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Manager of mystery terror 'exercise' on July 7 2005 responds to his critics

Tony Gosling | 05.10.2008 20:58 | Analysis | Terror War

Peter Power was all over the British mainstream media on July 7th 2005 explaining that his company, Visor Consultants, was running an exercise that fateful morning, at the same three tube stations where the bombs actually went off, which 'turned live'.
see also  http://www.londonbombs.org.uk/

Peter Power from Visor Consultants
Peter Power from Visor Consultants


At 1:48pm on 05 Oct 2008, PGPOwer wrote:

There has been much nonsense written about why my company ran an exercise on 7 July 2005 that had very close parallels to the real thing that day. Since then I have made several attempts to add my own comments to numerous sites that seem to get increasingly excited about their own conspiracy theories and in the process exclude any rational debate. It seems those who occupy the world of finding conspiracy theories to replace just about any coincidence, do not want to have any dialogue with those offering a different view, but I have not yet given up hope. I am therefore hoping, perhaps naively, that someone might like to read an honest and factual account about a particular exercise my company ran in London three years ago.

Unfortunately, the BBC have just postponed a programme in their ?conspiracy files? series that would have done this. Our client three years ago agreed to be named in the BBC programme since the attitude of the producer and his team was very balanced (several conspiracy theorists were also invited to take part). We even allowed our complete exercise material to be made available to the BBC. Regrettably broadcasting it now might jeopardise an ongoing court case, so they had little choice about postponing it to next year.

Early in 2005 Reed Elsevier, an organisation specialising in information and publishing that employs 1,000 people in and around London, asked us to help them prepare an effective crisis management plan and rehearse it before sign-off. Several draft scenarios were drawn up and the crisis team themselves set the exercise date and time: 9.00am on 7 July.

The test was planned as a table-top walk through for about six people (the CM team) in a lecture room with all injects simulated. Everything was on MS PowerPoint. The location of their Central London office near to Chancery Lane was chosen as one test site. With many staff travelling to work via the London underground system, the chosen exercise simulated incendiary devices on three trains, very similar to a real IRA attack in 1992, as well as other events.

As there had been eighteen terrorist bomb attacks on tube trains prior to 2005, choosing the London Underground was logical rather than just prescient. With this in mind it was hardly surprising that Deutsche Bank had run a similar exercise a few days before and, prior to that, a multi-agency (and much publicised) exercise code-named Osiris II had simulated a terrorist attack at Bank tube station. Moreover, I had also taken part in a BBC Panorama programme in 2004 as a panellist alongside Michael Portillo MP et al, in an unscripted debate (we had no idea at all what the scenario was to be?) on how London might once again, deal with terrorist attacks, only this time it was fictional (created entirely by the BBC).

In short, some of the research for our exercise had already been done. The scenario developed for our client even started by using fictitious news items from the Panorama programme then, as with any walk through exercise, events unfolded solely on a screen as dictated by the facilitator without any external injects or actions beyond the exercise room. Also factored into the scenario was to be an above ground fictitious bomb exploding not far from the head office of the protected Jewish Chronicle magazine where for exercise purposes, our imagined terrorists would have been aware that commuters would now be walking to work (past a building already considered a target) as some tube stations would have been closed.

Of just eight nearby tube stations that fell within possible exercise scope, three were chosen that, by coincidence, were involved in the awful drama that actually took place on 7 July 2005. A level of scenario validation that on this occasion, we could have done without.

An exercise that turns into the real thing is not that unusual. For example, in January 2003, thirty people were injured when a tube train derailed and hit a wall at speed. At the same time, the City of London Police were running an exercise for their central casualty bureau where the team quickly abandoned their plans and swung into action to cope with the real thing.

For a surprising number of people such coincidents cannot be accepted as such. There just has to be a conspiracy behind them, despite the obvious point that painstaking research will always identify probable above possible scenarios. By the way, the only reason I was asked to speak on TV news that day, when there was still much confusion about the real tragedies, was to encourage more organisations to thoroughly plan their own exercises knowing the threat of terrorism is and remains, very real. One tragic consequence being Islam, a great Abrahamic, monotheistic faith (along with Judaism and Christianity), has undeservedly become vilified by some people.

Peter Power
Visor Consultants

Tony Gosling
- Homepage: http://www.911forum.org.uk/board/viewforum.php?f=9

Comments

Hide the following 7 comments

Hmmmmm

05.10.2008 21:25

Peter says: -
Since then I have made several attempts to add my own comments to numerous sites that seem to get increasingly excited about their own conspiracy theories and in the process exclude any rational debate.

Like on this site where he appears to threaten to take legal action against someone discussing a newspaper article ->  http://lwtc247.wordpress.com/2008/02/12/shady-7-7-terror-suspect-wanted-for-questioning-peter-power/ (look in the comments).

He also appears to lie about when he retired in relation to the CPS deciding not to prosecute him for 'something' (see the FOIA comment later in the page).

Peter says: -
Of just eight nearby tube stations that fell within possible exercise scope, three were chosen that, by coincidence, were involved in the awful drama that actually took place on 7 July 2005.

