Terrorism Close Calls (2018) s01e05 Episode Script
Operation Overt: The Transatlantic Liquid Bomb Plot
1 [narrator.]
The goal is to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale.
The transatlantic plot, had it been successful, would've been the most dramatic Al-Qaeda plot since 9/11.
The plotters were planning to blow up airliners flying from London to different cities in the U.
S.
and Canada.
[narrator.]
They used everyday objects to assemble an explosive cocktail.
[Jose Rodriguez.]
They were going to use liquid explosives, disguised as soft drinks.
We'd have seen a half a dozen or more airliners suddenly fall off the radar.
[Rodriguez.]
747s, you know, they carry 300, 400 people on board.
That's a hell of a lot of people who would have died.
[narrator.]
The massive plot is orchestrated by a terror cell in Great Britain with a direct link to Al-Qaeda.
[Rodriguez.]
And we knew that Al-Qaeda was always looking at different ways of doing things.
Very ingenious, very smart.
The transatlantic liquid bomb plot from 2006 changed the airline travel irrevocably since then.
[narrator.]
The plot and its investigation causes a rift between two great allies.
There begins to be a split.
U.
S.
authorities want the plotters taken down and arrested.
The UK wants to let it play out a little bit further.
[Michael Hayden.]
I mean, can you imagine what it would've been like had this plot succeeded? The explosives would have worked, the aircraft would have exploded, and we would not have had a crime scene to investigate.
We had a huge stake in this, and we did what we had to do.
[narrator.]
True stories of the world's deadliest terror plots with exclusive access to leading counterterrorism experts and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
- Homegrown terrorists.
- Jihadi propaganda.
Neo-Nazis.
[Rep.
Peter King.]
This is cuts across ideological lines and it cuts across nationalism lines.
The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people.
People's lives depend on their success.
[narrator.]
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls: a terror cell based in London links with Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan to plot an attack that could rival 9/11.
In response, agents at the Central Intelligence Agency, along with their counterparts in Great Britain, launch one of the world's largest counterterrorism surveillance operations in history.
Passenger airlines and cargo planes have been the target of assassinations, suicide, and terrorism since the early days of commercial flight.
In recent years, global terror organizations, led by the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, have been responsible for the most terror attacks and plots against aviation.
September 11, 2001 marked one of the most tragic and shocking events in modern history.
It also revealed the tactical innovation of terrorist organizations to use a plane not just as a target for terror, but as the vehicle of an attack itself.
Since 9/11, Al-Qaeda has hoped to replicate their success in even more spectacular and horrific ways.
A British intelligence mapping system signals an alert.
It has detected communications between known Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and a 24-year-old British-born citizen in East London named Abdullah Ahmed Ali.
Mitch Silber is a former intelligence analyst for the FBI and author of the best-selling book The Al-Qaeda Factor.
One of the ways that law enforcement and intelligence are able to identify potential suspects, or people of concern when it comes to terrorism, is by looking at the nature of their telephone communications.
And you might know of certain individuals who were involved in a plot.
Once they're arrested, their phones are analyzed and, in a sense, giant link charts are created that look at who are the other associates who they've been in touch with.
And that might link someone from one plot with someone who's involved in another plot.
[narrator.]
In this case, the intelligence analysis links Abdullah Ahmed Ali to a suspected Al-Qaeda operative.
[Rodriguez.]
He was a British citizen of Pakistani descent, by the name of Rashid Rauf, who had fled the UK, the United Kingdom, in 2002 after he murdered his uncle.
So, they were looking for him.
[narrator.]
Communication with Rauf immediately puts Ali on Britain's threat list.
Even though he might've been on this threat list, still, no awareness would've been present as to what he might be planning.
[narrator.]
Scotland Yard quickly digs up more intelligence on Ali.
They learn that he spent his early childhood in Pakistan before moving back to East London with his family.
By all accounts, he seems like an intelligent young man with bright prospects.
He's also a husband with a new baby.
But then, 9/11 and the U.
S.
invasion of Afghanistan marks a turning point in Ali's life.
As a university graduate, Ali volunteers at the London offices of the IMA, the Islamic Medical Association.
The organization sends supplies to victims of U.
S.
bombing campaigns in Afghanistan.
It also takes Ali into the war zone.
[Silber.]
He had made multiple trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Basically, from his time in the in country, he began to be radicalized, and ultimately decided to get training from Al-Qaeda.
[narrator.]
By the time Ali returns to England, he's convinced that he should train for jihad.
The British security service, also known as MI5, is Britain's domestic counterintelligence and security agency working in tandem with New Scotland Yard.
They also work closely with their counterparts in the United States.
[Rodriguez.]
Scotland Yard and the municipal London Police are extremely capable police organizations that, once they have someone like this individual, Ali, under their sights they have tremendous capability to surveil them, monitor them, and to collect intelligence.
[narrator.]
Jose Rodriguez is the former director of the National Clandestine Service of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, responsible for all human intelligence gathering conducted by the U.
S.
government.
The National Clandestine Service is the operational arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.
It does human collection, and it executes covert action.
Counterterrorism is a covert action a mission.
[narrator.]
Once MI5 confirms communication between Ali and the British Al-Qaeda fugitive Rashid Rauf, they share the information with U.
S.
intelligence.
Michael Hayden, the former director for the U.
S.
National Security Agency, just started his new post as Director of the CIA when he learns of the potential threat.
I'd seen blips on my personal radar that something was afoot and that we knew something about it, and it was the first Al-Qaeda activity on which I was briefed.
[narrator.]
The CIA begins intercepting Ali's telephone and email traffic to identify other potential key contacts in Pakistan and England.
We are a global intelligence service.
We spend over $50 billion a year on this.
We have more than 100,000 people doing national intelligence tasks.
All right? And so, you should get something for that kind of investment.
And, what we did get, all right, is the kind of predictive intelligence, long-range intel, warning intelligence that allowed us to alert ourselves and our British friends that there was something going on here.
[narrator.]
The CIA uncovers a larger cell, or cluster, connected to Ali in England.
[Silber.]
The cluster in England was discovered, um through communications that the operatives were having with Al-Qaeda core in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And they were coded communications, but, clearly, these individuals who are back in the UK, back in the London area after travel overseas to Afghan and Pakistan, were communicating and talking about a plot, and guidance.
[narrator.]
British intelligence scramble to find out more about Ali's associates, and uncover clues to what they could be plotting.
They name their investigation "Operation Overt.
" They discover Ali's cluster is made up of roughly 18 men between the ages of 22 and 30.
[Silber.]
You've got a whole host of different types of individuals.
You've got Rastafarian converts to Islam, you've got family men, you've got taxi drivers, you've got university students, you've got Brothers.
So, it really is a bit of a mixed bag of individuals who are involved in this plot.
The 18 individuals involved with Operation Overt are linked in many different ways.
Some went to university together, others were involved in a charity together.
Yet even others went to certain mosques together.
It sort of, really reinforces a trend that we've seen among terrorist plots, as often the individuals know each other beforehand, before the plot comes together, and their linkages precede the terrorist plot.
[narrator.]
New intelligence reveals startling information about Ali and his ties to terrorism.
[Rodriguez.]
They discovered that Ali actually arranged for the training of the terrorists that were involved on the 7/7 attacks.
[narrator.]
The 7/7 attacks, or the July 7, 2005 London bombings, saw four suicide bombers detonate their vests on a city's public transportation system, killing themselves and 52 people.
The link between Ali and these terrorists immediately raises the stakes of the mission.
[Rodriguez.]
He had actually gone to Islamabad just before the 7/7/2005 terrorist operation against the London subway, and returned a few months later.
So, they were keen on finding out more information about him.
