I’ve just seen a segment on CBC Newsworld Sunday with Peter Power, a representative with a company called Visor Consultants. He has just acknowledged that his company was running a security exercise in London when the bombings happened. This exercise was apparently based on a scenario of 3 bombs going off in the same 3 stations at the same approximate time…
I don’t trust myself to comment on this…
Update [2005-7-11 6:17:19 by zander]: – I’ve got it! A short clip of the interview can be seen here. I’ve sent a longer, larger clip to crooks and liars, and it may be up with them later if they’re interested.
The only article I’ve found is at Al-jazeera
Also the somewhat sketchy CanadaFreePress
– however these quotes from him do echo what I heard Mr. Powers say quite bluntly on Canadian television just a moment ago.
“The host interviewed Peter Power, Managing Director of Visor Consultants, which bills itself as a `crisis management advice company’, better known to you and I as a PR firm.
“Power told the host that at the exact same time that the London bombings were taking place, his company was running a 1,000 person strong exercise which drilled the London Underground being bombed at the exact same locations, at the exact same times, as happened in real life.
“Peter Power was a former Scotland Yard official, working at one time with the Anti Terrorist Branch.”
Power told BBC that the drill focused around “simultaneous bombings”. Originally the London bombings were thought to have been spread over an hour, but BBC reports today say that the bombings were in fact simultaneous.
Watson and Jones say, “The fact that the exercise mirrored the exact locations and times of the bombings is light years ahead beyond a coincidence”.
Update [2005-7-11 1:51:36 by zander]: On the 7th, Peter Power did an interview with BBC Radio 5..
“POWER: At half past nine this morning we were actually running an exercise for a company of over a thousand people in London based on simultaneous bombs going off precisely at the railway stations where it happened this morning, so I still have the hairs on the back of my neck standing up right now.
HOST: To get this quite straight, you were running an exercise to see how you would cope with this and it happened while you were running the exercise?
POWER: Precisely, and it was about half past nine this morning, we planned this for a company and for obvious reasons I don’t want to reveal their name but they’re listening and they’ll know it. And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they’d met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.”
That interview can be downloaded here in .mp3 format.
Hmmm… maybe titanium hats are in order, instead?
This sounds awfully familiar… you know what they say – once is a coincidence… twice is a pattern ;).
On the bright side… a new fashion in hats!
(Good, if a bit freaky, catch, zander)
That’s the thing… CBC is a reputable source, Mr Powers is a Managing Director for the company in question. The discussion was about security, the host asked him about having an exercise happening at the time of the bombings, he confirmed that there was an exercise based on a tube bombing scenario… then they moved on… WTF?
I love those tin hat pictures.
I’m familiar with the CBC (well, sort of) and it’s a point that they were actually interviewing the guy… not talking about something someone said about something or other.
But still… training exercises on 9/11 dealing with highjacked and crashed planes, training exercises in Britain on 7/7 dealing with bombs in locations on trains… this is just too weird.
Just… please tell me there were no training exercises going on in Madrid on 3/11?
::decides she’d better order two hats for the apparently busy summer season::
They are in Canada right now!!
http://www.wcdm.org/wcdm_prog14.html
Every global white professional in the disaster biz, including Austin, sorry, Peter Powers, is in Toronto right at this moment – which might be a very good reason to go to Calgary.
Shit – I didn’t need to know that…
I’m going north – very far north…
Whitehorse is very unpleasant at this time of year 😉
More on Peter Power
I’m really not… er.. just lovin’ this guy…
May I just say: WTF???
This is really weird.
Thanks for being so alert, zander.
I’m trying to find the original radio interview… no luck yet, but I’m listening to all of the news programs on Five Live right now.
The CBC show will be rebroadcast. Does anyone care enough for me to try to record it?
This is from Prison Planet.
Is this the CBC broadcast you also saw?
When I read the Prison Planet entry, I was skeptical…that guy isn’t the most credible to me.
but then I also listened to the audio and then saw that you had seen a show on the CBC. Yes, please, SOMEONE TAPE THE SHOW, and contact crooks and liars about taping it too.
Powers does not mention the firm for which he was leading this drill…which makes you wonder, too…it was for a private firm?
If this is true…and I recently watched a doc on the history channel about the WTC and they included questions about whether or not the attack was real…
There have been other drills, of course, and nothing has happened. But what are the chances that such attacks would occur in the course of a drill two different times….considering these drills do not occur constantly.
