Earlier I screwed up the links to the previous parts. I'll put a list of permalinks up on the right-hand column of ye olde blog later.

Disclaimer time - I know that investigating the oddities of published reports puts me in the company of some real nuts and wackos. I also know that questioning or querying the official reports as they come in tends to aggravate some people, who don't even want to hear it. So be it, on both accounts.

Secondly, I have no idea who set up these bombs and I'm not saying I do. My job is to ask questions not to promulgate answers. If you think I'm pointing the finger at group X or group Y and saying "they did it" then you aren't reading what I'm writing.

Thirdly, I am fully aware the investigation is not over and I do hope that when it is completed a lot of these questions will be answered.

Furthermore, since Part 5 goes off the "deep end" let me add something I read in a book this morning. From Pattern Recognition pages 293-294:

There must always be room for coincidence. When there's not, you're probably well into apophenia, each thing perceived as a part of an overarching pattern of conspiracy. And while comforting yourself with the symmetry of it all, you stood all too real chance of missing the genuine threat, which was invariably less symmetrical, less perfect.

Fair enough?

The 500 pound invisible gorilla running through this case has been Israel. I hate to even mention it because it just gets people fired up and angry and irrational. Israel's either a victimized nation of saints or else a diabolical conspirator of Zionist evilness - there never seems to be any kind of medium.

My belief is that Israel is just like other countries, including my own. I know I'm "deluded" to think that, but so be it. And sometimes Israel does perform some seriously underhanded stuff. I'm just going to throw out the Lavon Affair and for complete fairness' sake, link goes to a Jewish website. Again, let me reiterate - if you think I'm pointing the finger at a specific group, you're not reading what I'm writing!

Ok... after the 20 lines of disclaimer let's get into what's been reported.

Former Israeli Prime Minister and current Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in London on the morning of the attacks. This is an undisputed fact. The first reports (from the AP) were that Netanyahu got a warning by British police minutes before the explosions, saying terror attacks were "possible". As a result, he stayed in his hotel and did not go to the Great Eastern hotel, which is near the Liverpool Street tube station:

British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before Thursday's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

Then the story changed to Netanyahu was warned after the first explosion:

“After the first explosion, our finance minister received a request not to go anywhere,” Finance Minister Silvan Shalom told Israel Army Radio.

The Israeli ambassador to London, Zvi Hefetz, said British police had called to tell embassy personnel to stay inside their offices. “There is fear that this wave of violence has not yet ended,” Hefetz said.

Note that the second linked story was posted at 1:32pm British time, when everyone thought that there had been multiple explosions at multiple times. It was only determined later that there had just been the three near-simultaneous underground ones and the bus one an hour later. So when Shalom says "after the first explosion", he was referring to after the Edgware one.

Stratfor says the Israeli Embassy wasn't warned "minutes before". Instead the Israeli Embassy did the warning - a "couple of days" before the blasts.

Meanwhile German newspaper Bild am Sonntag had an interview with Meir Dagan, the head of the Mossad (Israeli "CIA"). Dagan says they were warned "six minutes before" the blasts.

So which is true? Did the Israelis warn the British police? If so, why risk a senior Cabinet member going to an unsecured location while 1.500 capital police were up in Scotland for the G8? Or did the British police warn the Israelis, either minutes before the attacks or minutes after?

All the links go to mainstream, reputable news sources and they contain direct quotes from Israeli government officials. And the official story from the police is that the original speculation on the "first" explosion was that it was a power transformer overloading, so who knew that it was something more enough to call the Israeli embassy?

Another oddity here is that former NYC mayor Rudolph Giuliani was eating breakfast at the Great Eastern hotel, the same hotel where Netanyahu was scheduled to speak shortly after the bombs exploded nearby.

Yet more Israeli weirdness is that Mohammed Siddique Khan, the 30 year old married bomber, had made a 1 day trip to Israel back in 2003:

The government official said Mohammad Sidique Khan, who London police believe blew himself up on an underground train this month, arrived in Israel on Feb. 19, 2003, and left the next day.

Why on earth would Khan go to Israel and then come back the next day for any legitimate purpose? Many Muslims go to Israel to see holy sites or just for ordinary tourism, but it's a pretty long flight from Europe. Why fly in and fly out the next day?

