‘I know that what I have revealed, while increasing public knowledge, will raise other questions that I have not been able to answer,’ Sir John Saunders said, in issuing his final report into the Manchester Arena bombing.
‘I did ask the questions, I did get answers, but for the reasons I have given I have not been able to report publicly what those answers were,’ he added.
The report gave us a glimpse into the decision-making of MI5, but only a glimpse. Despite the thoroughness with which the chairman approached his task, it does leave unanswered questions.
Key among them are the two ‘pieces of intelligence’ that MI5 learned in the months before the bombing and why they didn’t they act on them. The chairman said there was a ‘realistic possibility’ that ‘actionable intelligence’ could have been obtained which might have led to preventing the attack that killed 22 people in May 2017.
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