So, like the guy Peter Powers, it makes my hair stand on end, too, if this just so happened to occur again during a training exercise.
Thank you! This is part of the earlier BBC Live Five radio interview that I was looking for, and couldn’t find. What I saw tonight was the same guy doing an interview on CBC Newsworld tv.
I’ll record the show when it’s rebroadcast, and see if I can contact crooks and liars…
Thanks…
Just go read the list of speakers and topics at the current Toronto conference in my link above!
In my line of work I get invited to speak at some pretty strange conferences. I’ve never met any of these so-called commercial security professionals, but I have met several Leftist experts seeking to expose them. I should really do a diary on them.
The exercises could easily have been conducted for a private company.
Maybe one like Valerie Plame used to work for…
the report at Al Jazeera is almost identical to the entry by Alex Jones at Prison Planet. Looks like they just lifted it verbatim.
I don’t think Powers was in on any set up, if this was one. He seems genuinely spooked (ahem) by the coincidence in his interview, and if he were part of something, why would he go on the radio and tv to talk about it?
I haven’t been tin-foily about the London bombings at all – I made some crack about it being Blair’s fault on the day it happened, but really just out of anger – fault through foreign-policy was what I was thinking.
I wouldn’t have gone off on this tangent at all if I hadn’t been boggled by this guy’s statements. And he doesn’t seem to be just some security shmuck, one of of thousands… some of his bio is here.
I’ll put it out of my mind tomorrow and forget all about it without ever developing any ‘theories’… but still, WTF?
Precisely. And yet….the coincidences are startling. Statistically, it would have to mean that such mass ‘security exercises’ are taking place in major cities around the world every week. Maybe they are.
Because otherwise, statistically, it would mean that the only conclusion is that two events – exercises and actual tragedies – have to be connected in some way.
my initial reaction was that this was a terrorist attack, like the one in Madrid…not some big coordinated “al Qaeda” –but the name as Juan Cole said, becomes a sort of announcement of affliation.
Knowing that the trial of the cleric was underway makes such an assumption even more believable.
I was recently reading about the iman in Morocco who has gone all over Europe teaching a sort of jihadist religion who was maybe associated with the Madrid bombings…again, the thought that people were creating their own “franchises” would make sense.
But I also knew that such an attack was very convenient for Bush and Blair, and coincided nicely with the G8 world leaders together, to get the opportunity to be close to such an attack.
It’s hard to think they “knew an attack was possible” but didn’t know the particulars when they were training at the EXACT same sites were the bombs went off.
The way I can “understand” the world of covert ops is by the way a set up is played out in The Little Drummer Girl…someone may think they’re working for one group when they’re working for another.
Speaking of coincidences – dude has a thing with trains…
1984
1987
He sure does… he also seems pretty much a control freak too:
In the midst of the smoke and panic in a crowded tube he managed to put on his police uniform which just happened to be at his side. (Clark Kent syndrome?) He then punched an LT employee unconscious.
When are ‘they’ going to take away google?
There are a lot more security exercises going on weekly than you think, at least in the US.
1. The WDCM conference in Toronto was last year not “currently”.
Check out where the speakers come from, not your usual bunch of kooks.
Zander your own links to the 1984 Kings Cross and 1987 Oxford Circus fires show why Power has a ‘thing’ about incidents in the Underground. He was trapped in the first and managed the response to the second.
Put the tin-foil hat back in the desk drawer, this guy us not creepy he is for real.
You’re absolutely right, of course – I wasn’t positing anything beyond my own WTF moment, and the strange tangents that it led me to. I’m not to be taken seriously at the best of times – and this isn’t even one of those times.
Irrelevant, but.. there is a World Terrorist and Disaster Management Conference happening in Toronto this week. This is precisely why Peter Power was appearing on a TV show with the Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness, Adrian Gordon.
Sorry Zander, not implying anything against you.
It’s just that I’m very sensitive to diaries on topics such as these right now.
Perhaps I was reacting more to the comments than your post.
Regarding the conference, oops, the link is to last year’s conference, but I didn’t spot the graphic at the top regarding the current one.
No worries – had I thought for a second, I would have talked myself out of posting this, so as not to tweak any tinfoil issue tensions. I haven’t seen any of the most controversial stuff, and my attitude toward any of it that found it’s way over here has been ‘Why not be agnostic about it?’.
