Britain’s top intelligence and law enforcement officials concluded less than a month before the London bombings that there was no group with current intent and the capability to attack the United Kingdom, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing a confidential intelligence report.
The Times said authorities made their conclusion in the wake of a terror threat assessment by the Joint Terrorist Analysis Center, which includes officials from Britain’s top intelligence agencies, as well as Customs and the Metropolitan Police.
The assessment, according to the newspaper, prompted the British government to lower its formal threat assessment one level, from “severe defined” to “substantial.”
Asked to comment on the document, a senior British official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said according to the newspaper, “We do not discuss intelligence assessments.”
The newspaper said the previously undisclosed report was sent to British government agencies, foreign governments and corporations in mid-June, about three weeks before a team of four British suicide bombers mounted their July 7 attack on London’s public transportation system.
The Times said the tersely worded threat assessment was particularly surprising because it stated that terror-related activity in Britain was a direct result of violence in Iraq.
“Events in Iraq are continuing to act as motivation and a focus of a range of terrorist related activity in the U.K.,” said the report, a copy of which was made available by a foreign intelligence service and was not disputed by four senior British officials who were asked about it, the Times said in its article.
