More Power to you

The tale of Peter Power has taken a couple of interesting turns. Power, you will recall, is the British security consultant who -- according to a story on Alex Jones' conspiratorially-hued site -- had been part of a "Vigilant Guardian" style terrorism exercise in London on the very same day that the real thing struck. Another blog called Wag News took Jones to task, arguing that the author had misrepresented his source material.

Now Jones' site has a new offering, in which Peter Power responds. This piece is written by Jon Rappoport, an author known to me. (He wrote the granddaddy of all "alternate theories of AIDS" pieces, pubished in the L.A Weekly back in the 1980s.)

Rappoport received the following message from Power. (Since this letter seems to be a generalized response to all media inquiries, I feel justified in reprinting it here.)

"Thank you for your message. Given the volume of emails about events on 7 July and a commonly expressed misguided belief that our exercise revealed prescient behaviour, or was somehow a conspiracy (noting that several websites interpreted our work that day in an inaccurate / naive / ignorant / hostile manner) it has been decided to issue a single email response as follows: It is confirmed that a short number of 'walk through' scenarios planed [sic] well in advance had commenced that morning for a private company in London (as part of a wider project that remains confidential) and that two scenarios related directly to terrorist bombs at the same time as the ones that actually detonated with such tragic results. One scenario in particular, was very similar to real time events.

"However, anyone with knowledge about such ongoing threats to our capital city will be aware that (a) the emergency services have already practiced several of their own exercises based on bombs in the underground system (also reported by the main news channels) and (b) a few months ago the BBC broadcast a similar documentary on the same theme, although with much worse consequences [??]. It is hardly surprising therefore, that we chose a feasible scenario - but the timing and script was nonetheless, a little disconcerting.

"In short, our exercise (which involved just a few people as crisis managers actually responding to a simulated series of activities involving, on paper, 1000 staff) quickly became the real thing and the players that morning responded very well indeed to the sudden reality of events.

"Beyond this no further comment will be made and based on the extraordinary number of messages from ill informed people, no replies will henceforth be given to anyone unable to demonstrate a bona fide reason for asking (e.g. accredited journalist/academic).

Peter Power"

This confirms in part the original Jones piece, although not his most spectacular assertions:

The exercise fulfils several different goals. It acts as a cover for the small compartamentalized government terrorists to carry out their operation without the larger security services becoming aware of what they're doing, and, more importantly, if they get caught during the attack or after with any incriminating evidence they can just claim that they were just taking part in the exercise.

This is presumption -- speculation derived from the facts provided by Mr. Power. As noted in previous posts, I have little problem with speculation, as long as it comes clearly labeled as such. Arguably, the label went missing in this instance.

Also, Jones was clearly in the wrong when he said that 1000 people took part in the exercise. We all make mistakes, of course. I have made my share.

Wag News has also decided to take another look at Peter Power. By an odd coincidence, he possesses professional ties to former New York mayor Rudi Guliani -- who, by another odd coincidence, happened to be on the scene when the bombs went off in London.

Jon Rappoport makes a couple of further claims about the London attack. The first one is a shocker:

I have received and seen several reports from people who were in and about in London as the bombings were taking place. One person, unnamed, states that he saw underground stations along one line shut down by many police BEFORE the bombings occurred. Another observer notes that additional bombs were reported by the press, early on, as DIFFUSED before they went off. And as I've written, the story of how many bombs there were and when they went off was changed several times in press reports---7-8 explosions were reduced to 4.

Is this true? Obviously, we cannot blindly accept a report from a single unnamed witness.

The allegation that police shut down stations before the bombs went off should (if true) be fairly easy to verify. The location was a heavily traveled public place. Other witnesses should be able to confirm or deny.