I’m just as likely to blame the Hindu Asuras for messing with our world as I am to blame a Bush/Blair conspiracy. But I will stick to my assertion that Peter Powers has some issue with trains… and continue to wonder if he has really messed with his vahana karma… 😉
This is something that gets me about the “reality-based” community. Seems to me that 95% of the people (this is just my own stat, taken from comments I’ve read) are perfectly willing to jump to the conclusion that al Qaeda was at fault in the London bombing without no evidence being revealed. And, it seems to me that that same group of people tend to think of themselves as “reality-based.”
But, when there is an incredible coincidence that suggests some strangeness might be afoot, that doesn’t fit neatly within the “reality-based” conclusions that should be drawn based on conventional wisdom, the “reality-based” community is perfectly comfortable to step up and dismiss the coincidence as merely normal chance.
Think about the evidence that is put forth in this post. If believed, then it says that someone actually bombed 3 rail stations at nearly the exact time, date and location as the time, date and location of a sanctioned exercise to deal with a fake bombing. If that is fact, a rational person might choose to explain the fact with different theories: 1) The bomber(s) had knowledge of the official training, and chose the time, date and place of the bombing to send a message to the planners — you can’t stop us; 2) The bomber(s) had some affiliation with/intelligence about the official training that they used in carrying out the attacks; 3) That the two events were random and unconnected.
I am sure a good investigator could come up with several other, perhaps much better, theories. But, in looking at those that I am able to come up with to explain this fact, and applying the same conventional wisdom or common sense that the “reality-based” community relies upon, I would estimate that the odds of theory #3 (a random coincidene) are very, very low. So low as to be laughable, IMHO. Yet someone writing a diary on this topic has do defend himself as a tin-foil hatter.
I recognize that the tin-foil hat stuff is done in good spirits. And, it is handled so much better here at BMT. So, I don’t mean to be critical. I just make this point about the “reality-based” community v. the “tin-foil hat” society.
Hey BostonJoe..
I just wanted to hop in here and explain a little bit about where I’m coming from.
I’m a Canadian, and I’m really into the amount and the quality of information and news I have access to while most of America is watching Anderson Cooper being blown around in a hurricane. So…tonight I had CBC on and was kind-of paying attention when this segment began. I’ve been interested in the ‘Canadian response’ to the bombing, and focused on the show. I was startled by this guys comments, shook my head a couple of times and started googling. There was nothing out there – so I quickly posted this diary, and began my project, dug around, managed to grab the video, etc…
I wasn’t trying to provide evidence of anything at all – and only afterward realized how this topic could go down. I really don’t want to encourage any conflict here.
So – (this isn’t personally towards you BostonJoe and Neutral Observer) – I’d like to make it known to anyone commenting in this diary that if this gets ugly or develops into conflict – a) I’ll feel like an idiot, and beat myself up over showing such bad judgment in posting it, then probably b) delete it, ’cause I really hate feeling guilty and don’t cope with it well. Fair warning everyone!
I wouldn’t want my comment to start some war either. I am still in my defensive mode from dKos purge wars of the last few days.
I don’t know what to make of the info either. But, to write it off as pure coincidence or call someone who posts it a “tin-foil” hatter seems kind of contrary to reality to me.
I envy you for the information you get in Canada. I don’t trust I am getting much factual data here.
I agree not to lob any more grenades.
Cool – I think we’re all on the same page. There are just too many things in the world to be pissed off about – there’s no need for us to be angry at each other, you know? There should be enough room around here for everyone to have different beliefs (and disbeliefs, as the case may be).
In my mind few of us will live long enough to know the absolute truth about what world leaders and their respective intelligence agencies are doing right now anyway. Most days, I’m almost glad for that – I don’t know if I could stand it.
i dont even know who anderson cooper is! your statement on “those americans watching andersoon cooper being blown…” really is an rather broad assumption that might be true sometimes but often is not. many americans have excellent sources of information outside of the advertising/corporate media. it isn’t that the sources arent there, it’s that people choose not to watch them.
please don’t take this is as a slam either, it is not. oh, as an aside, it’s been great knowing you! i won’t think i’ll be sweeping up in the fbc anymore. i will miss chatting with you though. ENJOY!
many americans have excellent sources of information outside of the advertising/corporate media. it isn’t that the sources arent there, it’s that people choose not to watch them.
How many of them take the time or care to even look for anything outside what is on one of their 200 channels of digital cable? I think Joe’s point is right that most Americans do get their news from dubious sources. It’s far too few of us that are actively searching for truth we’ll never get from the corporate media.