Israeli papers have been speculating that Khan went to Israel on February 19 to coordinate the bombing of a bar called "Mike's Place" in Tel Aviv, which occurred on April 20. The perpetrators in that bombing were two British citizens of Pakistani descent although the Palestinian group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

As I mention in Part 4, the type of explosives used in London has not been officially determined by the police yet. But Meir Dagan says the same type of explosives used in Mike's Place were used in London - a Chinese-manufactured explosive:

Mossad Chief Meir Dagan is reported to have said that the explosive in question is very powerful, and "much more lethal than plastic explosives and can be smuggled undetected due to its composition."

The Mossad determined that the substance was developed and produced at the Chinese ZDF arms factory, located about 65 kilometers (about 40 miles) from Beijing.

Not named in the English article linked above, but that explosion is called "CX123". Google doesn't bring up anything about "CX123". Neither does "ZDF arms factory", other than links back to the Mossad quote. I do note off a Czech arms manufacturer list that the ZDF Import/Import company website is now called Robinson Armament Company, which does indeed sell arms. The guns they sell are made in Russia however, so it doesn't seem to be linked to any Chinese factory.

Off a discussion website I found this comment (from March 17, 2004):

"The Israeli experts concluded that the explosives were manufactured in the laboratories of ZDF, one of China's leading military defence contractors. The first hint that China was working on a new type of explosive had come in March, 2001, when a top-ranking Chinese defector, Senior Colonel Xu Junping in the China's People Liberation Army and one of the nation's leading military strategists, had defected to the United States and was personally debriefed by CIA director George Tenet. So important was the debriefing that President Bush had authorised his closest aide, Condoleeza Rice, to sit in."

What's odd is that the original report about this explosive (not named) is that it's called a plastic explosive while the Mossad chief linked above says it's "more lethal than plastic explosives". This report seems to have gotten the information from unnamed "senior Mossad" officials.

The article is undated but it refer's to "last week's suicide bomb attack" on a club in Tel Aviv, committed by "two young British radical Muslims", clearly the same "Mike's Place" attack.

A look at the defecting Colonel Xu Junping shows he was a pretty big cheese in the CSIS - a Chinese espionage agency. The article alleges that the good colonel informed the American gov't that:

• The CSIS has "close contact" with Osama bin Laden;
• That the CSIS had secretly helped Slobodan Milosevic; and
• China helped Saddam Hussein "re arm" Iraq with nuclear weapons

The only "problem" with all that of course is that nobody helped Saddam acquire nuclear weapons. Not in April 2002, when the article was written. So was the rest of Junping's info bunko as well?

Not that both Tenet and Rice allegedly interviewed this guy and certainly information in April 2002 for putting the onus on Hussein would've been received with open arms. I'm not delving into the Downing Street Memo issue at this juncture, but clearly defectors with scary tales about Hussein were considered a "prime catch" by the Bush administration.

Junping is now "disappeared" into the federal Witness Protection Program, which means nobody in the journalistic world can ask find him to ask him questions.

So Junping allegedly spilled the beans about some new secret kind of "undetectable" explosive, codenamed CX123, which may or may not be "plastic" and may or may not have been traded to anyone from Iran to Iraq to Al-Qaeda. And the Mossad pieced together clues from the Mike's Place bombing to determine it was this secret explosive, which later they informed the British police that the same stuff was used on 7/7/05. With me so far?

If the above about CX123 is true, it would explain why the police haven't publically stated what the bombers used in London. I've seen reports that they're using dogs down there in the tunnel even today. As someone who has worked with bomb squads many times in the past, I can tell you that most conventional explosives are fairly easy to determine. Bomb squads and forensic teams use samples taken from the scene, look at the radius and force of the blast, the "effectiveness" of the explosive relative to the amount used, the temperature of items in the vicinity (did nylon 3 feet away melt? Did nylon 5 feet away only blacken? etc) and other similar things to determine what was used.

As I mentioned in Part 4, the French anti-terrorism chief, who has been in London working with Scotland Yard, said "military explosives" possibly from the "Balkans". Assuming he was informed or had evidence it was CX123, that would conform to both "military" and "from the Balkans", possibly via the Serb connection.