[narrator.]
As British and U.
S.
intelligence investigate each member of the London cluster, Ali is refining his plot.
In his East London home, Ali begins to research how to make explosive devices using hydrogen peroxide, and refers to a "blessed operation" via email.
[Rodriguez.]
They discovered that he had an accomplice by the name of Assad Sarwar, and that Assad Sarwar had actually been trained in explosives and in bomb making in the tribal area of Pakistan, and that he was actually observed buying high quantities of hydrogen peroxide in the northern part of London.
And syringes, and, uh soft drinks in plastic bottles, and disposable cameras.
And it piqued their interest.
[Silber.]
Assad Sarwar really serves as the quartermaster for the plot.
He is the individual who leads the efforts to get the material, the hydrogen peroxide, that will ultimately be the explosives for the plot.
And he's also the one who has the most technical capabilities.
[narrator.]
Ali and suspected co-conspirator Assad Sarwar take another trip to Pakistan.
Authorities believe he is seeking more explosives training from Al-Qaeda specialists.
[Rodriguez.]
When he left London, uh, in to travel to Islamabad in May of 2006 was questioned.
And when he got to Islamabad, the Brits had notified the Pakistani authorities to keep an eye on him.
Suspected that he was under suspicion.
He reported that to Al-Qaeda.
And Al-Qaeda, what they did, is they really speeded up their training.
Instead of spending months, they only spent weeks being trained in Pakistan.
[narrator.]
Upon his return to the UK, authorities secretly open and search Ali's luggage in a back room of the airport.
[Rodriguez.]
They surreptitiously opened the suitcase.
They found some very interesting things in the suitcases.
They found AA batteries.
They found packages of the soft drink Tang, in powder form.
Tang is known as an accelerant for explosive devices.
So, they decided to conduct a full-fledged surveillance operation against Ali.
[narrator.]
Ali's brother, a property investor, purchases an apartment in London for $260,000 in cash.
Ali turns it into a bomb factory.
Sarwar purchases a large amount of chemicals.
This includes more than 40 liters of hydrogen peroxide purchased from a health food and hydroponics supplier in Britain.
He leaves them at the apartment.
The apartment becomes a focal point for the cluster and for British intelligence.
[Rodriguez.]
They were being all of these people that were unidentified at the time, and they suspected that they were plotting something.
So, they decided that they would conduct a surreptitious entry operation into Ali Khan's apartment to collect intelligence, and to install video and audio surveillance of the apartment.
They actually have cameras installed in this apartment, that's serving as the bomb factory, as a means to track the progress of the conspirators as they continue to develop these devices.
[narrator.]
By early August 2006, investigators are watching and listening.
MI5, the British secret service, are recording Ali and his co-conspirators' every move.
Operation Overt becomes the biggest surveillance operation of its kind in Great Britain.
At one point, British law enforcement have 1,000 intelligence police officers, including surveillance teams, deployed to keep tabs on Ali, Sarwar, and other core members of the group.
They watch as meetings take place in restaurants and parks.
Surveillance also reveals something much more sinister: the construction of incredibly sophisticated explosive devices.
Operatives inside the apartment are observed constructing something out of drink bottles.
[Rodriguez.]
They were able to observe Ali drill holes into the soft drinks, the bottom of the soft drinks, to extract the ingredients.
And then they used the syringes to inject hydrogen peroxide mixed with Tang into the bottle.
[narrator.]
Surveillance teams watching the apartment soon discover the purpose for the batteries and other contents airport security had secretly found in Ali's suitcase.
They watch as Ali and Sarwar conceal the chemical compound hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, HMTD, inside hollowed Toshiba AA batteries.
Black foam is used to conceal the hole at the bottom of the batteries.
They then work on what investigators believe is the trigger for the explosives.
They were going to use a disposable camera, the flash from a disposable camera, to trigger the explosion.
So, they were very concerned.
[narrator.]
Through the cameras hidden in Ali's apartment, the surveillance team observe two plotters design what appears to be the schematics for a liquid bomb.
Ali is overheard talking about a big boom and getting their virgins.
He then begins to count a total of 18 recruits for the attack.
The attack is a suicide operation.
So, I mean one thing is to having people who sympathize with your ideology, and another thing is to go beyond that and agree to participate in suicide missions, which is what this was.
So, these are hard-core people.
[narrator.]
British and U.
S.
intelligence can now confirm that Ali and Sarwar are key figures in a diabolical suicide plot, and the proponents of a new kind of explosive device being supported and instructed by Al-Qaeda and their handler Rashid Rauf.
The origins for this plot all go back to Al-Qaeda core in Pakistan, an individual named Rashid Rauf who's a UK citizen but of Pakistani decent, um, and is now playing a key role as interlocutor between British individuals who were radicalizing the violence and Al-Qaeda core itself.
But it's really Al-Qaeda that comes up with this idea on how to beat western airline security.
Um The shoe bomb has been attempted, and no one is allowed to bring shoes on a plane without having them checked.
Um This is a new innovation for Al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda was very sure was very sure that this would work.
[narrator.]
The bigger question is where they intend to use these devices.
Ali is conducting some of that research in internet cafés in the UK, hoping to do it anonymously.
However, UK security services are tracking his research, and are gaining an early inclination as to what this plot is all about.
[narrator.]
Ali is observed sitting down in front of a computer at an internet café in East London.
[Silber.]
Abdullah Ahmed Ali is conducting research online to identify timelines, flight patterns, cities in North America, all with flights that depart Heathrow heading toward North America.
[narrator.]
London's Heathrow airport is the third busiest airport in the world.
Fourteen hundred flights take off and land from Heathrow every day That's one flight every 45 seconds.
Of Heathrow's 73.
4 million passengers, seven million depart for major U.
S.
cities.
Heathrow Airport is one of the busiest airports in all of Europe, um, a key hub in transatlantic travel, and, essentially, a tremendous vulnerability, um, when thinking about airline safety between Europe and the United States.
[narrator.]
As a major hub for long-haul transatlantic flights, Heathrow is a perfect launching point for Ali to stage the attacks.
MI5 and Scotland Yard notify U.
S.
authorities that Ali is planning a potential attack on commercial aviation, and continue round the clock surveillance of the cluster activities.
To me, the most dangerous point that, basically, told me this is an imminent operation, it's gonna happen, was when the plotters started to select flights.
That, to me, was the turning point.
[narrator.]
The details of the massive terror plot are becoming clear.
Ali has recruited 18 potential suicide bombers, purchased the materials for the explosives, assembled the devices, and began identifying and targeting specific transatlantic flight schedules.
The idea is that the different components of the explosive devices would be brought on the planes independently, not fully assembled, yet once on the planes, the individuals would, most likely, go back to the bathroom and then assemble these devices and explode them.
Ultimately, his goal is one thing is to have nine flights simultaneously over the Atlantic mapped out, that he and his other co-conspirators can board simultaneously and explode over the Atlantic.
The municipal police and British law enforcement had to throw everything they had at this, because they recognized that this was a very, very serious plot, um an operation a terrorist operation that would rival 9/11 in many different ways.
Uh Thousands of people would die.
Can you imagine having airplanes disappear from radar one night into the North Atlantic? So they, the Brits, understood the danger, and that some of these terrorists had already recorded suicide videos, and that they were very committed.
[narrator.]
Investigators are shocked to discover Ali isn't planning on going on the suicide mission alone.
was actually going to take his wife and his children aboard the flight that he was going to blow up.
So, that's how committed these people were to doing this.
Pretty scary stuff.
[Silber.]
Among this group of 18 different key conspirators, the vast majority of them aren't necessarily the planners.
They're really the operatives who are gonna bring the bombs onto the planes.