No!! Nooooooo – FBC would collapse without you taking care of us… <whimper> I take it all back, all of it – everything I’ve ever said about Texas, that crack about you drinking Tequila after closing hours, everything….
please, please don’t abandon me…. 😉
There are all kinds of diaries–one cool kind delivers us information we might not hear about elsewhere, and let us decide in what way to digest it.
I for one thought this a bizarre coincidence if nothing more. But bizarre coincidences are newsworthy in their own right, aren’t they? I as a citisen of Earth appreciate being kept apprised of them, whether half court shots for a million bucks, a guy who won the lottery twice (true story, in Colorado when I lived there), or antiterrorist training exercises that happen simultaneous with–and identical to–real life bombings.
Agree. It is good that these ‘oddities’ are brought to our attention here. We can choose to go further into them or not. The only point is that we have a lot of eyes and ears here, and sometimes one of us media watchers spots something that doesn’t quite add up. By bringing it to our attention there may be someone here with better knowledge who can show that the ‘oddity’ is not an oddity at all. Fine.
The date on the Toronto conference is July 10 – 13 2005 – see my link
Sven when I followed the link, the graphic at the top is the advert for this years conference, the detail info is for last years.
It was my mistake for spotting the detail and not the graphic.
NO, like you, most of the rest of us are sensitive about this now, too, and I don’t want to add fuel. I think my own original “WTF” response was probably not helpful in keeping this discussion on steady ground. <gr> But neither do I now, having read everybody’s comments several times, want to get scared off of having such a discussion.
Just personally, I don’t find your five points very convincing in the way of proving it is more real to think there is nothing odd in this story than real to think there is.
Crises and disaster management is big business. Sure, I knew that and I suspect practically everybody reading this does. That fact doesn’t make this story seems any less odd to me. And yes, they could easily and credibly have been running a training session the morning of a bombing. That seems entirely possible to me, but again, that fact doesn’t render the story less odd to me.
If isn’t just that they were running the drill–like drills being run all the time all over the world– or that the sites they picked were the ones the bombers picked, which is, as you say, a not unlikely event. It is also a.) the coincidence of bombing times, and b.) the coincidence of a drill nearly identical to the event running just as one did on 9-11.
It seems unusual enough to merit attention, or at least it does to me.
OK I’ll take a step back.
Yes there is an odd coincidence as to the timing and locations.
If asked as to the when and where of the attacks, my reasons would be:
When, peak morning rush hour.
Where, the main transfer stations for commuters coming from the East (Liverpool Street), North (Kings Cross & St Pancras), West (Edgware Road), who are travelling to the City of London financial district. The London Underground has always been seen as a very vulnerable target, particularly after Madrid.
I’ve been involved in crisis management training sessions at a former employer, not aimed specifically at a terrorist attack, but for and any type of emergency, e.g. fire, flood, major power failure. My involvement was to do with keeping the company IT infrastructure running.
Power appears to teach at a management level, his company or one like it, probably trained the people in my company who trained me.
In the mid 90s, the big niche market for external consultants was ISO 9001 Quality certification. I suspect that Crisis Management is the new one.
As to that conference in Sven’s link, many of the speakers were from local and national goverments. Exactly the people who plan for and manage the sort of response that the emergency services, Transport for London et al demonstrated last week.
A final comment.
I will refrain from using the word reality in future posts.
I will refrain from using the word reality in future posts
Lol! Yes and there will be a fine imposed if you do.
Thanks for your reply.
Thank you for explicating the nature of the three stops hit. I was willing to bet they would be more or less obvious targets – or why else would they be hit? And if they are obvious targets, then it makes sense for drills to take place with scenarious involving those three targets.
One thing to note is that, from the information available, this was NOT an “official” training – it was being done by a private company, for a private company. Unless it can be shown that there was some degree of cooperation or collaboration with any of the various governmental agencies, you cannot call this an “official” training.
Furthermore, one thing that I have not been able to figure out about this story is the nature of the drill, or who exactly was involved. In the article mentioned here, it says that the drill was conducted for a company with about a thousand employees. In other posts at Kos, this seems to get interpreted as “a drill involving a thousand people.” Which is it?
The kind of drill being conducted is dramatically different if it is a drill being done FOR a company of a thousand people (in which case only a few of those may have been involved), or a drill involving a thousand people. If the former is true, than this really starts to look like nothing – a private company, working on behalf of another private company, runs a small role-playing certification exercise that happens to mirror reality, involving an unknown but probably rather small number of people sitting around in an office building.