There were media reports that the explosive might've been the easier-to-assemble TATP. However upon further investigation, I note that an Israeli firm invented something called a "PET pen", which uses three chemical mixtures to detect explosives similar to TATP. Think of it as kind of a fancy version of litmus paper, if you will. So if it was TATP, it seems to me like the police would've been able to determine this quite rapidly.

But it TATP wasn't the explosive used by the London bombers, what was all that business about "22 pounds" or "traces" of TATP precusors being found in a Leeds apartment rented by the Egyptian chemistry student (described elsewhere as an expert in use of enzymes in biotechnology), Magdy Al-Nashar? Well reports today seem to indicate that's a dead end as the Egyptian police, masters at "interrogating" prisoners, say that Nashar had no links with either Al-Qaeda or the London bombing. The British police haven't commented yet, but the Egyptians seem pretty clear about it.

So let's say we can rule out the TATP. And let's investigate if maybe it was this mysterious, difficult-to-detect Chinese-made CX123, used in the Mike's Place bombing two years ago. I should note that explosive material was found in Lindsay's rented Fiat Brava at the Luton train station, which obviously should be able to be identified. But of course was it the same stuff as used by the bombers?

If so, that potentially ties Siddique Khan to both scenes since he was in Israel and perhaps was involved with Mike's Place. From other reports, Siddique and Shehzad Tanweer both went to Pakistan together on November 19, 2004, on the same flight. While in Pakistan, they allegedly met up with a British-born Pakistani named Zeeshan Siddiqui, who was friends with Asif Hanif. One of the two Mike's Place bombers (suicide) was named Asif Hanif, although I've seen some reports suggesting that these are not the same two Hanifs.

Zeeshan Siddiqui was arrested in Pakistan in May (before the London bombings) on "terrorist-related offenses". The Pakistanis are saying Siddiqui was also buddies with Abu Faraj al-Libbi, whom you might remember from Part 2 of my investigation. On August 2, 2004 the NYT, based on a Bush administration leak, outed the "turning" of an Al-Qaeda guy named Noor Khan. In that same article:

The question of how much to rely on information obtained from captured foes has always weighed on the intelligence business. In recent weeks, even as they cited accounts from some captured Qaeda members as the basis for new concerns about terrorism, American intelligence officials have acknowledged that another captured Qaeda figure, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, had recanted claims that Iraq had provided training in illicit weapons to Qaeda members.

So Siddiqui was tied to al-Liby, the guy who "recanted" that Iraq had trained Al-Qaeda members. According to the Financial Times, Siddiqui was arrested in May 2005 in Peshawar, Pakistan. According to another report:

A senior Pakistani official and a Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Pakistani authorities were questioning a Briton named Zeeshan Siddiqui, who was arrested in Peshawar in May.

The officials declined to expand on their suspicions, but local press reports said Siddiqui was linked to Junaid Babar, a Pakistani-American arrested in April 2004 in Queens, N.Y., who admitted in June to setting up jihadi training camps in Pakistan's tribal region and trying to buy explosives for a planned bombing in Britain, according to a New York Times article at the time.

The plot was foiled by a sweep in March 2004, when British police arrested eight British men of Pakistani descent. The Times on Thursday quoted a French intelligence official as saying that one of the London bombers, Mohammed Sidique Khan, had had some form of contact with that group.

That March 2004 "sweep" was Operation Crevice, discussed in earlier parts of my investigation.

So let's connect the dots, shall we? Siddique Khan, the 30 year old London bomber met Zeeshan Siddiqui in Pakistan last year. Zeeshan Siddiqui is tied to an alleged Al-Qaeda named al-Liby captured prior to August 2004. Zeeshan is also tied to Junaid Babar, who was arrested in the United States and Siddique Khan had "ties" to Babar's group, according to a "French intelligence official".

As I mentioned in earlier parts, this ties Siddique Khan to 1) Mike's Bombing in Israel April 2003 2) Pakistani-American terrorist arrested April 2004 in Queens, NY 3) Zeeshan Siddiqui arrested May 2005 tied to Operation Crevice British Pakistanis (March 2005) and 4) the August 2004 Noor Khan related British Pakistanis (Al-Qaeda) and of course 5) London 7/7 bombings. That's a heck of lot of suspicious activity for a guy who was not surveilled or targeted by anti-terrorism officials!

