This is why British officials carried out such a large-scale raid. “Nervous informant who gave details of new terrorist device,” from the TimesOnline, with thanks to Sr. Soph:
THE informant told MI5 that they did not have much time to stop another lethal terrorist attack on London.
The details he passed on were so precise and so terrifying that intelligence agents had to drop some of their other investigations to concentrate on what was supposedly happening behind the net curtains of a neat terraced house in an East London suburb.
The belief was that the authorities had only days to act. Surveillance had to be hastily organised, the police and other agencies had to be told, along with ministers, that this time the terrorists were expected to use chemicals and not explosives to murder their victims.
The nervous informant claimed to have seen the chemical vest that the terrorist would use, and while he didn’t understand how the device would work, he did pass on a description and the address where he saw it. The man also offered a list of names.
Some elements of the story he had to tell agents bordered on the incredible, but security sources said that they dared not ignore this alert.
The trouble was that Operation Volga was happening at a time when Britain’s security apparatus was already dangerously overstretched. Bruised by recent public criticism of their conduct over the July 7 bombings, the police, intelligence agencies and senior ministers have deliberately let slip the scale of the threat facing Britain so that the country has some idea of the growing menace of Islamic extremists.
Read it all.
More on the chemical suicide vest they’re looking for here.