For ten years Western Intelligence has fought a secret war against Al Qaeda, the most deadly and sophisticated terrorist organisation the world has ever faced. Peter Taylor, The Secret War on Terror I, BBC 2011
We investigate whether this secret war has made us all safer. ibid.
How far should the American government go to get Intelligence to save lives? ibid.
So why hasn’t bin Laden been captured or killed? ibid.
Under previous president George W Bush the CIA and the military had been given free rein to wage a secret war against the terrorists using abduction, secret interrogation black sites, and torture. ibid.
America first deployed its new secret weapon under George W but now Obama decided to ratchet up the use of these pilotless aircraft. ibid.
President Obama has authorised more than a hundred and sixty drone strikes ... But there’s a down-side to drone attacks: hundreds of civilians have been killed. ibid.
Al Qaeda is now global, resilient, adaptable and inventive. The American base at Guantanamo Bay is a stubborn reminder of how difficult and controversial the war has been. ibid.
Under increasing pressure Al Qaeda has found ways to adapt and strike back to deadly effect. Peter Taylor, The Secret War on Terror II
Is the west winning? And ten years after 9/11 are we any safer from attack? ibid.
MI5’s budget increased dramatically after the 2005 London attacks. ibid.
A generation that is totally alienated from the values of their parents, and even more alienated from the values of wider British society. All too often we don’t engage with them. And the intense targeting by the police and intelligence services only increases the anger of those who are vulnerable to radicalisation ... The danger is we create even greater resentment that may only end with further attacks. Peter Taylor, Generation Jihad
It’s thought that it was in Sheikh Faisal’s study groups that Lindsay first met Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the cell that went on to bomb London. Gradually Lindsay began to withdraw from the mainstream Muslim community in West Yorkshire. In 2005 Linsay reappeared but his old friends barely recognised him ... To avoid detention all the 7/7 bombers changed their appearance in the months leading up to the attack. ibid.
Following the London bombings the security services began to target suspected supporters of Islamist terrorism. Britain has some of the toughest anti-terrorism laws in the world. The police began to use them. ibid.
The suicide bombers were home-grown, young British men attacking their own country. Horizon: The 7/7 Bombers – A Psychological Investigation, BBC 2005
The investigation uses research from around the world to explore the psychology of a fanatical mind. Uncovering research that confronts our expectations of who the suicide bombers are. ibid.
The challenge is to understand what motivated these four men and to stop it happening again. ibid.
It seems that being away from home is significant. ibid.
The group was turning inwards ... The four men had gone from being friends to being co-conspirators in Britain’s first suicide attack. ibid.
The cells were spontaneously forming without any connections to an established group. It was a pattern that Sageman discovered was repeated across the world. Instead of one centrally organised network [Marc] Sageman had uncovered a very different phenomenon. A phenomenon thriving because independent groups of friends were radicalising together. ibid.
1953: US overthrows Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran. US installs Shah as dictator. Michael Moore, Bowling for Columbine, 2002
1954: US overthrows democratically elected President Arbenz of Guatemala. 200,000 civilians killed. ibid.
1963: US backs assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem. ibid.
1963-1975: US military kills 4 million people in South East Asia. ibid.
11th September 1973: US stages coup in Chile. Democratically elected President Salvador Allende assassinated. Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed. 5,000 Chileans murdered. ibid.
1977: US backs military leaders of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadoreans and 4 American nuns killed. ibid.
1980s: US trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill Soviets. CIA gives them $3 billion. ibid.
1981: Reagan administration trains and funds Contras. 30,000 Nicaraguans die. ibid.
1982: US provides billions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians. ibid.
1983: White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis. ibid.
1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. US invades Panama and removes Noriega. 3,000 Panamanian civilian casualties. ibid.
1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from the US. ibid.
1991: US enters Iraq. Bush reinstates dictator of Kuwait. ibid.
1998: Clinton bombs ‘weapons factories’ in Sudan. Factory turns out to be making Aspirin. ibid.
1991 to present: US planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. UN estimates 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions. ibid.
2000-2001: US gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in ‘aid’. ibid.
11th September 1991: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people. ibid.
What we wanted to do was have a terror campaign. Howard Hunt, leader of CIA plot to oust Arbenz; later Watergate break-in conspirator
When Arbenz became President in Guatemala, the country was very much under the control of the United Fruit Company and big international corporations. And Arbenz ran on this ticket that says we want to give the land back to the people, and when he was in power he began to implement policies that would do just that, give land rights back to the people. The United Fruit company didn’t like that very much, so they hired a public relations firm and launched a huge campaign in the United States to convince people ... that Arbenz was a Soviet puppet, and if we allowed him to stay in power, the Soviets would have a foothold in this hemisphere ... Out of this public relations campaign came a commitment on the part of the CIA and the Military to take this man out. And in fact we did. We sent in planes. We sent in soldiers. We sent in jackals. We sent everything in to take him out, and did take him out. And as soon as he was removed from office, the new guy that took over after him basically reinstated everything to the big international corporations, including the United Fruit. John Perkins, author Confessions of an Economic Hitman, economist for Chas T Main Inc
So they said a decision has been made at the highest levels of our government to rid Guatemala of the Arbenz regime, and we would like you to participate in it. What we wanted to do was have a terror campaign. To terrify Arbenz particularly, terrify his troops much as the German Stuka bombers terrified the population of Holland ... We sewed confusion ... a little harmless bombing. John Hunt former CIA agent
The most spectacular terror attacks since 9/11 was underway. Frontline: A Perfect Terrorist, PBS 2011
Civilians, Indians and westerners were methodically gunned down. With guns, grenades and military precision ten men were laying siege to the port city of Mumbai. 166 people were killed. ibid.
For two years an undercover operative had been casing the city ... David Coleman Headley. He had been chosen for the job because he had the perfect cover – he was an American. ibid.
Help came from the ISI [Pakistan Security Service]. ibid.
Here he is a household name. ibid.
US officials deny that Headley was a double agent. ibid.
Isis – they are the world’s most feared terrorist group … The failures of two American presidents … But these fighters were not new – they have been at war for more than a decade – ever since the American invasion of Iraq. Frontline, The Secret History of Isis, PBS 2016
For Zarqawi, the creation of the caliphate would be the fulfilment of a prophecy. ibid.
Isis conducted or inspired more than ninety attacks around the world. And have more than forty affiliated terror groups in sixteen countries. They have promised that the worst is yet to come. ibid.