Why the RAF Fairford 'plot' doesn’t add up

0:01Sky News, the full story first.

0:12The security of a military base is an issue even beyond its barbed wire fence, as RAF Fairford has shown, and this is why.

0:27The most excruciating period of politics that I can ever remember. I have to say as a government minister, never quite sure what the Cabinet Office did, but just hold meetings. It's gone down like a bucket of sick. I kind of thought that decades of experience meant that you weren't swallowing this vapid... Oh, blimey! Hello and welcome to Electoral Dysfunction with me, Beth Rigby. Me, Ruth Davidson. Me, Harriet Harman. And me, Jess Phillips. Electoral Dysfunction, wherever you get your podcasts.

1:00Hi everyone, Neil here. If I happened to live beside a military airbase, I imagine its security wouldn't be an abstract thing to me. In fact, such as the state of the world these days, I would probably be worrying about it all the time. So do spare a thought for the poor farmer who came home in the early hours of Sunday to find three white vans and several masked men near her village in Gloucestershire. because right next door is RAF Fairford, a British base but used by American bombers in their war with Iran. We suddenly saw a large group of men and they were panicking. Our vehicle is quite similar to the patrol vehicles that they use and we had our lights on main beam.

1:43I think we sort of dazzled them. Five British men from London have been arrested. At the time of recording, no charges have yet been brought. But in a statement from Scotland Yard shortly before this podcast was published, the news that the five were to be released on bail. At this stage, we are keeping an open mind in this investigation. Be assured we are considering this from every possible angle, including that this may be actively committed by proxies or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly working on behalf of a foreign state. I spoke to Jason Farrell, Sky's Home Affairs editor, before the police statement.

2:22Very early stages of the investigation, but we do have some information about the suspects. What do we know and what does it tell us? Well, we know that they are British nationals and we know that they're from London and we know that they're in their mid-twenties. They come from three boroughs in London, so Camden, Westminster and Wilsdon, which are all neighbouring boroughs, so they could live quite close to each other. and beyond that we don't know much and I think it's really important and significant that we haven't been given much information and I don't think we would expect to be given much information at this stage of the game.

2:58Certainly for example their motivation is not something the police are going to just trot out whilst they're still interrogating these people and haven't even named them yet and haven't charged them yet. I think what's interesting about it is that there There are five of them. So when we talked about threats from other states, for example, people being used as proxies, people being radicalised, usually they're lone actors or there might be one or two of them. But the fact that there are five of them does suggest something a little bit more organised. In terms of the immediate response, what do we know as to exactly what took place?

3:35Yeah, well, it was local police, we're told, and the MOD, so the military, were called in. And actually, it was the armed officers who attended the scene. And we heard from Vicky Evans, who's the counterterrorism policing senior national coordinator, who said she wanted to thank the emergency services for their response, including the armed officers who first attended the scene, not knowing what they may face. That's another telling clue, isn't it, that they didn't know exactly what they were up against. We did see from the photographs that those five individuals who were being arrested had been stripped to the waist down.

4:14And that would be something that you might do if you thought someone was carrying a weapon or potentially was even armed with an explosive device of some description. So that was certainly a precaution that they took at the scene. There's been a little bit of criticism from the local farmer who reported this, that there wasn't a quick response in terms of evacuating the homes. That took until 6am in the morning before that word went out. She sent a message on the local WhatsApp group saying, in case anyone is awake, something very odd is going on in the village. The road by the village hall is blocked by three white vans and we saw a group of masked men.

4:54I called the police to report. So she sent that in the dead of night, but actually the evacuation process didn't happen until around 6am in the morning. Obviously, if there was a large explosive device with potential to cause damage, you'd expect those homes to be evacuated more quickly. So she's raised that as the police dropping the ball. I mean, I know this part of the world pretty well. It is very leafy, very gorgeous. But if you are living around and about RAF Fairford, you've got to imagine that even if you haven't been tasked directly by the security services or indeed a local police force to be on your guard, you probably would be.

5:26I think you would, wouldn't you? You get the sense that these are vigilant residents. And if they see something like this, as was demonstrated by this farmer coming home late at night, catching these men in the headlights. I mean, any of us in an area near to a military base, particularly, if you saw something like that, you probably would call the police. Balaclava is the big giveaway, isn't it? I think the other question is, what did the security services know? So we know that there was heightened security. around the bases. Deborah Haynes, our defence editor, got wind of this, that the security was being increased.

