“On August 10, 2006, officers from Scotland Yard and MI5, Britain’s domestic security service, swept through the United Kingdom, raiding up to fifty locations from East London to Birmingham. Seizing more than 400 computers, 200 cell phones, and 8,000 other pieces of evidence from paper files to memory sticks, they uncovered what soon became known as the ‘trans-Atlantic airline bombing plot.’ Twenty-four men, all U.K.-born Muslims, were arrested. The British authorities said that their intent was to smuggle a series of ‘liquid-based’ improvised explosive devices (IEDs) aboard up to nine flights between Europe and the United States. …The conspirators intended to explode the IEDs in flight–possibly over U.S. cities. If the plot had been carried out, the airborne death toll alone could have been as high as 2,700. …FBI director Robert Mueller III said the undertaking had ‘all the earmarks of an al Qaeda plot.’ ”
– Peter Lance, Triple Cross, Pages 439-440