Presuming for the sake of argument that the second is really the case, WHO those thousand people are also makes a difference. Say the thousand people are, nearly to a person, the employees of the company. That means there are no police or transit officials involved in this drill at all. Depending on the company, there may not even be ANY field personnel involved.
But let’s say, for the sake of argument, that of those thousand people involved, a good number of them were field people, who would either be sent out to the affected areas in response to the attack, or who are in or near the affected areas to begin with as a part of their normal job. Then you would need to look at the timing of the drill. When, exactly, did they start the exercise? When were they scheduled to dispatch people to the involved sites, or to divert the people already there from doing normal stuff to doing crisis-related stuff? Had that phase even started by the time the bombs went off, or were the managers back at the office still sitting around and talking about what they would be doing for the rest of the day?
The whole point of the “the drills were coordinated with the attack” argument is that somehow the drills would provide cover for the attackers, or would provide a convenient opportunity to carry out the attacks. If the nature of the drills was such that no help or assistance would really be possible, than it simply does not matter whether or not the two events were a coincidence.
Zwackus! Hi there, and thanks for your sensible comment. I’ve been hoping to see you around here…
I don’t claim to have any of the answers to the questions that you’ve raised, but I have developed an impression of Visor Consultants since I posted this diary and began digging around. A little background on Peter Power can be found here. He doesn’t seem to be just an anonymous security consultant, nor does Visor seem to be just one of many companies in this field.
I don’t know if anyone has identified the company which was conducting the drill. Early on, he made a point of not disclosing that information – and I don’t know if it’s since been released or leaked.
You’re right, he does appear to be quite prominent in his field. However, that alone does not necessarily mean much – it just means that he’s good at what he does, or that a lot of people think he is.
What all this depends upon is the context of the situation, which I just don’t know. If somebody can give some more details regarding this situation, it would be appreciated.
.
Am I reading the commentary right …
“They will not have died in vain.”
US War Propaganda LONDON – It’s Al Zarqawi!
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Someone please explain this writing to me!
~~~
On the one hand, it makes no sense to me. It’s a non-sequitur. “They will not have died in vain?” It’s not like they were warriors in battle, for heaven’s sake. They were ordinary commuters on their way to work. It’s the same kind of stupid thing that’s said of the ordinary people who died on 9-11. Not died in vain? Excuse me, I’m sorry to be harsh, but if there was ever a case of dying in vain, these are examples of it.
Her words could be read as guilt and complicity. Or they could be read as the vapid and chilling reassurances these folks always give the survivors: thank you for allowing your country to become a target by supporting our war, and be comforted that your loved one died in the good cause of our dreams of world domination.
You could also read it as a revenge statement “we are going to get the people that did this”. It is certainly unusual, as most condolences for innocent victims express exactly that – their innocence.
The text also appeared to be a personal message from CR added on to the larger statement, perhaps created by an aide.
But what do I know?
That’s true, Sven. It could be read as a revenge statement, which is also right up their dark alley.
(Your last question and your sig line pose a conundrum. If we can’t be you, how can we know what you know?)
But I have already admitted to being an aging paradoxical comedian in my bio 😉
“There are some things that I know that I know, and there are some things that I don’t know that I don’t know”. But cogito ergo sum
.
if you want to be me …
and there are some things that I know that I don’t know”.
The essence of wisdom is the knowledge of your limitations!
Wasn’t it a quote from Shakespeare?
This is best reflected in the Finnic, Samoyedic, and Yukaghir languages; e.g., Finnish mene-n “I go,” e-n mene “I don’t go,” mene-t “you go,” e–t mene “you don’t go”; Yukaghir met eluje “I didn’t go” (with negative prefix el– [äl– in Finnish]; compare met meruje “I went”).
© Encyclopædia BritannicaI think, therefore I am – Rene Descartes 1838
USA WELCOME: Make Yourself Known @BooMan Tribune and add some cheers!
Who wrote it? Sounds to me more like someone just wanted to say something, and what came to mind was what many people say at times like these… ‘they will not have died in vain’.
They say it of firefighters, and people in war, and kids caught in the crossfire of gang shootings and so on.
Of course, it could be a statement of revenge and all that as well. Difficult to say what it is, without knowing the person who wrote it and what they were thinking.
Hi, Nanette. It was. . .da dum. . .Condi, signing for the us in her capacity as Sec of State.
Oh. Well, then…. that puts a bit of a different spin on things. I can see now, where it says that. Sigh, I think I need new glasses.