Siddique Khan was 30 years old at the time of the London bombings while the other three were aged 18, 22 and Lindsay, whom is described as being 19. Siddique Khan has been mentioned elsewhere as not only a friend of the younger men, but also a "mentor" for them. He played sports with them and encouraged them to stay in school. So if anyone of the four was the "mastermind", clearly suspicion points most heavily at Khan.

By the way, some media reports saying that a fifth man, traveling with the other 4 and caught on CCTV, flew out of the country just before the bombs exploded. That has since been determined to not be true.

Now, there's another theory, which is that one of the bombers is not even dead. One of the oddest reports from the media was that ID from some of the different bombers were found in multiple locations:

Police are still trying to figure out why some of the bombers appeared to be carrying pieces of identification not just of themselves but of at least some of their three accomplices.

From another article:

Closed-circuit television caught the friends laughing and chatting like hikers setting out on a jaunt before they fanned out to different bus or train lines, each lugging a sophisticated 10-pound bomb in his knapsack. Identification cards for three of them were found in two subway cars and a bus destroyed in the attacks.

Certainly the victims were of all ethnicities and races. I note that in a piece about the forensic team identifying the bodies from London:

Dr Andrew Reid said recovery teams are working tirelessly to identify bodies and body parts from "primary sources" - dental records, fingerprints or unique medical devices such as pacemakers and hip replacements.

Where none exist they rely on matching DNA from hair samples supplied by relatives, but the testing can take weeks.

And he revealed that the bodies of the bombers will be treated in exactly the same way as the victims.

Dr Reid, coroner for Inner North London and responsible for the identification process at the Kings Cross and Aldgate tube bombs and the Tavistock Square bus bomb, said: "In some cases where there are no fingerprints or dental records we might have to rely on DNA.

"In the worst cases for some of the victims it might take weeks."

He said he understood relatives frustrations at the delay with only ten victims formally identified after six days, but said his priority was to avoid mistakes.

In previous disasters up to 10 per cent of identifications were incorrect.

Dr Reid said that secondary sources include personal possessions, papers, photos and credit cards.

So unless a bomber's fingerprints were on file, he might only be identified by recovered evidence (ID) and/or medical records and/or tissue samples. I note that the families of the three younger men all expressed surprise and grief that their relatives were involved in the bombing. The first tip that it was these four individuals came from the mother of Hasib Hassain's mother, who frantically phoned police to inform that her son was missing. Hassain was the bus bomber, and his decapitated body was found more or less "whole" and was identified by the family.

As I noted in earlier reports, families of the younger men thought their sons (and husband in one case) were heading to a "religious event". Did perhaps Khan trick these other three into carrying backpacks full of explosives with timers without their knowing about it? And did Khan ditch his backpack somewhere along the way and disappear? Or was he killed alongside the rest?

Let's review - Hussain's mother calls into police a few hours after the explosion to report her son is missing. Police get a detailed description of his body and examine the remains of the Tavistock bus explosion, matching Hussain by his clothing. He is decapitated and close to the epicenter of the explosion. Surviving witnesses describe him with a large backpack.

Police backtrack his day, possibly with the help of his family, and see him entering the King's Cross station on CCTV with three other men. Those three men are identified as Siddique Khan, Lindsay and Tanweer. ID from all three men are recovered amongst the bodies, hence these men are the four bombers. And that may very well be what happened.

But if Khan was either a double agent or a secret Al-Qaeda member, either way, he might've escaped. Clearly he has established ties to other Pakistani terrorists, whether as a true colleague or else an undercover agent, and clearly he served in a mentoring capacity to the younger men. Since they told their families they were going to a "religious event" and bought return train tickets to Luton, they may well have been duped, perhaps by Khan, perhaps by someone else.

Again, this investigation is not over and I fully acknowledge that. But if the bombers, whether all 4 or just Khan, got their hands on top-secret Chinese military explosive, some larger force is at play here. Whether that's Al-Qaeda or a government wishing to stage an incident for its own purposes is yet to be determined.

As I've said before, I'm asking questions here rather than trying to promulgate answers. But this looks to me like a very sophisticated attack and for that reason alone, I will continue to keep a sharp eye on new developments in the future...

Peace