5:59I think there's no doubt that there was some sense of heightened security. And we also know that the locals in the area were saying that they felt that security had been tightened over the weekend. So there's a sense that maybe whatever it was, it might have been stopped anyway. But there's also a sense based on the fact the police activity seems to be prompted in some part by members of the public calling in or a member of the public calling in, that perhaps there was an element of this that they didn't know about. And I think that's the interesting area. Just to be clear, the fact that there was increased security or reports of increased security, let's be accurate, that does not necessarily mean that there was intelligence specific to what was taking place on Saturday.

6:42I think it's quite probable that they had an idea of an increased threat, but didn't necessarily know in what form it was coming or who was involved. But that's not what we heard from President Trump. President Trump was, we've been onto these guys, we've been following them, we knew they were coming. There's certainly a sense from him that this is the culmination of a planned operation. So we don't know yet whether they had been tracking these guys all the way from London or not. But I think reading between the lines, there's certainly elements of it. It feels like they didn't know about because obviously the calls from the public triggered something.

7:17Give us an idea of the scale of the investigation itself, a number of different agencies being brought in. Yeah, so obviously counter-terrorism policing leading on this. We know that the local police, the MOD and national police and other agencies are all involved in this. And essentially we're being told it's a hugely complex and large-scale operation. Again, this is from Vicky Evans involving local and national policing, the MOD local agencies, working together to progress the investigation and support the community. So you've got on the one level, you've got everything that's going on the ground in Gloucestershire with this cordon that's been set up, homes evacuated, supporting those individuals, finding out who saw what.

7:59Although again, the local farmer telling us that she hadn't been contacted by the police and she's the one who reported it. But I imagine that is something that will happen. And then you've got these addresses in London with the three suspects, their home addresses, the people that they're connected to seizing their device. It's the usual thing. We always talk about this, don't we, whenever anyone is arrested on suspicion of terrorism activity, but it's the obvious, isn't it? It's checking their devices. Who have they been in touch with? Do they have any associates? Have they got any previous that they've been involved in anything like this before?

8:32Even, you know, we find often with terrorist suspects that they've had previous criminality, even if they haven't had previous involvement in acts of terrorism, that often they've been involved in other forms of crime. And of course, the reason that the police wish to gather that sort of evidence is to find those links perhaps to those who ultimately directed whatever was going on on Saturday night. And we understand, don't we, that Iran will feature in the investigation. Yeah, they will. And it's not surprising, if not least because in July, they said that UK bases such as RAF Fairford were legitimate targets because they were accommodating bombers from the US who were involved in the operations over Iran.

9:18So that is the reason just on its own, let alone any sources from within the investigation, telling journalists this is part of the investigation. But we have had a statement from the embassy which is denying it. So I'll just tell you what they have said. They say the embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran in London categorically rejects and strongly condemns the recent unfounded and malicious speculations published by some British individuals and media outlets attempting to link Iran to the arrest of five suspects in the vicinity of RAF Fairford base. The circulation of such fabricated speculations, particularly in the aftermath of the criminal acts of aggression committed by the United States and the Israeli regime against the Iranian people will serve no purpose other than to fuel Iranophobia propaganda in the UK.

10:05And then they go on to say the Islamic Republic of Iran reserves the right to take appropriate legal measures as necessary to safeguard the rights and interests of the country and its people in response to misleading and damaging media narratives. So, I mean, they were again, criticising the UK for housing US involved in this conflict, but at the same time saying this has got nothing to do with us. Well, I suppose that may very well be the case. But in previous podcasts, where we've been looking at the use of proxies by foreign actors, there is a big question that you always ask. Was this directed by ex-foreign power?

10:42Or was this inspired by them? That is a really key question. It could be that people are simply inspired by events in Iran, or events elsewhere in Gaza, or again, Russia and Ukraine is not a conflict that we should ignore completely in this conversation. But then there is the other possibility that if it is a foreign power, that they have somehow been recruited either for financial gain or because they ideologically have fallen down that rabbit hole. And I think last time I was on your show, we were talking about my producer, Nick, who actually set up a profile and went into one of these Telegram chat rooms and got effectively through the first few processes of being recruited, it would seem, by someone who was claiming to be linked to the Iranian regime.

