BRITISH domestic spy agency MI5 is being accused of a cover-up for failing to disclose to a parliamentary watchdog that it bugged the leader of the July 7 London suicide bombers discussing the building of a bomb months before the attacks. MI5 had secret tape recordings of Mohammad Sidique Khan, the gang leader, talking about how to build the device and then leave the country because there would be a lot of police activity. But, despite the recordings, MI5 allowed him to slip the net. Transcripts of the tapes were never shown to the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which investigated the attacks. The disclosures prompted allegations of a whitewash from politicians and victims of the attacks at the weekend.
| Mark Steyn was just talking about this sort of reporting yesterday: before the attack, there's a paranoid gummint that's trampling the rights of its citizens; after the attack the gummint was sitting on its hands and didn't bother connecting the dots that were there for all to see. |