Under Bus

Under Bus

As conspiracies go, this one had all the moral content of impacting meteors, avalanches, or earthquake-producing, shifting tectonic plates. These brief recollections start some weeks after Paris November 2015, put down before the accelerating situation corrupts memory.

The earth trembled. Humans-unable to change the immediate course of precipitating events-reacted. We, mankind's surrogates, at most are able to deflect the energy pulses, gambling to effect long term solutions, knowing we cannot predict that future accurately.

'Ahmed, I've got something to show you. It could be a coincidence but...'

I, his Director, suggested to my analyst that his information and related conclusion was a coincidence, that his theory was very unlikely.

Once alone, I used a secure line to call my counterpart in London, likely still in his office.

'Last week's terrorist acts, have you seen a pattern in the victims?' I asked.

'The victims? Wrong place, wrong time. Victims past are not this department's concern, terrorists and future victims are.'

'Look again.'

His call came three hours later. 'So? Many are owners of spamming operations or the like. Vermin. And a few others.'

'Did you look at the postings I sent?'

'You get them from SITE Intelligence Group?'

'No, they're not from Islamic State's account on Telegram.'

'They're just members of a trade group? So what?'

'With their addresses? Their office and home addresses?'

'So what?'

'There is no such organization, no such trade group.'

A digestive pause.

'Then what...? Then why the list? Who put it on line?'

'We've back-tracked the few site visitors, particularly in the days before the event and most seem to link back to your non-posting domestic ISIS terrorists or to persons unknown who did post on the site.'

'Persons? Plural?'

'Seems to be. Look at the fonts and styles. No one edited. And in all cases, the first address listed is where they were hit.'

We agreed to look into past events and to monitor for similar events, which we ranked Highly Probable.

Some weeks later, after terrorists killed 17 bankers, associates, family and bystanders in three countries and the Channel Island of Jersey, we resumed the conversation.

'It's not completely the same MO, but a good copycat. Same results. You forecast right. Similar victim types were clustered at each of the meetings, while others of the same occupational clusters were at their usual locations.'

'Task force?'

We created a small task force to find out, expanding it to include necessary counterparts in selected intelligence organizations, dubbing it Project Straws.

Five days later, when the EDAS (Europol Directors Asymmetrical Sub-group) held its regular meeting to update and coordinate, we Project Straws team leaders briefed them.

At the end of the presentation, the Chair asked 'What are you suggesting? That ISIS is changing its tactics away from indiscriminate terrorizing, to targeting specific individuals? Why?'