[narrator.]
The bombers begin recording martyrdom videos.
In Ali's video, he refers to Osama Bin Laden.
[recording of Ali.]
[narrator.]
Each leave a message of trying to justify their actions.
Umar Islam, the Rastafarian convert says [recording of Umar Islam.]
[narrator.]
For the agents involved, the clock is ticking.
Bugs planted in the terrorist safe house pick up a conversation.
One of the plotters asks Ali [voice on surveillance device.]
How long do we have to go? [narrator.]
Ali replies, "A couple of weeks.
" On Ali's direction, a core member of the group plans a dummy run within 72 hours to test airport security at Heathrow Airport.
The dummy run becomes a point of contention between the U.
S.
and the British investigation.
[Rodriguez.]
Where the U.
S.
drew the line with the British, where we were not gonna allow the dry testing of this on airplanes, if, in fact, explosives were gonna be brought on board.
But, you know, we all were very concerned.
And here in the U.
S.
, the president, President Bush, and his National Security Council were meeting every day, and discussing this operation.
As this plot is continuing to accelerate, and the discussions are happening between UK and U.
S.
authorities, there begins to be a split.
U.
S.
authorities want the plotters taken down and arrested.
The UK wants to let it play out a little bit further so they can identify everyone who's in the plot.
The British kept telling us, "We have this.
We can stop this before it happens.
" And we were saying to them, "What happens if there is an aspect of this operation that you have no visibility into?" I mean, we can't afford to have thousands of people die, and airplanes blown out of the sky.
So there was a tension between the two governments.
[Hayden.]
In North America, we had this just raw, counterterrorism, disrupt-the-plot point of view, where our British friends had this law enforcement point of view that required more patience of them and us.
That second was a big ask, because we were getting nervous.
[narrator.]
Another important objective of the CIA is the capture of the man who orchestrated the plot, Al-Qaeda's Rashid Rauf.
One of our contributions was the linkage between Al-Qaeda and Pakistan and the plotters in Great Britain.
And then the focus of our Pakistan search was Rashid Rauf.
And he really was the operational leader for the plot back back in Pakistan.
[Rodriguez.]
My own information that I had at the time, was that he was a British of Pakistani descent, that he was a criminal, that he was wanted by the authorities for murder, and that he had fled the UK, uh, to the tribal area, that he had become involved with Al-Qaeda in the tribal area, and that he was a very committed jihadist.
And that he was, actually, a very good planner, and he was very important in trying to conduct operations against the West.
Very committed Jihadist.
[narrator.]
The CIA works closely with the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service, and enlist the support of ISI General Kayani to try and locate Rauf.
[Rodriguez.]
The British were in total control of the plotters in the UK.
What they didn't have access to was the tribal area of Pakistan.
And it just so happened that the plot was being led by Rashid Rauf, who was in the tribal area of Pakistan under the direction of Al-Qaeda.
So, if you wanted to take down the operation, you needed to go find the person who was orchestrating the attack.
That was our part of the mission, to go and find and capture Rashid Rauf.
We began to work with them over the summer months of 2006, using human assets, using our technical capabilities, using, of course, the reach that our Pakistani partners into the tribal area And together, we were able to monitor Rashid Rauf and his communications between the tribal area and the London plotters.
[Hayden.]
In the midst of all this, all right, as a new director of CIA, I fly to the multiple war zones in August of 2006.
Accompanying me is Jose Rodriguez, the head of operations for CIA, the former head of our counterterrorism center.
[Rodriguez.]
So, at the end of the two days, General Hayden went on to his next stop on the schedule, but I stayed behind.
I was briefed on two very important and significant pieces of intelligence.
The first piece of intelligence was in relation to the most recent British report on the plotters, and it had to do with the fact that they had selected the flights that they were going to target, that they were going to blow up.
When you see it, you say to yourself, "This is imminent.
This is gonna happen.
" And you remember what happened after 9/11, when the Congress, and everybody in the media were saying, "You never connected the dots, you know? What's the problem with you? You should have been able to connect the dots.
" Where here we had all of the dots connected.
The second, very important piece of intelligence was that we had made great progress in the search for Rashid Rauf.
While I'm in Kabul, Jose's back in Islamabad.
The Pakistanis quickly, unexpectedly, informally approach Jose, saying, "We think we know where Rashid Rauf is.
He's traveling on a known bus line.
He will go through a checkpoint.
We can arrest him.
What do you think?" [Rodriguez.]
In the back of my mind, I knew that our government had agreed with the British to give them more time.
I knew, from the intelligence perspective, that we had agreed with MI5 to give them more time.
And I was told that President Bush had, in discussions with Prime Minister Blair, also agreed to provide more time.
So that was in the back of my mind.
But I didn't want to waiver in my answer to General Kayani on a hypothetical situation.
So my response to him was, "Of course, yes.
We will agree to do this.
No problem.
" The meeting ended with Kayani, and we jumped into General Asmat's vehicle, when, all in the sudden, he gets a call from his people at the checkpoint, saying, "The bus is coming.
Do we have permission to board the bus and capture Rashid Rauf if he's there?" And the chief of station turns to me and says, "What do we do, boss?" Now, Jose is forced to make a spur-of-the-moment decision.
[Rodriguez.]
First, I knew that this was within our authority to conduct covert action, pursuant to a presidential finding, to capture, detain, interrogate, take down terrorists, disrupt plots.
I knew we had the authority to do that.
But there was an issue here, a policy decision.
I also knew that if I didn't make the decision, that there was a chance that we would never be able to find Rashid Rauf again.
He would disappear into the tribal area.
Also, it crossed my mind that if airplanes started to fall from the sky, that I would be hauled up to the Congress and told, "Let me get this straight, Mr.
Rodriguez You are the head of the Clandestine Service, you have the authority to capture these people, you had a terrorist that wanted to blow up our airplanes, you had him within your grasp, and you could not make a decision? You're fired.
" No doubt, the CIA would have been blamed, and I would have been the fall guy.
[narrator.]
Weighing the relationship between the U.
S.
and one of its biggest allies, and what might be the only opportunity to capture Rashid Rauf and shut down the plot, Agent Rodriguez is forced to make a difficult decision.
[Rodriguez.]
In the end, people's lives would be at risk.
Thousands could die if we did not make the right decision then and there.
So, I went ahead and said, "Yes, let's go ahead and do this.
" The Pakistanis had gone in the bus, and had grabbed Rashid Rauf, and had confirmed that it was Rashid Rauf.
[indistinct chatter.]
So, all of these things happened very quickly.
The decision, I think was of great consternation to the Brits, and, probably, they were angry.
And some people, even in Washington, second guessed, or were concerned that I had made the right decision at the time.
[narrator.]
British intelligence consider the unauthorized arrest as an affront, and possibly even damaging to their investigation.
I know that one of the British law enforcement, when he found out that we had gone ahead and approved the takedown of Rashid Rauf, said that it was a breach of trust.
[Hayden.]
They weren't very happy about that at all, and we later modestly apologized, but Jose did have to make a decision.
We believed that Rashid Rauf was was the brains behind the plot.
He was the point certainly in Pakistan.
He was the center of the wheel from which all the other spokes radiated, and I believe there is good evidence that some of the plotters had actually met with him back in Pakistan.
I have to actually think that was probably the right decision for Jose in those circumstances, but, Lord Almighty, that set in motion a whole bunch of events, because now, with Rauf rowed up in Pakistan, the British have to move in London, otherwise the plotters are gonna slip the noose.
And so, the British have to go to battle stations immediately to begin to row up the people they knew were involved in the plot.
They wanted to let this run longer to build up evidence, and, indeed, it made it much more difficult for the British to prosecute these obviously-guilty individuals in British courts, because we, in essence, put them on a shot clock.
