Politics: Was the terrorist alert in Britain exaggerated?

Was the terrorist alert in Britain exaggerated? According to an article in the NYT, British authorities (and North-American afterwards) would have overestimated the terror threats on Great Britain. But, when the Scotland Yard acted to shut down the suspected "terrorist cell" on Aug. 10, that action set off a chain of events that raised the terror threat levels in Britain and the United States. Passengers were prevented from taking liquids and certain belongings on airplanes and air traffic plunged into chaos around the world. But of course the whole was politically very positive both for the US as for Blair's governments, providing support and encouragement for their strategies in their fight against terrorism.

Those days, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan Police in London, said the goal of the people suspected of plotting the attack was “mass murder on an unimaginable scale”. On the day of the arrests, some officials estimated that as many as 10 planes were to be blown up, possibly over American cities. And Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, described the suspected plot as “getting really quite close to the execution stage.”

However, according to senior British officials, the suspects were not prepared to strike immediately. They say the estimate of 10 planes was speculative and exaggerated. Officials said they were still unsure of one critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of assembling and detonating liquid explosives while airborne. While officials and experts familiar with the case say the investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters, they add that there are still serious doubts on the accuracy of some of the public statements made at the time. Instead, the reactions of Britain and the United States in the wake of the arrests of 21 people on Aug. 10 were driven less by information about a specific, imminent attack than fear about other possible terrorist attacks.