And, since we do know who it is, and we do know her history and the history of the person she represents… revenge is the most likely scenario. Of course, not meaning revenge against whoever it was who actually did it or anything. Anyone who is in the way will do!
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AP Press Photo of her condolence at UK Embassy.
I had it up earlier in my diary.
USA WELCOME: Make Yourself Known @BooMan Tribune and add some cheers!
Yes, thanks, I see that now. I’ve had my second cup of coffee now so I should be a bit less fuzzyheaded ;). Hopefully.
.
Is disarmed by a controlled explosion.
Bomb squad
Use this analogy for London bombing, universal agreement by terror experts and politicians: an attack will happen, we just do not know when. How much gall does a powerful leader need to order a controlled bombing of London, thereby preventing a major and devastating attack on the City of London?
It has been done before in the UK and in Europe, US allies in the IRAQ War.
UK – Dublin/Monaghan bombs
France – Rainbow Warrior
Italy – see diary Soj
Israel – USS Liberty
No added security alert in London, it was left to normal daily routine, therefore vulnerable.
On 9/11 the Norad exercise was to limit the fallout – secure operation – of an expected multiple hijacking. Misjudgement when the planes were used as bombs from the sky – see links.
London Consultants are not for security, but to limit information flow to outside world. BBC, Sky News and other TV networks were impeded in their reporting job and censored.
STATISTICS
The chance of concurrence of the bombing in three places and the consultants exercise are close to nill. I hope Jerome a Paris will come forward with some calculations.
AIM of Blair and Bush
Resolve. Get political and public support at a moment the polls shows the American public is fed up with the casualties and goal in Iraq. Buying time to complete the occupation of US bases in Iraq, fix some infrastructure and security matters, and start pulling out allied troops.
Please do not wear those tin foil hats but exchange them for kevlar helmets.
Pax
I want to clear the air here with me first before I comment on subject. I am not a person who wears the hat of said mentioned discussion, but I find all this too convenient to dismiss.
For the first time in my life and since 9/11, I have had this distinct feeling deep within my gut that I do not trust my government and others around the world as well. Am I just a suspicious person or am I a nut case? I do not know which I happen to be; consequently, I find myself looking into things deeply to find the answer. Too much has been left to be answered IMO. I know it sound suspicious to me and I would like it followed through to be sure about the statement this man declared. If there is something to his statement then we must accept it and investigate further.
to do with our government. Every official and unofficial explanation, every statistic, every reason, every excuse.
If enough people questioned more often…
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Cellular phone service has been shut off in four busy New York commuter tunnels since last week’s deadly blasts in London, officials said on Monday.
No specific reason was given for the move but cell phones have been used to trigger bombs in the past.
Cell phone service is disabled in the Holland and Lincoln tunnels that connect Manhattan to New Jersey under the Hudson River, the Midtown Tunnel to the city’s Queens borough and the Battery Tunnel to Brooklyn, officials said.
The move came immediately after the bombings in London on Thursday, said a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees operation of the Lincoln and Holland tunnels.
New York has remained on high alert for another attack following the Sept. 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks, which destroyed the World Trade Center’s twin towers.
In March 2004 bombs in Madrid that killed 191 people on trains were fitted to mobile phones, using the alarms as timers. Police in London have said they believe the subway bombs there were detonated by timers.
“Following the bombings in London, as a security precaution, the Port Authority required that cell phone service be suspended inside the Lincoln and Holland tunnels,” said Tony Ciavolella, a Port Authority spokesman. “This was an initiative we put into place for the safety and security of the public.”
The service will be disabled until further notice, Ciavolella said.
A spokesman for the New York Police Department said officials would weigh the benefits of disabled service against allowing cell phone service in the tunnels so the public could report suspicious packages or individuals.
——
I can weigh the benefit for you right now and say I’d stay out of those tunnels completely.
Me, I just like a good conspiracy theory! You get to break out your cool hats and settle down comfortably with popcorn and an antenna (to catch stray waves of information) and have a grand old time. What could be better?
We get to have so few of them nowadays, cuz everytime we come up with one lately, it turns out that… well… let’s just say that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
Ok, now that I have a whole roll of tin foil on let me throw this out there. It is just a scenerio I am not saying this is what happened.
The “drill” was in place because a)they were warned and didn’t want to panic the public b)the government planned it and needed to “control” it so the damage was kept to a minimum. I really am not a conspiracy theorist but this begs for more questions and answers. The way we have been lied to on a daily basis begs for a through investigation. I just don’t believe the government propaganda. Think Abu Garaib, Pat Tilmon, Gitmo, wmd, 9/11 connected to Iraq, need I go on? I for one, will never stop questioning what they say and do until I have verifiable proof they are telling us the truth.