They had to go move because the Pakistanis had arrested Rashid Rauf.
[Rodriguez.]
For the next few days, all hell broke loose, and the Brits had to go operational that very evening.
[indistinct chatter.]
[Hayden.]
The British then had to make the decision, largely forced by the Pakistani move, to which we did not object, the British had to make the decision to go now.
They had to launch their folks to go grab everybody they knew was in the plot.
[narrator.]
British police raid a two-story brick duplex on Walton Drive in High Wycombe.
At least six people belonging to Ali's cluster live in the house.
Inside, they find Ali and two Brothers who are also core members of the cell.
Agents arrest Ali and search his pockets.
They find a memory card that will later reveal details of seven flights out of Heathrow to North America.
Information is collected that shows the particular flights that were being considered, and it shows that there is a multitude of airlines, as well as a number of different North American cities, to include Toronto, Miami, New York, and Chicago, and it just shows the whole scope of this plot.
[narrator.]
Ali had selected Air Canada, United Airlines, and American Airline flights out of Heathrow with six-hour windows where all would be airborne and vulnerable to a simultaneous attack.
They also find the blueprint of Ali's terror plot his diary.
Notes from Ali's diary contain to-do lists.
It also reveals the twisted and frightening rationale behind the plot.
[voice on recording.]
We now know what websites they went to, what flights they were investigating.
We think the number was, again, more than a half a dozen, all right, relatively simultaneously, flying out of Great Britain, but not just to American cities, to North American cities.
And so, there would've been a sense, had it worked and now we're trying, through forensics, to put together what happened There would've been a sense of randomness.
[narrator.]
By the end of the night, 25 suspects are taken into custody in London.
Investigators discover all key components of the explosive devices enough to produce at least 20 bombs.
[Hayden.]
After the arrests were made in Great Britain, all right well, we learned some things Number one, looks like they had a little more hydrogen peroxide than we thought they did.
I guess the sense I had, back here in North America, mind you, the sense I had was they were a bit further along in their plotting than, perhaps, we had assessed.
[Rodriguez.]
At the time, some people questioned my judgment.
But I also knew that our own government, from the president on down, to the National Security Council and the principals, were all very concerned about this operation, and that it could happen, and that, perhaps maybe, the British did not had visibility in some aspects of the plot.
So I think that a lot of our government was very pleased, uh that this operation was finally taken down.
[narrator.]
The day after the arrests, new security regulations are enforced at London's Heathrow Airport, to include no carry-on luggage except essential medications, with the exception of milk for babies, which passengers are required to taste at security checkpoints.
Airports see long lines, chaos, and confusion.
[Silber.]
The transatlantic liquid bomb plot is the plot that changed airline travel in the sense that, once that plot happened, within days, new rules were put into place restricting the carry of any type of liquid in a transatlantic or, frankly, any type of flight.
[Hayden.]
I mean, the logical response to this kind of thing is to tighten security.
Could they have gotten through with the hydrogen peroxide bottles? Well, the answer is we'll never know because we're not letting people take bottles on aircraft anymore.
We just went to the absolute absolute ban.
You know, that's why, for example, if you're traveling to the United States, it's three ounces and no more, a number carefully arrived at by what you could or could not do with three ounces of a particular kind of liquid.
[narrator.]
In all, only seven of the 25 people associated with the liquid bomb plot are convicted and sentenced to life terms in prison.
The outcome for Rashid Rauf, the man believed to be the brains behind the operation, is more complicated.
[Rodriguez.]
The interrogation of Rashid Rauf was Pakistani.
He was under arrest for a year.
They put him in jail for the year.
The British requested his extradition and the Pakistanis did not agree to it.
[Silber.]
The story of Rashid Rauf, after his arrest, is a peculiar one, because he subsequently was able to escape from Pakistani authorities.
[Hayden.]
Frankly, from the American point of view, escape under some really mysterious circumstances.
All right.
So, he gets back into the Al-Qaeda flow.
[Rodriguez.]
And, actually, went back to plotting, and had about three new plots, including one against New York City.
But, fortunately, he was killed a year later by a U.
S.
drone, and that is the end of Rashid Rauf.
Killed in December of 2008 by a Predator drone.
[narrator.]
Operation Overt is one of the longest, costliest, and most serious investigations in Britain's history.
If the terror attack had succeeded, it would have also been one of the world's deadliest.
Can you imagine what it would've been like had this plot succeeded, had we not been able to penetrate it early on, and to learn all about its various details? I mean, if they would've been able to go on board those aircraft, multiple wide bodies flying from multiple British airfields to multiple North American, not even just United States, destinations, and if, about at the same time, these aircraft would've exploded, and we tested the explosives, the explosives would've worked The aircraft would've exploded, fuselage would've been ruptured They all failed catastrophically, all on board died.
We would've had a number of dead roughly equivalent to 9/11, and we would not have had a crime scene to investigate.
I can only imagine the challenge we would've had of putting it back together after the event.
That would've been very, very difficult.
[narrator.]
If the planes had exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, it would have taken the bombers and the bombs with it.
No one would know how the bombs had been built.
The planes would have simply disappeared, along with its passengers.
Then there's the issue Would these planes have been exploded over the Atlantic, or on approach to Kennedy, to Toronto, to Miami, to Chicago, and had they been blown up over North American cities, then the death toll even skyrockets further.
[narrator.]
The potential devastation of the transatlantic liquid bomb plot not only prompted increased transatlantic security, but intelligence sharing between nations.
[Hayden.]
We have really stepped up, and our British friends have stepped up, our ability to collect intelligence.
You know a thought I didn't have on September 11th? That in 16 years I'd be able to sit here and talk with you and say, "You know, we'd not had another successful major attack mounted from the outside against the United States of America, and it wasn't because people weren't trying.
" We've been blessed by a lot of things.
Geography helps.
You know.
Friendly neighbors, big oceans.
Makes it a little bit easier than for our European friends.
We're not bad at this either.
We've got really good intelligence services.
Then there's one final factor.
You know, America's made more secure, not more free, not just more free, America's made more secure by the American dream.
We are, by and large, a welcoming nation.
We allow people in here and accept them.
That can't be said for all of our friends, even democracies.
And so, we need to be careful in these steps to keep ourselves safe, we don't do things that, actually, in the long term, make us not only less free, but less secure.
What we saw was a change in the flavor of plot.
Less complex, less catastrophic, less mass casualty.
But more likely, more often.
[Rodriguez.]
So, if you're involved in all of this, after a while, you become numb, because there is so much threat, and there is so much going out there, uh that you just take them on one at a time.
Thank God, we were successful.
We were pretty successful after 2001.
There was nothing that came our way, and we were able to stop everything.
[Hayden.]
There's a human interest aspect to this, too.
After the plot had been broken up, um, an agency officer asked to come see me.
So, he comes in, and he has a model of a United airliner.
And he comes in and said, "General my brother flies the transatlantic route for United Airlines.
He said he doesn't know what we did, but he figured we did a lot, and he wanted you to have this," and he gave me the model of the plane.
You know, it's all about people.
You really get to rely on the human beings who do this on behalf of you as director, but, more importantly, on behalf of the nation.
You know, I'm a big fan of Homeland, all right? It's a good show, it's entertaining, and they get a lot of details wrong, like picking up a cellphone at CIA headquarters.
That's never going to happen.
But there's something they get right, and that's the obsession of the CIA officers in the show, because that mirrors the obsession of CIA officers in real life on their mission.
We're gonna come after you.
We're gonna find you.
We're gonna⦠We're gonna have to blow you up.
The goal is to commit mass murder on an unimaginable scale.
