to get into the battery kind of unit. And so I'm staring at the safe thinking, oh, I've got to leave in 24, 36 hours. And I need that passport out of there. How do I get it out of the safe? And so- Do you know a guy? I know a guy. And I called him. Yeah. And he said, okay, send me a picture of the safe. And so I sent him a picture of the safe. And he calls me back. 20 minutes later and he's like okay turn the safe over you know so it's sort of facing upward and you're looking into where the the door would be he's like measure and he's just doing this from his knowledge of this particular safe he's like take a ruler and go like an inch and a quarter down from the top lip of the safe mark a dot there and then from the other side basically draw a line It's like an inch and a quarter from where the sort of door connects over. And that spot right there, go and get a carbide bit for your drill and drill into it right at that spot. And what'll happen is it's going to hit the bolt and that's going to start the motor moving. It's going to push the bolts in and the whole thing will spring open. And sure enough, I just laid that thing out on my patio, drilled into that exact spot and the thing just flung open. Wow. And so he's doing that from just the knowledge of a particular brand of safe, knowing where that bolt essentially is going to meet the skin of the safe and where you puncture it. We are giving so many tips to potential safecrackers and burglars. It's kind of like... It's an exciting time. It's an exciting time. New sponsorship deal for my... That's right. But back to Forest Road. So the team are going into Forest Road. It's a split level maize net. So you go through the front door. Now one door on the left leads to the downstairs flat, and then there's another door to go up to the target flat. Of course, it's going to be pitch black when they go in. It's all dark. Can't turn on the lights, so you have to use a torch. They're going to check it's empty, I'd imagine. We know, because we later see pictures of this when this all comes to trial, that there's a kitchen upstairs with some stuff in it that they bought. pretty empty bathroom living room and upstairs two bedrooms one has some boxes in it now the bomb disposal experts first of all going to have to give this the all clear in one of the boxes there's some of the kind of weird weird chemistry kits hydroponic test kits which i've since discovered are there to check phs glass jars dyes batteries one jar has some kind of gloopy liquid in it which they're going to carefully take a sample of they're videoing as they go and we know this and we know all these details because this is all going to come out in the trial now amusingly i think that team may not have realized or may have forgotten that this could be used as evidence in court and so you can hear them talking at various points so at one point you hear them going when they see the gloopy stuff why don't you touch it and then someone's joking cut the blue wire i It's like it's a bomb. And then at one point, you hear one of them say on the video, I effing love my job. But in all seriousness, right? Just sort of surprised that he gets to do this. Yeah, because it's just so crazy what he's doing. I just love that detail. But it's obvious to the team that the kitchen is where the action is and where whoever's using this flat are doing things. So in the kitchen, they're going to find some strange liquid in the bin. And the kitchen cabinet has this row of Lucozade bottles in the line. Do you have Lucozade? I don't think so. That sounds like motor oil. No, no, it's an energy drink. It's a really good energy drink. Some are empty, some look full. So at this point, the technical installers from A-Branch would get to work. They would be trying to work out where you can place the bugs and devices. On the night, it's interesting. You also need that surveillance team of watchers around them who they can communicate with just in case something happens. And actually, it's really interesting that on that night that they're there, that first night at least, there's stuff going on in the streets. So there's a police surveillance team keeping an eye and a bunch of drunks look like they're about to start a fight outside the kebab shop, very London. It looks like this could get nasty and one of them pulls a knife and the police are obviously going to have to intervene if it looks dangerous. But fortunately, it breaks up. so that doesn't compromise the operation that first night though this team get initial audio coverage into the flat it's good what they really want there is tv coverage which is much more useful but it's obviously harder to get because you you've got to get got to find a place where you can hide a you need a power source ultimately you've got to hook the the video cameras into something right you've got to wire it into i i'd imagine it's kind of battery driven In 2006? Yeah. I don't know. Do you need perpetual coverage? It's an interesting question. Interesting question. I think in some of the longer term kind of surveillance operations I'm thinking of, you need to wire it in to something. Yeah. That's an interesting question. Which is part of the difficulty with these things as you're talking about drilling. Yeah. Really. And so that becomes challenging because then it's like you need silent drills and things like that. I