US says UK is No1 terrorist threat

British citizens pose largest terrorist threat to the USA

Postby Prenders88 on February 8, 2009, 8:52 pm
From The Sunday Telegraph.

American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched
a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11
attacks being launched from Britain.

They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US
under the visa waiver programme is the most likely source of another
terrorist spectacular on American soil.

Intelligence briefings for Mr Obama have detailed a dramatic
escalation in American espionage in Britain, where the CIA has
recruited record numbers of informants in the Pakistani community to
monitor the 2,000 terrorist suspects identified by MI5, the British
security service.

A British intelligence source revealed that a staggering four out of
10 CIA operations designed to thwart direct attacks on the US are now
conducted against targets in Britain.

And a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama told The Sunday
Telegraph that the CIA has stepped up its efforts in the last month
after the Mumbai massacre laid bare the threat from Lashkar-e-Taiba,
the militant group behind the attacks, which has an extensive web of
supporters in the UK.

The CIA has already spent 18 months developing a network of agents in
Britain to combat al-Qaeda, unprecedented in size within the borders
of such a close ally, according to intelligence sources in both London
and Washington.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who has advised Mr Obama, told The
Sunday Telegraph: "The British Pakistani community is recognised as
probably al-Qaeda's best mechanism for launching an attack against
North America.

"The American security establishment believes that danger continues
and there's very intimate cooperation between our security services to
monitor that." Mr Riedel, who served three presidents as a Middle East
expert on the White House National Security Council, added: "President
Obama's national security team are well aware that this is a serious
threat."...