11:31And one of the very first things they asked is whether they had access to any military bases, military personnel that might be useful to them. So that would suggest that that was something that that person, whoever they were working for, and you never know, may well have been interested in. And I think that's an interesting link, isn't it? And we know from the security services and from Ken McCullen, from the head of MI5, that they are deeply concerned and have foiled a number of plots where proxies have been used to commit acts or attempt to commit acts of violence or disruption or terrorism on UK soil.

12:13Often it's been, for example, targeting dissidents, but often it is, and I come back to this, individuals that they've managed to get hold of. What's interesting here is the bringing together of a group of people to do something potentially bigger. And how big really depends on what they had in those vans, I think, and the levels of expertise they had in using it.

12:42I'm Adele Robinson, a correspondent for Sky News, and I wanted to give you a recommendation for when you finish this podcast. I've made a documentary for YouTube called The Calm Online, Sadistic and Deadly. It takes a look inside one of the darkest corners of the internet and the disturbing community that exists there, exploring how young people can be drawn into it and the devastating consequences that can follow. It's a story that's difficult to hear, but one I think is really important to understand. You can find The Calm on the Sky News app, website and YouTube channel.

13:18Jason, just the other week, we were again covering the War Game series, Deborah Haynes, our defence editor's podcast turned television series. And of course, the TV series imagines a very different situation to the one in which we're seeing around Fairford or imagining around Fairford, a direct attack on the UK. But we are seeing a less dramatic version of the home front problem. You've got civilians, local police and military personnel, basically all having to respond really, really quickly to something happening on their doorstep. Yeah, I mean, those war games, scenarios that Deborah Haynes has played out both in the podcast and the TV are fascinating because it does often start with a fairly small event.

13:59I think the TV programme started with the assassination of two pilots. On the one hand, you look at it and go, well, that's a bit of thuggery, could be carried out by anyone. But on the other hand, as Deborah Haynes' war game plays out, you know it could be something that state sponsored that's part of a bigger strategy and a wider strategy to either cause disruption or to provoke or just to simply test the water and see how the state will react and that's why it's so fascinating to watch you know real politicians react to those situations because each scenario is as new to them in many ways as it is to us although obviously they have all the expertise around them to help them and i think with this you know is a key question.

14:44If this has been and can be proven to be an Iranian-backed attack or any other state-backed attack on British soil, how do we respond to that? And I suppose, at least in the short term, one thing will be happening. Security at bases up and down the land, I'm thinking of places like Faslen, of course, down on the south coast as well. We should expect to see heightened security for some time. That's quite right. Anytime you have an attack like this, you always have to worry that, you know, there's some people behind it who may still be at large and maybe thinking, well, the next move is going to be.

15:18And yes, so the security around all the British bases, particularly those ones housing US assets, will definitely have heightened security at this time. Jason, just put into context for us, I mean, if there had been a successful attack of some sort on a UK military base shared with our US allies, where would you put that in the kind of the list of terrorist attacks that we have seen? Well, in some ways, less horrific than ones that we've seen that have attacked the British public. The attacks on London Bridge, obviously, the London attacks on the Tube line, which are just indiscriminate, in some ways, less horrific than that.

15:57But in other ways, the idea that if it is someone who is sponsoring this, that is a state that's actually behind this, rather than, for example, just an ideology, then that does put us in a very different situation, especially if they are actually targeting our military assets and our military personnel, because it would suggest something more sinister in the sense of, is this part of a wider strategy? Is this part of a bigger program of threat to the UK? And obviously, it requires dealing with a much larger organization with a much more power behind it, and a much greater geopolitical impact for any response that we have.

16:41So, yeah, on one level, it's not as awful as some of the things that we have seen in London and in other parts of the continent. But on another level, it's a very, very different type of threat. Sobering times. Jason, thanks very much indeed. That's a lot for today, but this is an incredibly fast-moving and developing story. So for the very latest, just head over to the website skynews.com or the app itself. We're back tomorrow.

17:35Harman. And me, Jess Phillips. Electoral Dysfunction, wherever you get your podcasts.