And Blair does not want an investigation, he only wants to catch the terrorist. Amazing how tin foil makes dots connect – ok. time to take the foil off. I think be a lot of nasty and smelly stuff will be coming to the surface and maybe even flying around soon. Hopefully in the end it will prove to be a healthy cleansing process. I just can’t give up the hope.
Sorry, no link to the Blair statement, don’t remember where I read it yesterday.
Sometime as co-ncidence is just a co-incidence. If you want to extend the conspiracy theory, why was there a meeting of doctors including and emergency trauma specialist about to start at the British Medical Association as the bomb went off and why were the staff of the London Air Amubulance holding a briefing meeting.
Sometimes a co-incidence is the result of informed speculation. The London “blue light” services held a full scale emergency exercise which assumed multiple bomb attacks at tube stations on a Friday evening. It was held then so people could be warned in advance and clear the areas for the exercise. It meant the clear-up and getting the trains in position for a regular service could be done at leisure over the weekend.
It is quite logical for a company to not hold a training exercise on a Friday. Remember the longer holidays we have and some people chose to take longer weekends in the summer, especially if they have a weekend home. Friday is traditionally “Poets” day – Piss Off Early, Tommorrow’s Saturday. Add into that mix muslim workers who would want to attend prayers and jewish workers who would want to get home in time for Shabbat (even and Fridays are a bad day for meetings pr exercises that would need analysis and follow-up afterwards. A Thursday exercise allows the follow up to be done on the Friday and the results digested over the weekend.
Many companies in London have emergency plans. When I worked at the Greater London Council which had its headquarters on the banks of the Thames, I was officially designated in charge of audit north in case of flooding (I was the only person in audit who lived north of the river) so I had my maps of how to get to the emergency headquarters. Mind you, I was not issued even with wellington boots and a rubber boat. There is much greater continugency planning these days. Companies lease or have arrangment for “shadow” offices ready to recover a copy of their mainframe and with with temporary workstations.
that make a lot of sense concerning reasons for some “synchronicity” in the timing of both events.
the one thing that really has not been mentioned that tends to make people feel the hair rise on the back of their necks is that there was also a drill going on on 9-11…and this caused some confusion for air traffic controllers.
considering that Cheney could not bother to hold one meeting on terrorism after he had been put in charge, (yet could hold very many energy policy task force meetings (per Richard (hair on fire) Clark) and considering that Rumsfeld could not be contacted after he had been given specific responsibility a month before concerning NORAD (he was in the Pentagon in a meeting with Wolfie…and was on hand for a good p.r. photo op helping a crew with a stretcher,
…and considering that former NSA guy Bamford informed everyone about the old (1960s)”operation northwoods” plan from the JCS to fake an attack by Cuba as a pretext to invade…
…it’s really an indication of how little confidence otherwise “rational” people have in this administration that they question every event.
For me, it began with the 2000 election theft, but it was brewing during the blowjob investigation by Hyde and Barr and Burton and all those fine Republicans who were just as “guilty” as Clinton…which is what the fundie repuke base cared about, but apparently, it’s okay to have an illegit kid while married if you’re a republican.
And for anyone to think that political hardball stopped with the Borgias and their poison is just plain naïve…
…but all that said, I will continue to think it was a small band of AQ sympathizers…whoever they might be.
Hey everyone! When I showed up here a moment ago, I noticed more than 20 new comments in this diary. To be honest with you, I winced, and dreaded the thought that I’d find a messy fight in here.
What a relief to see the kind and lighthearted tone everyone has taken. Thank you for proving that even a badly timed diary on a controversial topic at a tense time doesn’t have to get ugly.
Love you guys, y’all rock!
All I can say (as someone who works at what could be considered a target in Manhattan) is that if anyone tells me we’re having a terrorism drill at work, I think I’ll be calling in sick that day and maybe heading for the hills.
Other plausible scenarios (more plausible than just “coincidence”, anyhow):
In each case, the alternative to being a “mere coincidence” requires someone from the exercise and/or someone responsible for the bombing to have knowledge of the other.
If it’s case #4, following that line of investigation would be a very bad idea, from a security standpoint. #3 is like the cases in WWII where codebreaking revealed the allies were putting their supply lines or troops in peril, but they were purposely allowed to be attacked to protect the codebreaking “for a higher purpose”. If its #2, its imperative this be investigated to the fullest, because something very very fishy is going on. If its #1, following the lead will be the best way to get to the planners of the attack.
