IS THIS A WHITE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE?:

U.S. Responded to Plot With Speed, Secrecy (Dan Eggen and Spencer S. Hsu, August 13, 2006, Washington Post)

The British probe began modestly last year, in the aftermath of the London subway bombings, when a concerned citizen within London's large Muslim community tipped authorities to a suspicious acquaintance, sources have said.

But starting about two weeks ago, authorities in London and Washington grappled with a succession of three major developments that shifted the investigation into a higher gear and led to last week's hurried raids and arrests. First was clear evidence of plans to target the United States; then came plans by the British to shut down the plot; and finally a frantic rush to execute the arrests earlier than expected to avoid losing suspects or allowing an attack to occur, according to intelligence and law enforcement officials.

In late July, the British became "exceptionally concerned about where the specifics of the investigation were leading them -- it was getting more from conception to completion," one official said. Chertoff publicly described this as the moment "that the investigation revealed that this planning was taking the direction of targeting the United States."

Within days, the FBI was hunting down names provided by British intelligence and police, seeking to identify any domestic tentacles of the suspected plot. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, who took over the bureau just days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, cleared most of his schedule to concentrate on the probe around this time, aides said.

More than 200 FBI agents and scores of analysts and other personnel would be assigned to the operation in late July and early August, mounting dozens of clandestine surveillance and search operations on individuals with possible links to the London plotters, officials said. Among the individuals were people who had been called or e-mailed by suspects or their relatives and acquaintances, as the FBI combed through layers of the group's "social network" inside the United States.

The case included labor-intensive 24-hour surveillance, which can require several dozen people to watch a single target, one official said. Those conducting the surveillance generally had no idea why the subject was being watched, the official said.

The volume of surveillance was such that it produced a noticeable surge in applications for clandestine warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees most intelligence surveillance inside the country, according to law enforcement officials.

An administration that either accepted a denial of such an application or waited for the court to catch up--if it were to stop being a rubber stamp--would have failed in its constitutional duties. Meanwhile, it seems safe to assume they weren't even applying for warrants on the overseas communications they were monitoring.

MORE:
PLANE-BOMB BOTTLES FOUND (August 13, 2006, NY Post)

British cops investigating the airline bomb plot have reportedly found scores of bottles that had been filled with the components for liquid chemical bombs in outdoor garbage bins.

The bottles contained liquids including peroxide, which can trigger an explosion when mixed with other chemicals and ignited with a small spark, Britain's News of the World reported today.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 13, 2006 9:54 AM