The transatlantic plot, had it been successful, would've been the most dramatic Al-Qaeda plot since 9/11.
The plotters were planning to blow up airliners flying from London to different cities in the U.
S.
and Canada.
[narrator.]
They used everyday objects to assemble an explosive cocktail.
[Jose Rodriguez.]
They were going to use liquid explosives, disguised as soft drinks.
We'd have seen a half a dozen or more airliners suddenly fall off the radar.
[Rodriguez.]
747s, you know, they carry 300, 400 people on board.
That's a hell of a lot of people who would have died.
[narrator.]
The massive plot is orchestrated by a terror cell in Great Britain with a direct link to Al-Qaeda.
[Rodriguez.]
And we knew that Al-Qaeda was always looking at different ways of doing things.
Very ingenious, very smart.
The transatlantic liquid bomb plot from 2006 changed the airline travel irrevocably since then.
[narrator.]
The plot and its investigation causes a rift between two great allies.
There begins to be a split.
U.
S.
authorities want the plotters taken down and arrested.
The UK wants to let it play out a little bit further.
[Michael Hayden.]
I mean, can you imagine what it would've been like had this plot succeeded? The explosives would have worked, the aircraft would have exploded, and we would not have had a crime scene to investigate.
We had a huge stake in this, and we did what we had to do.
[narrator.]
True stories of the world's deadliest terror plots with exclusive access to leading counterterrorism experts and the elite agents who stopped the attacks.
- Homegrown terrorists.
- Jihadi propaganda.
Neo-Nazis.
[Rep.
Peter King.]
This is cuts across ideological lines and it cuts across nationalism lines.
The depravity of the enemy we face knows no bounds and so does our determination to keep them from hurting people.
People's lives depend on their success.
[narrator.]
On this episode of Terrorism Close Calls: a terror cell based in London links with Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan to plot an attack that could rival 9/11.
In response, agents at the Central Intelligence Agency, along with their counterparts in Great Britain, launch one of the world's largest counterterrorism surveillance operations in history.
Passenger airlines and cargo planes have been the target of assassinations, suicide, and terrorism since the early days of commercial flight.
In recent years, global terror organizations, led by the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, have been responsible for the most terror attacks and plots against aviation.
September 11, 2001 marked one of the most tragic and shocking events in modern history.
It also revealed the tactical innovation of terrorist organizations to use a plane not just as a target for terror, but as the vehicle of an attack itself.
Since 9/11, Al-Qaeda has hoped to replicate their success in even more spectacular and horrific ways.
A British intelligence mapping system signals an alert.
It has detected communications between known Al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan and a 24-year-old British-born citizen in East London named Abdullah Ahmed Ali.
Mitch Silber is a former intelligence analyst for the FBI and author of the best-selling book The Al-Qaeda Factor.
One of the ways that law enforcement and intelligence are able to identify potential suspects, or people of concern when it comes to terrorism, is by looking at the nature of their telephone communications.
And you might know of certain individuals who were involved in a plot.
Once they're arrested, their phones are analyzed and, in a sense, giant link charts are created that look at who are the other associates who they've been in touch with.
And that might link someone from one plot with someone who's involved in another plot.
[narrator.]
In this case, the intelligence analysis links Abdullah Ahmed Ali to a suspected Al-Qaeda operative.
[Rodriguez.]
He was a British citizen of Pakistani descent, by the name of Rashid Rauf, who had fled the UK, the United Kingdom, in 2002 after he murdered his uncle.
So, they were looking for him.
[narrator.]
Communication with Rauf immediately puts Ali on Britain's threat list.
Even though he might've been on this threat list, still, no awareness would've been present as to what he might be planning.
[narrator.]
Scotland Yard quickly digs up more intelligence on Ali.
They learn that he spent his early childhood in Pakistan before moving back to East London with his family.
By all accounts, he seems like an intelligent young man with bright prospects.
He's also a husband with a new baby.
But then, 9/11 and the U.
S.
invasion of Afghanistan marks a turning point in Ali's life.
As a university graduate, Ali volunteers at the London offices of the IMA, the Islamic Medical Association.
The organization sends supplies to victims of U.
S.
bombing campaigns in Afghanistan.
It also takes Ali into the war zone.
[Silber.]
He had made multiple trips to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Basically, from his time in the in country, he began to be radicalized, and ultimately decided to get training from Al-Qaeda.
[narrator.]
By the time Ali returns to England, he's convinced that he should train for jihad.
The British security service, also known as MI5, is Britain's domestic counterintelligence and security agency working in tandem with New Scotland Yard.
They also work closely with their counterparts in the United States.
[Rodriguez.]
Scotland Yard and the municipal London Police are extremely capable police organizations that, once they have someone like this individual, Ali, under their sights they have tremendous capability to surveil them, monitor them, and to collect intelligence.
[narrator.]
Jose Rodriguez is the former director of the National Clandestine Service of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, responsible for all human intelligence gathering conducted by the U.
S.
government.
The National Clandestine Service is the operational arm of the Central Intelligence Agency.
It does human collection, and it executes covert action.
Counterterrorism is a covert action a mission.
[narrator.]
Once MI5 confirms communication between Ali and the British Al-Qaeda fugitive Rashid Rauf, they share the information with U.
S.
intelligence.
Michael Hayden, the former director for the U.
S.
National Security Agency, just started his new post as Director of the CIA when he learns of the potential threat.
I'd seen blips on my personal radar that something was afoot and that we knew something about it, and it was the first Al-Qaeda activity on which I was briefed.
[narrator.]
The CIA begins intercepting Ali's telephone and email traffic to identify other potential key contacts in Pakistan and England.
We are a global intelligence service.
We spend over $50 billion a year on this.
We have more than 100,000 people doing national intelligence tasks.
All right? And so, you should get something for that kind of investment.
And, what we did get, all right, is the kind of predictive intelligence, long-range intel, warning intelligence that allowed us to alert ourselves and our British friends that there was something going on here.
[narrator.]
The CIA uncovers a larger cell, or cluster, connected to Ali in England.
[Silber.]
The cluster in England was discovered, um through communications that the operatives were having with Al-Qaeda core in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And they were coded communications, but, clearly, these individuals who are back in the UK, back in the London area after travel overseas to Afghan and Pakistan, were communicating and talking about a plot, and guidance.
[narrator.]
British intelligence scramble to find out more about Ali's associates, and uncover clues to what they could be plotting.
They name their investigation "Operation Overt.
" They discover Ali's cluster is made up of roughly 18 men between the ages of 22 and 30.
[Silber.]
You've got a whole host of different types of individuals.
You've got Rastafarian converts to Islam, you've got family men, you've got taxi drivers, you've got university students, you've got Brothers.
So, it really is a bit of a mixed bag of individuals who are involved in this plot.
The 18 individuals involved with Operation Overt are linked in many different ways.
Some went to university together, others were involved in a charity together.
Yet even others went to certain mosques together.
It sort of, really reinforces a trend that we've seen among terrorist plots, as often the individuals know each other beforehand, before the plot comes together, and their linkages precede the terrorist plot.
[narrator.]
New intelligence reveals startling information about Ali and his ties to terrorism.
[Rodriguez.]
They discovered that Ali actually arranged for the training of the terrorists that were involved on the 7/7 attacks.
[narrator.]
The 7/7 attacks, or the July 7, 2005 London bombings, saw four suicide bombers detonate their vests on a city's public transportation system, killing themselves and 52 people.
The link between Ali and these terrorists immediately raises the stakes of the mission.
[Rodriguez.]
He had actually gone to Islamabad just before the 7/7/2005 terrorist operation against the London subway, and returned a few months later.
So, they were keen on finding out more information about him.
