More On The Fairford Incident

The biggest thing we've seen in the wake of the RAF Fairford incident has been confusion, and at least from the UK, a deliberate attempt to minimize what happened, although perhaps characteristically from the UK, there's also a great deal of bumbling on all sides. For instance, from the Guardian:

One of the five men arrested near RAF Fairford as part of a terror investigation that prompted fears of an Iran-backed plot called the police to report the incident, it has emerged.

The call from the man, in his 20s and from London, was one reason armed police were scrambled to arrest the men, who were with three vans close to the military base used by the US in its attacks on Iran.

In the YouTube video embedded above, Major General Chip Chapman, a former head of counter-terrorism, says it's possible that the actor recruited proxy dummies who were told

to go to X location, and this guy said, "where are we?" you know, "RAF Fairford," "What's in the back?" "a bomb," . . . and he thought that was too much. This is psychologically what we call prisoner's dilemma, where you can get a defection and not everyone stays loyal.

Nevertheless, the timeline doesn't add up. The claim from the BBC is that one of the van dudes called 999 at 12:45 AM, but he farmer who called 999 at 1:36 AM, nearly an hour later, said there was no response from police until after her call. In addition, the farmer said the "MoD number" she called before she finally dialed 999 had been given to local residents specifically to report unusual activity around the base 24/7, but it wasn't picked up. In addition, the Guardian link says this of what was in one of the vans:

The Guardian understands that police first on the scene found several barrels in the vans, one of which contained petrol, while the others were empty.

Nevertheless, legacy media in both the US and UK misrepresented this to claim, as NBC did,

No explosives were found in vehicles searched after five men were arrested in connection with a huge security operation near an air base the U.S. Air Force uses to facilitate strikes on Iran, British counterterrorism police confirmed Tuesday.

In an update explaining Monday’s decision to release all five suspects who were arrested on terrorism and explosives charges on bail, Laurence Taylor, Britain’s head of counterterrorism policing, said “a quantity” of gasoline was recovered from three vans near RAF Fairford.

“Those vehicles have been subject to extensive examination, with the support of military assets and forensic experts, and we can confirm that no improvised explosive devices were found,” he said, adding that investigators had searched properties in London.

The "empty" barrels must have contained something, and we may assume that this would be easy enough for law enforcement to determine. What was it, and what happened to it? Another question is why the village was evacuated from Sunday morning to apparently Tuesday. Again, via The Guardian,

Eighty-five households were forced to decamp to a leisure centre on Sunday as the bomb squad and counter-terror police descended on the village of Whelford, where the men were arrested.

Some of the evacuated residents were able to stay with families, about 60 people received support from a Cotswold district council rest centre in Cirencester and 28 people were accommodated overnight in hotels.

Not mentioned in the link, however, is the criticism from the Whelford farmer that although there was intense law enforcement activity immediately after her 1:36 AM call, the village wasn't evacuated until 6:00 AM, while residents weren't allowed to return until Tuesday. Newsweek raised other questions about the investigation:

The three white vans the farmer described have also been the subject of speculation.

. . . "Those vehicles have been subject to extensive examination, with the support of military assets and forensic experts, and we can confirm that no improvised explosive devices were found," [ Assistant Commissioner Laurence] Taylor said in the updated press release Tuesday, adding that "a quantity of petrol was recovered."

But who owns the vans? Who painted the phony FUEL2YOU sign on one of them? Also from Newsweek:

Local politicians have expressed concern about the messaging around the investigation, and residents and analysts have claimed the site was already on high alert before Sunday's arrests.

. . . [Flashpoint security expert Kathryn] Raines also said that the base appears to have been on high alert before the arrests, with open-source accounts reporting that Fairford had moved to FPCON Delta, the highest U.S. military Force Protection condition, at 8:45 p.m. on Friday.

Trump's comments on Sunday that the suspects had been "under view" for some time suggested cooperation between the U.K. and the U.S., and that their capture was the culmination of an ongoing operation between the countries.

This clashes with the official Counter Terrorism Policing account that the incident began when a member of the public alerted authorities to suspicious vehicles. The farmer's account also points toward a chance encounter with the suspects as key to raising the alarm.

Taylor did not specify the men were already under surveillance.

Elsewhere in the Newsweek piece, another UK source notes,

Meanwhile, Chris Phillips, former head of the U.K.'s National Counter Terrorism Security Office, told Newsweek on Monday that it was unlikely that British police would have allowed a group to put together a bomb and take it to the site.

"I think it's unlikely they were under tight surveillance," Phillips said.

So there are lots of unknowns, and a certain amount of conflict, in the official story as we get it, but despite UK attempts to discredit Trump's and Rubio's versions, my money is still on what they've said.