Ain’t it great, living in a world of grays?
From the BBC5 interview, it seems that the company has 1000 employees. Powers does not indicate that all of them were doing this drill.
The info from CanadaFreePress in the blockquote looks like it was their quotation of Alex Jones from Prison Planet…so, again, one person is the source for two other “sources” here…Al J. and CFP. Jones is the one who uses the phrases 1000s of people involved, not Powers, according to my understanding.
Alex Jones, btw, is not someone I hold in high esteem…though he may be exactly right about everything. Via his online archive, I heard an interview Jones did with Jeff Sharlet, the guy who wrote Jesus Plus in Harpers a while back. Sharlet seems like a reputable writer who was trying to explain the “nuance” of his story. Jones took Sharlet’s words and stuffed them into a little box of scare tactics. I only linked to Jones because he was the one with the bbc5 interview.
Powers does say this:
we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they’d met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on.”
From the way this remark is phrased, I assume that this room full of crisis managers helped to manage this actual crisis.
In your scenarios above, I pick door number 3 and a half…in a Being John Malokovich rabbit hole sort of way.
I tend to agree with you.
Maybe someday we’ll find out who in the British Government organized this exercise, and why. I really doubt anyone but the guy who picked the 3 stations and the day and time of the exercise is “in on it”, whatever it is. The rest of those consultants, well, I’m not sure I’d like to be in that line of work — not with “coincidences” like this happening.
if intelligence had uncovered credible warnings, a secuity exercise would provide cover for having people in the area. i think it’s unlikely bush-blair knew precisely beforehand then let it happen- because that wouldn’t necessarily help them. they might have had some warning, but not precise enough to prevent the attack. so there’s an “exercise” but no warning to civilians. what would really hurt them would be to give an alert, but not be able to prevent the attack.
I noticed heightened security (a k-9 unit or two!) at the Hoboken, NJ commuter rail station at wed pm rush hour 9 hours before the london bombings. it was strange, so i’ve been wondering if there was a connection.
While I have no problem with you pointing out the coincidence of this exercise, zander, I have to say that about 50% of the commenters have sounded off without properly adjusting their tin foil hats. The major mistake they have made is ignoring what you posted in the second update. Peter Power is quoted very clearly saying
Hello, Earth to BooTribbers…it was an exercise conducted by a security consultant for a COMPANY.
Half of the comments on this diary are predicated on the assumption that it was a government exercise that the terrorists got wind of and used as cover, and/or that 1000 security personnel were closeted in an exercise instead of on the streets or tube stations.
Please, lets have believable conspiracy theories, folks.
actually, the CIA and the MI6, or whatever number it is now in the UK constantly create and use “companies” to facilitate their work.
These companies put a layer between and also provide a respectable cover. Read “Spider’s Web,” by a former award-winning Financial Times reporter to learn about the way that Bush Sr. used cover companies to do biz with both Saddam and Iran. This is, of course, a conspiracy, as was Iran-Contra and BCCI…events that are all closely related to people who are in power in the US at this time.
Therefore, it is not outside the realm of history to wonder about anything that occurs while these people hold power here…and to wonder how this might affect the country with the closest ties to the US.
Valerie Plame was working for just such a company so that she had access to Aramco and others.
As far as the 1000s of people…I think I mentioned above that came from one person with a track record of twisting real info.
As far as comments predicated on one scenario or another…I don’t think most comments take anything more than a speculative view…could be this, could be that.
Agree with you about the CIA & MI6 use of companies as cover.
But there’s no reason why they would use a corporate cover to conduct a crisis management exercise related to the bombing of the London Underground, when they could quite easily and legitimately do so with the Metropolitan Police and Transport for London.
I’m not critical of your very reasonable comments on this diary, fauxreal.
It’s just that a large proportion of the other comments make the assumption (perhaps encouraged by Alan Jones) that Peter Power was talking about an official exercise, and that the people involved somehow had responsibilities related to the Underground or to emergency services. Nothing in what he actually said points to that at all. If it had been the case, it seems logical that he would have said so.
I don’t think we disagree. I’m just expressing frustration at people composing conspiracy or cover-up theories without a shred of evidence and apparently without looking at the readily available primary source of information.
For my money the comments by NeutralObserver and Zwackus provide the most plausible explanations.