[narrator.]
As British and U.
S.
intelligence investigate each member of the London cluster, Ali is refining his plot.
In his East London home, Ali begins to research how to make explosive devices using hydrogen peroxide, and refers to a "blessed operation" via email.
[Rodriguez.]
They discovered that he had an accomplice by the name of Assad Sarwar, and that Assad Sarwar had actually been trained in explosives and in bomb making in the tribal area of Pakistan, and that he was actually observed buying high quantities of hydrogen peroxide in the northern part of London.
And syringes, and, uh soft drinks in plastic bottles, and disposable cameras.
And it piqued their interest.
[Silber.]
Assad Sarwar really serves as the quartermaster for the plot.
He is the individual who leads the efforts to get the material, the hydrogen peroxide, that will ultimately be the explosives for the plot.
And he's also the one who has the most technical capabilities.
[narrator.]
Ali and suspected co-conspirator Assad Sarwar take another trip to Pakistan.
Authorities believe he is seeking more explosives training from Al-Qaeda specialists.
[Rodriguez.]
When he left London, uh, in to travel to Islamabad in May of 2006 was questioned.
And when he got to Islamabad, the Brits had notified the Pakistani authorities to keep an eye on him.
Suspected that he was under suspicion.
He reported that to Al-Qaeda.
And Al-Qaeda, what they did, is they really speeded up their training.
Instead of spending months, they only spent weeks being trained in Pakistan.
[narrator.]
Upon his return to the UK, authorities secretly open and search Ali's luggage in a back room of the airport.
[Rodriguez.]
They surreptitiously opened the suitcase.
They found some very interesting things in the suitcases.
They found AA batteries.
They found packages of the soft drink Tang, in powder form.
Tang is known as an accelerant for explosive devices.
So, they decided to conduct a full-fledged surveillance operation against Ali.
[narrator.]
Ali's brother, a property investor, purchases an apartment in London for $260,000 in cash.
Ali turns it into a bomb factory.
Sarwar purchases a large amount of chemicals.
This includes more than 40 liters of hydrogen peroxide purchased from a health food and hydroponics supplier in Britain.
He leaves them at the apartment.
The apartment becomes a focal point for the cluster and for British intelligence.
[Rodriguez.]
They were being all of these people that were unidentified at the time, and they suspected that they were plotting something.
So, they decided that they would conduct a surreptitious entry operation into Ali Khan's apartment to collect intelligence, and to install video and audio surveillance of the apartment.
They actually have cameras installed in this apartment, that's serving as the bomb factory, as a means to track the progress of the conspirators as they continue to develop these devices.
[narrator.]
By early August 2006, investigators are watching and listening.
MI5, the British secret service, are recording Ali and his co-conspirators' every move.
Operation Overt becomes the biggest surveillance operation of its kind in Great Britain.
At one point, British law enforcement have 1,000 intelligence police officers, including surveillance teams, deployed to keep tabs on Ali, Sarwar, and other core members of the group.
They watch as meetings take place in restaurants and parks.
Surveillance also reveals something much more sinister: the construction of incredibly sophisticated explosive devices.
Operatives inside the apartment are observed constructing something out of drink bottles.
[Rodriguez.]
They were able to observe Ali drill holes into the soft drinks, the bottom of the soft drinks, to extract the ingredients.
And then they used the syringes to inject hydrogen peroxide mixed with Tang into the bottle.
[narrator.]
Surveillance teams watching the apartment soon discover the purpose for the batteries and other contents airport security had secretly found in Ali's suitcase.
They watch as Ali and Sarwar conceal the chemical compound hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, HMTD, inside hollowed Toshiba AA batteries.
Black foam is used to conceal the hole at the bottom of the batteries.
They then work on what investigators believe is the trigger for the explosives.
They were going to use a disposable camera, the flash from a disposable camera, to trigger the explosion.
So, they were very concerned.
[narrator.]
Through the cameras hidden in Ali's apartment, the surveillance team observe two plotters design what appears to be the schematics for a liquid bomb.
Ali is overheard talking about a big boom and getting their virgins.
He then begins to count a total of 18 recruits for the attack.
The attack is a suicide operation.
So, I mean one thing is to having people who sympathize with your ideology, and another thing is to go beyond that and agree to participate in suicide missions, which is what this was.
So, these are hard-core people.
[narrator.]
British and U.
S.
intelligence can now confirm that Ali and Sarwar are key figures in a diabolical suicide plot, and the proponents of a new kind of explosive device being supported and instructed by Al-Qaeda and their handler Rashid Rauf.
The origins for this plot all go back to Al-Qaeda core in Pakistan, an individual named Rashid Rauf who's a UK citizen but of Pakistani decent, um, and is now playing a key role as interlocutor between British individuals who were radicalizing the violence and Al-Qaeda core itself.
But it's really Al-Qaeda that comes up with this idea on how to beat western airline security.
Um The shoe bomb has been attempted, and no one is allowed to bring shoes on a plane without having them checked.
Um This is a new innovation for Al-Qaeda.
Al-Qaeda was very sure was very sure that this would work.
[narrator.]
The bigger question is where they intend to use these devices.
Ali is conducting some of that research in internet cafés in the UK, hoping to do it anonymously.
However, UK security services are tracking his research, and are gaining an early inclination as to what this plot is all about.
[narrator.]
Ali is observed sitting down in front of a computer at an internet café in East London.
[Silber.]
Abdullah Ahmed Ali is conducting research online to identify timelines, flight patterns, cities in North America, all with flights that depart Heathrow heading toward North America.
[narrator.]
London's Heathrow airport is the third busiest airport in the world.
Fourteen hundred flights take off and land from Heathrow every day That's one flight every 45 seconds.
Of Heathrow's 73.
4 million passengers, seven million depart for major U.
S.
cities.
Heathrow Airport is one of the busiest airports in all of Europe, um, a key hub in transatlantic travel, and, essentially, a tremendous vulnerability, um, when thinking about airline safety between Europe and the United States.
[narrator.]
As a major hub for long-haul transatlantic flights, Heathrow is a perfect launching point for Ali to stage the attacks.
MI5 and Scotland Yard notify U.
S.
authorities that Ali is planning a potential attack on commercial aviation, and continue round the clock surveillance of the cluster activities.
To me, the most dangerous point that, basically, told me this is an imminent operation, it's gonna happen, was when the plotters started to select flights.
That, to me, was the turning point.
[narrator.]
The details of the massive terror plot are becoming clear.
Ali has recruited 18 potential suicide bombers, purchased the materials for the explosives, assembled the devices, and began identifying and targeting specific transatlantic flight schedules.
The idea is that the different components of the explosive devices would be brought on the planes independently, not fully assembled, yet once on the planes, the individuals would, most likely, go back to the bathroom and then assemble these devices and explode them.
Ultimately, his goal is one thing is to have nine flights simultaneously over the Atlantic mapped out, that he and his other co-conspirators can board simultaneously and explode over the Atlantic.
The municipal police and British law enforcement had to throw everything they had at this, because they recognized that this was a very, very serious plot, um an operation a terrorist operation that would rival 9/11 in many different ways.
Uh Thousands of people would die.
Can you imagine having airplanes disappear from radar one night into the North Atlantic? So they, the Brits, understood the danger, and that some of these terrorists had already recorded suicide videos, and that they were very committed.
[narrator.]
Investigators are shocked to discover Ali isn't planning on going on the suicide mission alone.
was actually going to take his wife and his children aboard the flight that he was going to blow up.
So, that's how committed these people were to doing this.
Pretty scary stuff.
[Silber.]
Among this group of 18 different key conspirators, the vast majority of them aren't necessarily the planners.
They're really the operatives who are gonna bring the bombs onto the planes.
