CIA tracks 4,000 UK terror suspects

Washington: The CIA has begun an unprecedented intelligence-gathering operation in Britain to help MI5 monitor 4,000 terrorist suspects.

The US intelligence service is recruiting and handling a record number of informers within the British Pakistani community with the tacit agreement of the government, according to security sources in Washington and London.

More than four out of 10 CIA operations to prevent attacks on the US homeland are now conducted against targets in Britain.

This has led to friction between British and American spies, with some US intelligence officers irritated that resources are being diverted to gather intelligence on suspects in their closest ally's backyard.

British intelligence officers do not know the identity of all the CIA informants and are uneasy about some of the uses to which the intelligence has been put.

MI5 as a whole is glad of the help, however, and works closely with its sister service. American spies share information when it directly concerns security in Britain.

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that intelligence from CIA informers has helped thwart more than one terrorist atrocity on British soil.

Information passed on by a CIA source in Britain was also instrumental in locating Rashid Rauf, the British-born Al Qaida operative who was killed by a US air strike in Pakistan on November 22.

A British official said: "There is a great deal of CIA activity inside the UK. The CIA has been given a free rein to raise, handle and process from intelligence sources inside the UK.

"In many cases we do not know who their assets are. Several of the recently-foiled terrorist plots inside the UK were uncovered by informants run by US source handlers. We've been able to interdict these plots."

A former CIA officer, who still carries out freelance work for the agency, voiced the irritation of some American spies. "It's certainly frustrating that Britain is an Islamist swamp," he said.

"You don't want to have to spend time spying on your friends."

British security chiefs have long turned a blind eye to a CIA presence in Britain and, since the September 11 attacks, MI5 and the CIA have worked together closely to combat the threat from Islamist extremists. MI5 also tolerates similar operations by the Israeli agency Mossad, which briefs members of the north London Jewish community on threats to their security.

Increased presence

However, US security chiefs have dramatically stepped up their presence in Britain over the last two years because they think that Islamist extremists here are the biggest threat to US security, and are concerned that MI5 may be swamped by the scale of the threat. They fear that Al Qaida recruits could travel to the US under America's visa waiver programme.

Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, has estimated that there are around 4,000 people in Britain who pose a direct threat to national security. He said in November 2007 that the number of known suspects had risen to "at least 2,000", adding: "We suspect that there are as many again that we don't yet know of."

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and Middle East intelligence analyst for the White House National Security Council, said: "A great deal of concern about threats to the US homeland is based upon attacks coming out of the UK.

"The 800,000 or so British citizens of Pakistani origin are regarded by the American intelligence community as perhaps the single biggest threat environment that they have to worry about.

"They know that a lot of those people travel back and forth to Pakistan, many for good reasons like marriages and funerals, but many also for terrorist training. The most significant plot foiled by Al Qaida since September 11 against the American homeland was the Operation Overt plot in the UK in August 2006."

Three British Muslims were charged in connection with that plot to blow up transatlantic airliners using liquid bombs. They were found guilty of conspiracy to murder last September, though none was convicted of planning to blow up the aircraft.

The British official said it was this plot that brought about the increased CIA activity in Britain.

He added: "The Americans lost their patience with MI5. The Yanks said: 'We're not having US aircraft, carrying American citizens, hijacked by British subjects and blown up in American airspace.'"

- The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2009