If we take this at face value then it would seem to make this coincedence more likely, but we have to ignore the fact that the 'terrorists' didn't choose the 3 from 'just 8' like Peter, they choose them from a larger number of stations. If the 'terrorists' did choose their 3 randomly from 8 (which they didn't), it would still be 336 to 1 that they would pick the same 3 as Peter. If you factor in the actual number of stations that the 'terrorists' could have chosen from, this number gets a lot bigger pretty quickly (let alone adding in the time, the number of attack sites, the date and more).

These coincidence theorists really get my goat ;)

Ashley


more bullshit

05.10.2008 23:18

> Peter Power was all over the British mainstream media on July
> 7th 2005 explaining that his company, Visor Consultants, was
> running an exercise that fateful morning, at the same three
> tube stations where the bombs actually went off, which
> 'turned live'.

His company wasn't running an exercise AT any tube stations, it was running a tabletop exercise in an office. Why do you have such trouble sticking to the facts?

tonygoslingtruth


A level of scenario validation that on this occasion, we could have done without

06.10.2008 06:48

The trouble is that nobody actually believes what you say. Nobody is saying your are lying. Nobody is saying you are saying anything untrue, But, still, nobody believes you.

"A level of scenario validation that on this occasion, we could have done without."

Is a callousy worded comment that might make people inclined to suspect someone was secretly wishing events upon other people.

"A level of scenario validation that on this occasion, we could have done without."

Is the kind of quasi-military, risk and security langugage that might make people suspicious of motives. The kind of language that might make people suppose that preparation was because - despite denials - that someone knew and continues to know something that they are keeping secret.

So nobody actually believes because normal people see that kind of exercise as being unusual and frightening behaviour. The kind of behaviour that is designed to be frightening. The kind of behaviour that, were it carried out by "animal rights" or "loose anarchist groups" or "middle eastern men" would attract the attention and censure of police and security forces. The kind of behaviour that is "planning and preparation" - no matter who carries it out.

Nobody actually believes because the vast majority of people would ever be allowed to carry out such an exercise to see if "A level of scenario validation that on this occasion, we could have done without," would ever occur. They would be in prison. Why should private organisations be exempt from that reaction from the state? It smacks to some people as being a kind of privilege. A cruel and unusual privilege - but privilege nevertheless.

What purpose could such an exercises serve? Why should the benefits of such exercises be extended to privileged groups and not the general public? Why should such exercises be exempt from censure? These are questions that you do not address. You do not explain what the exercise contained or involved, merely that it was innocent.

Now imaging that being used, as an argument in a court of law by any one of a number of dissenting groups within society. That is why nobody believes that such things are innocent: because everybody has been taught by "risk consultants" and the "culture of security" that such behaviour is a prelude.



Sceptical Bystander


Mmmh....

07.10.2008 01:58

Peter Powers said on the BBC in 2005 :

"And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on."

How does this fit with what he says today ?

Well it does not fit, does it ?

What seems certain is that he was not involved in the planning of the actual bombings otherwise he would not have spoken about this drill at all.

But it seems to me there is a very strong possibility he has been used as a vehicle for it and that he lies to try to cover it up.

Billy Boy


A rather dodgy group...

07.10.2008 02:22

Reed Elsevier organized arms fairs the world over, including DSEI, until 2007.

Billy Billy


Correction, Billyboy

07.10.2008 12:55


Actually, it does seem to fit rather well with what he said before.

It was blatantly obvious to anyone who's come into contact with one of these organisations that Peter Power overflammed the accuracy of his paper-pushing exercise when he was first interviewed on the BBC.

The "quick-time" to "real-time" thinking garbage fits totally with what takes place in these exercises, when they stick a bunch of execs in a room, play them blasts of fictionalised radio broadcasts and get them to play at disaster management. Only the naive ever thought the exercise involved 1000s of real people running around the London underground.

There are two possible reasons why Power over-hyped the significance of his exercise when first interview.

1) Because he's involved in the giant conspiracy, but temporarily forgot for some reason, so blurted out the details on the radio. Then went off to fake the suicide martyrdom videos using a series of CGI experts in the film industry.

2) He's trying to plug his company, so it gets more business. Which it has.

My vote remains with option 2.

Norville B


Norville

07.10.2008 21:09

In his latest explanation Peter Power says :

>> The test was planned as a table-top walk through for about six people (the CM team) in a lecture room with all injects simulated. Everything was on MS PowerPoint.

In short, some of the research for our exercise had already been done. The scenario developed for our client even started by using fictitious news items from the Panorama programme then, as with any walk through exercise, events unfolded solely on a screen as dictated by the facilitator without any external injects or actions beyond the exercise room. > And we had a room full of crisis managers for the first time they'd met and so within five minutes we made a pretty rapid decision that this is the real one and so we went through the correct drills of activating crisis management procedures to jump from slow time to quick time thinking and so on. > So it wasn't exactly rocket science or totally out of the pale to come up with that scenario unusual though it be to stop the exercise and go into real time, and it worked very well, although there was a few seconds when the audience didn't realise whether it was real or not. > As Yesterday we were actually in the City working on an exercise involving mock broadcasts when it happened for real.

"When news bulletins started coming on, people began to say how realistic our exercise was - not realising there was an attack. <<

Seriously, how does it fit ? Why would they suddenly get the real thing instead of the exercise and confuse it with the exercise if they were isolated in a room with no external input ?

Or am I missing something ?

Sounds fishy to me.

More explanations/details are needed.

Billy Boy