Police who responded to the alleged bomb plot against an American airbase on British soil were actually summoned by one of the suspects, a report states.
The claimed bomb plot against the de facto U.S. air base at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, England, in which no bomb was found and no suspects have been held under terrorism laws, has taken yet another strange turn after it was stated that police were not, in fact, first alerted to the incident by a farmer returning home late at night, but by one of the suspects themselves.
Five men were arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning in the village of Whelford, which sits on the fringe of RAF Fairford, the British administrative name for one of the U.S. Air Force’s most important overseas bases. According to revelations claimed by The Times of London, Britain’s newspaper of record, police knew about the incident an hour earlier than previously thought because one of the masked men, “acting suspiciously” close to the airbase, called the emergency number 999 himself.
The security services were evidently expecting an attack at Fairford before the events of the early hours of Sunday morning. Because Fairford attracts a wide variety of exotic aircraft compared with other airports and airbases across the United Kingdom, it is perennially popular with plane-spotters, and this community noticed a sudden change in the security posture on Saturday, the day before.
The base reportedly moved to force protection level ‘Delta’, the highest and rarely seen state, in response to intelligence of a specific and imminent threat. In addition to the usual base security, a heavy earth-mover plant was parked blocking perimeter gates, armoured cars were regularly patrolling the fence line, and aircraft were dispersed around the base, a Cold War-era tactic to make the air wing less vulnerable to attack.
Given the peculiarities of the case — that the UK & U.S. governments were clearly anticipating an attack and that Washington said it had been tracking a group for some time, that a group of men with trucks full of petrol were arrested, but that no explosives were found and at least one of those men called the police on themselves, a wide variety of possibilities are now being considered. Among them are allegedly that the purpose of the incident may have been surveillance or testing security response times, or even a disruptive stunt to sow confusion, tie up policing resources, or ‘send a message’.
Police are also reported to be investigating whether the man among those five arrested who called the police did so because he got cold feet about whatever plot was afoot, or if drawing the police to that location was part of the plan.
As reported yesterday, it is clearly part of the message the United States is putting out that there was a serious threat against the base and that a foreign power was involved. To what extent the British and American governments are themselves engaging in deception and muddying the waters in counter-intelligence work in the public sphere remains to be determined.