Response to 9/11 was 'huge overreaction' - ex-MI5 chief

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Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, Saturday October 18 2008


A former head of MI5 today describes the response to the September 11 2001 attacks on the US as a "huge overreaction" and says the invasion of Iraq influenced young men in Britain who turned to terrorism.

In an interview with the Guardian, Stella Rimington calls al-Qaida's attack on the US "another terrorist incident" but not qualitatively different from any others.

"That's not how it struck me. I suppose I'd lived with terrorist events for a good part of my working life and this was as far as I was concerned another one," she says.

In common with Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, who retired as MI5's director general last year, Rimington, who left 12 years ago, has already made it clear she abhorred "war on terror" rhetoric and the government's abandoned plans to hold terrorism suspects for 42 days without charge.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/18/stella-rimington-9-11-mi5

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1. Notwithstanding her popular argument Rimington is nuts.

She hid Real IRA links to a ragbag of disgruntled Asian nutters who failed to get any slice of Bandar's £1.2billion BAE backhanders.

And those freebie sinecures such as non-exec director on the board of Marks & Spencer only encouraged subsequent fatcat shenanigans for tossers like Blair to get his snout in the JP Morgan trough.

As for her published memoir it is rife with historical whoppers.

The ultimate grande dame of disinformation.