mean, it's definitely harder when you haven't got control of the property and you're only in there for a while. So they can't do it on that first night and they're going to go in a couple more nights to try and get that TV coverage in because you've got to work out where you can put it. For obvious reasons, we're not going to go into exactly where that might be. We don't know, to be honest, or how they did it, but we do know they get it. I think you know. I don't know. I think Gordon knows. No, I don't know. That's a very suspicious rebuttal, Gordon. No, I just think that's the kind of sources of methods, isn't it, of how you get a covert camera and how you hide it in a property. We do know that there's a covert camera because, again, footage from it will be used in trials. We know it eventually does get in there, but I think that is where the real technical skill of these installers are, which is to look at a place and go, where can I place a covert camera where it won't be spotted and it will get the coverage of a room that you need i mean it's it's pretty impressive stuff in terms of how you do it and you've got to install it all in the dark i'm guessing you've got to flipping lights on yeah you're not flipping the lights on so you're going to be kind of wearing a you know either have a head torch i guess or a tiny torch if you make a mistake you leave a bit of dust somewhere or or a hole or you're going to give it all away aren't you i was surprised it wasn't mentioned in here and maybe they didn't use it but But another piece of this that I think usually accompanies a breaking and entering operation is having people go in and take video and photos of the entire place right up front. So then as you leave, you can compare this sort of what you've left. Yeah, exactly. To the photos and video. I think, I don't know if they did it in this case, but I've spoken to other people who talk about that, taking Polaroid pictures. So, you know, they're instantly developed and you can lay them there. And then as you move stuff around to either search it or raise something there, you can then make sure you put it back in exactly the right place. But it takes a few nights, not much sleep for this team from A branch, but eventually they do succeed in getting audio and video coverage. And that means they're going to be able to see and hear what is happening in the property in real time. And that is going to be crucial because previously you had all these disparate leads, strange stuff they're buying. And for the first time, that coverage will bring everything together and bring clarity to what this group of terrorists are making and what they intend to do with it. And they're going to see something very strange. Very strange and very disturbing. Well, maybe there, Gordon, let's end our first episode of this adventure into the MI5 investigation of this liquid bomb plot. But we'd be remiss if we didn't say that if you go ahead and join the Declassified Club at TheRestDisclassified.com, you can download all of those episodes right now, as well as get access to our two-part interview with former Director General of MI5, Jonathan Evans. as he talks with us in the windowless basement room of MI5 itself about this plot. And one more thing, David. Club members are going to get exclusively the first four chapters of your new book, The Persian, just out, as well as, I think, a special introduction from you. So that's there for club members. So do sign up to hear that. But otherwise, we'll see you next time. We'll see you next time. Do you want to know what really happens inside MI5? Or what we chat about when the cameras aren't rolling? If you love the show and you want to come behind the scenes with us, who better to join than our producer Becky? From now on, she'll be writing a free newsletter every week taking you behind the mic at The Rest Is Classified. Make sure to subscribe via the link in the episode description to be the first to read the latest classified insider or head to the rest is classified dot com to find out more hi guys it's katie k and anthony scaramucci here from the rest is politics u.s we have just recorded a four-part series that's all about donald trump becoming the global phenomenon we know him as today you know katie i knew donald trump since 2005 so in this series we rewind the clock right back and dig into the people, the events and the scandals that built him. Yeah, we're going to take you from his days in military school, what he learned there, how he actually weirdly thrived there, to his father's ties to the Ku Klux Klan, his days as a business mogul in New York and how that really shaped his worldview and his way of doing business. And we're going to explore parts of the Trump story that you might never have even heard of. Not to mention, Cady, the nefarious trickster, Roy Cohn. Where's my Roy Cohn? I heard him say that so many times. I mean, I was only there for 11 days, Caddy. Where's my Roy Cohn? Well, let me tell you something. If you want to know who Roy Cohn was, you're going to tune into this series. With all the headlines that come out of Trump World every single day, we just felt there'd never really been a more important time to try to understand the America that created Donald Trump. To listen to episode one of Becoming Trump, head over to The Rest is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you soon.