[narrator.]
The bombers begin recording martyrdom videos.
In Ali's video, he refers to Osama Bin Laden.
[recording of Ali.]
[narrator.]
Each leave a message of trying to justify their actions.
Umar Islam, the Rastafarian convert says [recording of Umar Islam.]
[narrator.]
For the agents involved, the clock is ticking.
Bugs planted in the terrorist safe house pick up a conversation.
One of the plotters asks Ali [voice on surveillance device.]
How long do we have to go? [narrator.]
Ali replies, "A couple of weeks.
" On Ali's direction, a core member of the group plans a dummy run within 72 hours to test airport security at Heathrow Airport.
The dummy run becomes a point of contention between the U.
S.
and the British investigation.
[Rodriguez.]
Where the U.
S.
drew the line with the British, where we were not gonna allow the dry testing of this on airplanes, if, in fact, explosives were gonna be brought on board.
But, you know, we all were very concerned.
And here in the U.
S.
, the president, President Bush, and his National Security Council were meeting every day, and discussing this operation.
As this plot is continuing to accelerate, and the discussions are happening between UK and U.
S.
authorities, there begins to be a split.
U.
S.
authorities want the plotters taken down and arrested.
The UK wants to let it play out a little bit further so they can identify everyone who's in the plot.
The British kept telling us, "We have this.
We can stop this before it happens.
" And we were saying to them, "What happens if there is an aspect of this operation that you have no visibility into?" I mean, we can't afford to have thousands of people die, and airplanes blown out of the sky.
So there was a tension between the two governments.
[Hayden.]
In North America, we had this just raw, counterterrorism, disrupt-the-plot point of view, where our British friends had this law enforcement point of view that required more patience of them and us.
That second was a big ask, because we were getting nervous.
[narrator.]
Another important objective of the CIA is the capture of the man who orchestrated the plot, Al-Qaeda's Rashid Rauf.
One of our contributions was the linkage between Al-Qaeda and Pakistan and the plotters in Great Britain.
And then the focus of our Pakistan search was Rashid Rauf.
And he really was the operational leader for the plot back back in Pakistan.
[Rodriguez.]
My own information that I had at the time, was that he was a British of Pakistani descent, that he was a criminal, that he was wanted by the authorities for murder, and that he had fled the UK, uh, to the tribal area, that he had become involved with Al-Qaeda in the tribal area, and that he was a very committed jihadist.
And that he was, actually, a very good planner, and he was very important in trying to conduct operations against the West.
Very committed Jihadist.
[narrator.]
The CIA works closely with the ISI, Pakistan's intelligence service, and enlist the support of ISI General Kayani to try and locate Rauf.
[Rodriguez.]
The British were in total control of the plotters in the UK.
What they didn't have access to was the tribal area of Pakistan.
And it just so happened that the plot was being led by Rashid Rauf, who was in the tribal area of Pakistan under the direction of Al-Qaeda.
So, if you wanted to take down the operation, you needed to go find the person who was orchestrating the attack.
That was our part of the mission, to go and find and capture Rashid Rauf.
We began to work with them over the summer months of 2006, using human assets, using our technical capabilities, using, of course, the reach that our Pakistani partners into the tribal area And together, we were able to monitor Rashid Rauf and his communications between the tribal area and the London plotters.
[Hayden.]
In the midst of all this, all right, as a new director of CIA, I fly to the multiple war zones in August of 2006.
Accompanying me is Jose Rodriguez, the head of operations for CIA, the former head of our counterterrorism center.
[Rodriguez.]
So, at the end of the two days, General Hayden went on to his next stop on the schedule, but I stayed behind.
I was briefed on two very important and significant pieces of intelligence.
The first piece of intelligence was in relation to the most recent British report on the plotters, and it had to do with the fact that they had selected the flights that they were going to target, that they were going to blow up.
When you see it, you say to yourself, "This is imminent.
This is gonna happen.
" And you remember what happened after 9/11, when the Congress, and everybody in the media were saying, "You never connected the dots, you know? What's the problem with you? You should have been able to connect the dots.
" Where here we had all of the dots connected.
The second, very important piece of intelligence was that we had made great progress in the search for Rashid Rauf.
While I'm in Kabul, Jose's back in Islamabad.
The Pakistanis quickly, unexpectedly, informally approach Jose, saying, "We think we know where Rashid Rauf is.
He's traveling on a known bus line.
He will go through a checkpoint.
We can arrest him.
What do you think?" [Rodriguez.]
In the back of my mind, I knew that our government had agreed with the British to give them more time.
I knew, from the intelligence perspective, that we had agreed with MI5 to give them more time.
And I was told that President Bush had, in discussions with Prime Minister Blair, also agreed to provide more time.
So that was in the back of my mind.
But I didn't want to waiver in my answer to General Kayani on a hypothetical situation.
So my response to him was, "Of course, yes.
We will agree to do this.
No problem.
" The meeting ended with Kayani, and we jumped into General Asmat's vehicle, when, all in the sudden, he gets a call from his people at the checkpoint, saying, "The bus is coming.
Do we have permission to board the bus and capture Rashid Rauf if he's there?" And the chief of station turns to me and says, "What do we do, boss?" Now, Jose is forced to make a spur-of-the-moment decision.
[Rodriguez.]
First, I knew that this was within our authority to conduct covert action, pursuant to a presidential finding, to capture, detain, interrogate, take down terrorists, disrupt plots.
I knew we had the authority to do that.
But there was an issue here, a policy decision.
I also knew that if I didn't make the decision, that there was a chance that we would never be able to find Rashid Rauf again.
He would disappear into the tribal area.
Also, it crossed my mind that if airplanes started to fall from the sky, that I would be hauled up to the Congress and told, "Let me get this straight, Mr.
Rodriguez You are the head of the Clandestine Service, you have the authority to capture these people, you had a terrorist that wanted to blow up our airplanes, you had him within your grasp, and you could not make a decision? You're fired.
" No doubt, the CIA would have been blamed, and I would have been the fall guy.
[narrator.]
Weighing the relationship between the U.
S.
and one of its biggest allies, and what might be the only opportunity to capture Rashid Rauf and shut down the plot, Agent Rodriguez is forced to make a difficult decision.
[Rodriguez.]
In the end, people's lives would be at risk.
Thousands could die if we did not make the right decision then and there.
So, I went ahead and said, "Yes, let's go ahead and do this.
" The Pakistanis had gone in the bus, and had grabbed Rashid Rauf, and had confirmed that it was Rashid Rauf.
[indistinct chatter.]
So, all of these things happened very quickly.
The decision, I think was of great consternation to the Brits, and, probably, they were angry.
And some people, even in Washington, second guessed, or were concerned that I had made the right decision at the time.
[narrator.]
British intelligence consider the unauthorized arrest as an affront, and possibly even damaging to their investigation.
I know that one of the British law enforcement, when he found out that we had gone ahead and approved the takedown of Rashid Rauf, said that it was a breach of trust.
[Hayden.]
They weren't very happy about that at all, and we later modestly apologized, but Jose did have to make a decision.
We believed that Rashid Rauf was was the brains behind the plot.
He was the point certainly in Pakistan.
He was the center of the wheel from which all the other spokes radiated, and I believe there is good evidence that some of the plotters had actually met with him back in Pakistan.
I have to actually think that was probably the right decision for Jose in those circumstances, but, Lord Almighty, that set in motion a whole bunch of events, because now, with Rauf rowed up in Pakistan, the British have to move in London, otherwise the plotters are gonna slip the noose.
And so, the British have to go to battle stations immediately to begin to row up the people they knew were involved in the plot.
