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 the suspects said on his martyrdom video that the war against Muslims in 
 Iraq and Afghanistan had motivated him to act. 
  
 Investigators say they believe that one of the leaders of the group, an 
 unemployed man in his 20s who was living in a modest apartment on 
 government benefits, kept the key to the alleged bomb factory and 
 helped others record martyrdom videos, the officials said. 
  
 Hours after the police arrested the 21 suspects, police and government 
 officials in both countries said they had intended to carry out the 
 deadliest terrorist attack since Sept. 11. 
  
 Later that day, Paul Stephenson, deputy chief of the Metropolitan 
 Police in London, said the goal of the people suspected of plotting the 
 attack was mass murder on an unimaginable scale. On the day of the 
 arrests, some officials estimated that as many as 10 planes were to be 
 blown up, possibly over American cities. Michael Chertoff, the 
 secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, described the 
 suspected plot as getting really quite close to the execution stage. 
  
 But British officials said the suspects still had a lot of work to do. Two 
 of the suspects did not have passports, but had applied for 
 expedited approval. One official said the people suspected of leading the 
 plot were still recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers. 
  
 While  investigators found evidence on a computer memory stick 
 indicating that one of the men had looked up airline schedules for 
 flights from London to cities in the United States, the suspects had 
 neither made reservations nor purchased plane tickets, a British 
 official said. Some of their suspected bomb-making equipment was found 
 five days after the arrests in a suitcase buried under leaves in the 
 woods near High Wycombe, a town 30 miles northwest of London. 
  
 Another British official stressed that martyrdom videos were often 
 made well in advance of an attack. In fact, two and a half weeks since the 
 inquiry became public, British investigators have still not 
 determined whether there was a target date for the attacks or how many 
 planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes was 
 speculative and exaggerated. 
  
 In his first public statement after the arrests, Peter Clarke, chief of 
 counterterrorism for the Metropolitan Police, acknowledged that the police 
 were still investigating the basics: the number, destination and timing 
 of the flights that might be attacked. 
  
 A total of 25 people have been arrested in connection with the 
 suspected plot. Twelve of them have been charged. Eight people were 
 charged with conspiracy to commit murder and preparing acts of 
 terrorism.  Three people were charged with failing to disclose 
 information that could help prevent a terrorist act, and a 17-year-old 
 male suspect was charged with possession of articles that could be 
 used to prepare a terrorist act. Eight people still in custody have not 
 been charged. Five have been released. All the suspects arrested are 
 British citizens ranging in age from 17 to 35. 
  
 Despite the charges, officials said they were still unsure of one 
 critical question: whether any of the suspects was technically capable of 
 assembling and detonating liquid explosives while airborne. 
  
 A chemist involved in that part of the inquiry, who spoke on the 
 condition of anonymity because he was sworn to confidentiality, said 
 HMTD, which can be prepared by combining hydrogen peroxide with other 
 chemicals, in theory is dangerous, but whether the suspects had the 
 brights to pull it off remains to be seen. 
  
 While  officials  and  experts familiar with the case say the 
 investigation points to a serious and determined group of plotters, 
 they add that questions about the immediacy and difficulty of the 
 suspected bombing plot cast doubt on the accuracy of some of the 
 public statements made at the time. 
  
 In retrospect, said Michael A. Sheehan, the former deputy commissioner of 
 counterterrorism in the New York Police Department, there may have been 
 too much hyperventilating going on. 
  
 Some of the suspects came to the attention of Scotland Yard more than a 
 year ago, shortly after four suicide bombers attacked three subway trains 
 and a double-decker bus in London on July 7, 2005, a coordinated 
 attack that killed 56 people and wounded more than 700. The 
 investigation was dubbed Operation Overt. 
  
 THE POLICE ARE TIPPED OFF 
  
 The police were apparently tipped off by informers. One former British 
 counterterrorism official, who was working for the government at the 
 time, said several people living in Walthamstow, a working-class 
 neighborhood in East London, alerted the police in July 2005 about the 
 intentions of a small group of angry young Muslim men. 
  
 Walthamstow is best known for its faded greyhound track and the 
 borough of Waltham Forest, where more than 17,000 Pakistani immigrants 
 live in the largest Pakistani enclave in London. 
  
 Armed with the tips, MI5, Britains domestic security services, began an 
 around-the-clock surveillance operation of a dozen young men living in 
 Walthamstow bugging their apartments, tapping their phones, 
 monitoring their bank transactions, eavesdropping on their Internet 
 traffic and e-mail messages, even watching where they traveled, 
 shopped and took their laundry, according to senior British officials. 
  
 The initial focus of the investigation was not about possible 
 terrorism aboard planes, but an effort to see whether there were any 
 links between the dozen men and the July 7 subway bombers, or 
 terrorist cells in Pakistan, the officials said. 
  
 The authorities quickly learned the identity of the man believed to 
 have been the leader of the cell, the unemployed man in his mid-20s, who 
 traveled at least twice within the past year to Pakistan, where his 
 activities are still being investigated. 
  
 Another British official stressed that martyrdom videos were often 
 made well in advance of an attack. In fact, two and a half weeks since the 
 inquiry became public, British investigators have still not 
 determined whether there was a target date for the attacks or how many 
 planes were to be involved. They say the estimate of 10 planes was 
 speculative and exaggerated. 
  
 Last June, a 22-year-old Walthamstow resident, who is among the 
 suspects arrested Aug. 10, paid $260,000 cash for a second-floor 
 apartment in a house on Forest Road, according to official property 
 records. The authorities noticed that six men were regularly visiting the 
 second-floor apartment that came to be known as the bomb factory, 
 according to a British official and the person briefed about the case. Two 
 of the men, who were likely the bomb-makers, were conducting a series 
 of experiments with chemicals, said the person briefed on the case. 
  
 MI5 agents secretly installed video and audio recording equipment 
 inside the apartment, two senior British officials said. In a secret 
 search conducted before the Aug. 10 raids, agents had discovered that the 
 inside of batteries had been scooped out, and that it appeared several 
 suspects were doing chemical experiments with a sports drink named 
 Lucozade and syringes, the person with knowledge of the case said. 
 Investigators have said they believe that the suspects intended to bring 
 explosive chemicals aboard planes inside sports drink bottles. 
  
 In that apartment, according to a British official, one of the leaders and 
 a man in his late 20s met at least twice to discuss the suspected plot, 
  
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 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)