They wanted to let this run longer to build up evidence, and, indeed, it made it much more difficult for the British to prosecute these obviously-guilty individuals in British courts, because we, in essence, put them on a shot clock.
They had to go move because the Pakistanis had arrested Rashid Rauf.
[Rodriguez.]
For the next few days, all hell broke loose, and the Brits had to go operational that very evening.
[indistinct chatter.]
[Hayden.]
The British then had to make the decision, largely forced by the Pakistani move, to which we did not object, the British had to make the decision to go now.
They had to launch their folks to go grab everybody they knew was in the plot.
[narrator.]
British police raid a two-story brick duplex on Walton Drive in High Wycombe.
At least six people belonging to Ali's cluster live in the house.
Inside, they find Ali and two Brothers who are also core members of the cell.
Agents arrest Ali and search his pockets.
They find a memory card that will later reveal details of seven flights out of Heathrow to North America.
Information is collected that shows the particular flights that were being considered, and it shows that there is a multitude of airlines, as well as a number of different North American cities, to include Toronto, Miami, New York, and Chicago, and it just shows the whole scope of this plot.
[narrator.]
Ali had selected Air Canada, United Airlines, and American Airline flights out of Heathrow with six-hour windows where all would be airborne and vulnerable to a simultaneous attack.
They also find the blueprint of Ali's terror plot his diary.
Notes from Ali's diary contain to-do lists.
It also reveals the twisted and frightening rationale behind the plot.
[voice on recording.]
We now know what websites they went to, what flights they were investigating.
We think the number was, again, more than a half a dozen, all right, relatively simultaneously, flying out of Great Britain, but not just to American cities, to North American cities.
And so, there would've been a sense, had it worked and now we're trying, through forensics, to put together what happened There would've been a sense of randomness.
[narrator.]
By the end of the night, 25 suspects are taken into custody in London.
Investigators discover all key components of the explosive devices enough to produce at least 20 bombs.
[Hayden.]
After the arrests were made in Great Britain, all right well, we learned some things Number one, looks like they had a little more hydrogen peroxide than we thought they did.
I guess the sense I had, back here in North America, mind you, the sense I had was they were a bit further along in their plotting than, perhaps, we had assessed.
[Rodriguez.]
At the time, some people questioned my judgment.
But I also knew that our own government, from the president on down, to the National Security Council and the principals, were all very concerned about this operation, and that it could happen, and that, perhaps maybe, the British did not had visibility in some aspects of the plot.
So I think that a lot of our government was very pleased, uh that this operation was finally taken down.
[narrator.]
The day after the arrests, new security regulations are enforced at London's Heathrow Airport, to include no carry-on luggage except essential medications, with the exception of milk for babies, which passengers are required to taste at security checkpoints.
Airports see long lines, chaos, and confusion.
[Silber.]
The transatlantic liquid bomb plot is the plot that changed airline travel in the sense that, once that plot happened, within days, new rules were put into place restricting the carry of any type of liquid in a transatlantic or, frankly, any type of flight.
[Hayden.]
I mean, the logical response to this kind of thing is to tighten security.
Could they have gotten through with the hydrogen peroxide bottles? Well, the answer is we'll never know because we're not letting people take bottles on aircraft anymore.
We just went to the absolute absolute ban.
You know, that's why, for example, if you're traveling to the United States, it's three ounces and no more, a number carefully arrived at by what you could or could not do with three ounces of a particular kind of liquid.
[narrator.]
In all, only seven of the 25 people associated with the liquid bomb plot are convicted and sentenced to life terms in prison.
The outcome for Rashid Rauf, the man believed to be the brains behind the operation, is more complicated.
[Rodriguez.]
The interrogation of Rashid Rauf was Pakistani.
He was under arrest for a year.
They put him in jail for the year.
The British requested his extradition and the Pakistanis did not agree to it.
[Silber.]
The story of Rashid Rauf, after his arrest, is a peculiar one, because he subsequently was able to escape from Pakistani authorities.
[Hayden.]
Frankly, from the American point of view, escape under some really mysterious circumstances.
All right.
So, he gets back into the Al-Qaeda flow.
[Rodriguez.]
And, actually, went back to plotting, and had about three new plots, including one against New York City.
But, fortunately, he was killed a year later by a U.
S.
drone, and that is the end of Rashid Rauf.
Killed in December of 2008 by a Predator drone.
[narrator.]
Operation Overt is one of the longest, costliest, and most serious investigations in Britain's history.
If the terror attack had succeeded, it would have also been one of the world's deadliest.
Can you imagine what it would've been like had this plot succeeded, had we not been able to penetrate it early on, and to learn all about its various details? I mean, if they would've been able to go on board those aircraft, multiple wide bodies flying from multiple British airfields to multiple North American, not even just United States, destinations, and if, about at the same time, these aircraft would've exploded, and we tested the explosives, the explosives would've worked The aircraft would've exploded, fuselage would've been ruptured They all failed catastrophically, all on board died.
We would've had a number of dead roughly equivalent to 9/11, and we would not have had a crime scene to investigate.
I can only imagine the challenge we would've had of putting it back together after the event.
That would've been very, very difficult.
[narrator.]
If the planes had exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, it would have taken the bombers and the bombs with it.
No one would know how the bombs had been built.
The planes would have simply disappeared, along with its passengers.
Then there's the issue Would these planes have been exploded over the Atlantic, or on approach to Kennedy, to Toronto, to Miami, to Chicago, and had they been blown up over North American cities, then the death toll even skyrockets further.
[narrator.]
The potential devastation of the transatlantic liquid bomb plot not only prompted increased transatlantic security, but intelligence sharing between nations.
[Hayden.]
We have really stepped up, and our British friends have stepped up, our ability to collect intelligence.
You know a thought I didn't have on September 11th? That in 16 years I'd be able to sit here and talk with you and say, "You know, we'd not had another successful major attack mounted from the outside against the United States of America, and it wasn't because people weren't trying.
" We've been blessed by a lot of things.
Geography helps.
You know.
Friendly neighbors, big oceans.
Makes it a little bit easier than for our European friends.
We're not bad at this either.
We've got really good intelligence services.
Then there's one final factor.
You know, America's made more secure, not more free, not just more free, America's made more secure by the American dream.
We are, by and large, a welcoming nation.
We allow people in here and accept them.
That can't be said for all of our friends, even democracies.
And so, we need to be careful in these steps to keep ourselves safe, we don't do things that, actually, in the long term, make us not only less free, but less secure.
What we saw was a change in the flavor of plot.
Less complex, less catastrophic, less mass casualty.
But more likely, more often.
[Rodriguez.]
So, if you're involved in all of this, after a while, you become numb, because there is so much threat, and there is so much going out there, uh that you just take them on one at a time.
Thank God, we were successful.
We were pretty successful after 2001.
There was nothing that came our way, and we were able to stop everything.
[Hayden.]
There's a human interest aspect to this, too.
After the plot had been broken up, um, an agency officer asked to come see me.
So, he comes in, and he has a model of a United airliner.
And he comes in and said, "General my brother flies the transatlantic route for United Airlines.
He said he doesn't know what we did, but he figured we did a lot, and he wanted you to have this," and he gave me the model of the plane.
You know, it's all about people.
You really get to rely on the human beings who do this on behalf of you as director, but, more importantly, on behalf of the nation.
You know, I'm a big fan of Homeland, all right? It's a good show, it's entertaining, and they get a lot of details wrong, like picking up a cellphone at CIA headquarters.
That's never going to happen.
But there's something they get right, and that's the obsession of the CIA officers in the show, because that mirrors the obsession of CIA officers in real life on their mission.
We're gonna come after you.
We're gonna find you.
We're gonna⦠We're gonna have to blow you up.