Published On: Tue, Oct 16th, 2018

Westminster Bridge attack: the man who let Khalid Masood get in to New Palace Yard

In the previous article at FBEL about the Westminster Bridge “terror attack” inquest, it was reported that footage purportedly showing “Andreea Cristea” falling from Westminster Bridge could not have been filmed at the official inquest time for her descent because in the film the wrong boat was leaving Westminster Pier. This is enough to declare the inquest a grand exercise in cover-up, and the incident which is being eased into the history books, with oil from the greasy pole, as one that didn’t happen as the Government (through its productive organs of deception) first engineered in appearances (the Metropolitan Police/Mi5), and then dictated in the narrative (the corporate-media). Given that Keith Palmer, a policeman posted to the north Carriage Gate of the New Palace Yard of Westminster, is very much considered dead by his aggrieved family, we can call it a false-flag attack rather than a hoax.

Prior to the inquest, and besides the strange fate of Andreea Cristea, the chief reason for suspecting that the Westminster Bridge attack of March 2017 was not organic was the apparent fact of the assailant making his way into the New Palace Yard at Parliament beyond two sets of security measures which were 1) police guarding the perimeter gates, and then 2) a raising/lowering barrier with complimentary road-block for vehicles exiting the compound.

The inquest was useful for one thing at least; it revealed that while the Carriage Gates were open (which apparently they do remain so when large volumes of traffic in and out are expected), officers with firearms should have been in the same vicinity, according to a long standing order that Westminster police guards in general appeared to be ignorant of as a matter of tradition. The two armed police on duty at the time of the attack were somewhere else on the grounds doing a “roving patrol” and didn’t know that they should have been stationed near the gates. In parlance describing the execution of a false flag, this would be known as a “police stand down”, especially in the context of the culture that UK police have evidently nurtured where the “gun is king”. Reading the inquest transcripts, one gets the feeling that the gates of Westminster are generally guarded by put-out-to-pasture ex-firearms cops who feel weak if they don’t have a shooter, and don’t know how to disarm a man with a knife through self-defence techniques. Indeed, the majority reaction to the attacker, Khalid Masood, from the unarmed police on guard that day appears to have been to run away. At the inquest, an effort was made by QCs questioning senior Met Police personnel to present Masood’s entry through the gates as being resisted, with Palmer in particular being forced backwards in a struggle reminiscent of pikestaff-warfare – but witness testimony actually revealed that it was pure retreat until Palmer stumbled on the cobblestones. At fault, very clearly, is the police culture, and a real terrorist (not that there are any) would find it all very interesting reading.

At the time of the attack, there were six unarmed police at the gates in the stretch of Westminster Palace grounds perimeter relevant to the examination. Keith Palmer and Nick Carlisle were on the north Carriage Gate, Stephen Marsh and Doug Glaze were on the south Carriage Gate, and James Ross was stationed at the gate for pedestrian entrance. The north gate is the one nearest the corner with the road leading from the Westminster Bridge, and so logically it would be the one that Masood would first try to enter; the south gate is next, and then the pedestrian gate is furthest south, although they are all situated in very close proximity to one another. It appears that Marsh did not testify at the inquest – and neither did the man, Kevin Tipple, who was relieving Carlisle of duty on the north gate when the attack happened.  Of the three who did go on the record at the inquest, Ross’ evidence has an air about it that gives an impression of being unaffected by the occasion – let’s put it that way; it is for our purposes, without a doubt, the most useful.

Ross tells of how people on the street running away from Masood tried to come in through the pedestrian gate, and of how he prevented them from doing so. He was absolutely right in this regards. He had had news of an approaching “knife man”, conveyed to him by a passer-by, and there would be no way of his knowing if he would be letting accomplices onto the grounds. He closed the gate.

At the north gate, Carlisle appears to give an account of people coming in off the street (and as we will see from testimony by a high ranking Met Police officer, this invasion of people into the courtyard forms part of the official narrative). Carlisle quantified the size of the crowd moving from the crash site to the gates at 20-30 people [Day 15, page(s) 8: line(s)5]. We also know from Carlisle that Tipple recognised that the gate should be shut, and shouted an instruction for it to happen. It appears that there was no time after all to shut a gate, but it certainly would not help matters, if the police guards had decided to try, if people were entering the yard and occupying the ground through which it would swing close. According to Carlisle Palmer told people to come in to the yard: “[he had] waved to the crowd and shouted ‘Come in here, come in here’” [15, 10:7-8]. Given that it is implausible that an officer guarding the gates of Parliament would not respond exactly like Tipple and Ross [even Glaze wanted to shut the bars (5, 165:13-14)], this could very well be an alteration of the truth (as per instruction from on high?†) to explain why there was no effort in the end to close the gate.

Now consider the following, which is an account of CCTV footage by a correspondent for Nick Kollerstrom’s Terror on the Tube site who attended the inquest:

Crowd behaviour in several videos, about three short clips, is odd. People are shown running across the road to the car, perhaps as you would if you observed a crash, to help. However, what looked like an organised group of people seem to self herd and run and around the corner, past the gates, for no apparent reason.

The reader should pay special attention to the impression of a “self-herding” crowd that then moved from the crash site to the Carriage Gates, carrying Masood with it (as was shall see). James Ross reports that “People were running past the gate across Parliament Square, congregating round the north gate as well.” [5, 165: 6-8].

Another reason to be suspicious of this crowd was that it was the means by which sensationalist news was conveyed to the police on guard at the gates regarding a potential imminent threat to them. This is Carlisle’s account [15, 8: 11-24]:

Carlisle: I stepped forward into the mouth of the gates, looked to my right and saw the crowd emerging around the corner.

Hough (QC): At that stage could you see or hear anything from the crowd just as they were coming around that corner?

Carlisle:  That was the first occasion I got a shouted warning. A white man wearing a suit , a male in his 40s with dark hair shouted words to the effect of ”men with knives stabbing people, men with knives”.

Hough: How close was the man in the suit when you heard that being shouted by him?

Carlisle: About 5 metres. Close.

Hough: Was that man part of the large crowd you had seen at the corner?

Carlisle: He was.

[15, 9/10: 19-2]

Hough: Now, you say that you saw the attacker close behind the man in the suit who had shouted about people stabbing?

Carlisle: That’s right.

Hough: When you first saw him, what did you notice about him?

Carlisle: I noticed that he had two very large knives that were held up at eye level , and that he was running through the crowd. He wasn’t looking at members of the public. He was looking directly he looked me in the eye. He was looking at police officers at the gates.

From this account we get the sense of Masood very much being of the crowd that “self-herds” to the Carriage Gates. We also see a crowd member screaming a scare story that doesn’t even closely resemble any truth (James Ross reports he heard a woman shouting “they’re throwing grenades” [5, 164/165:25-1]). With this dangerous behaviour, in the context of a false flag (and indicative of the same) we should suspect a deliberate attempt to create panic. In the same context, a group of people could well have been detailed to be at the corner at the crash site, and bring Masood with them past the gates, and then act as a spoil to prevent police from closing them.

When Masood gains entry to the yard, there are varied accounts of how and when he starts to attack Palmer: accounts that differ spectacularly. Neither Ross nor Glaze saw Masood enter the gates; according to Carlisle, one moment Masood was outside, the next he was suddenly driving Palmer back (as per the official story). However, there is reason to be doubtful about the fact of Masood as the killer of Palmer (ultimately, in any case, it was the people who engineered the terror who are responsible), but this is material for another article – except we can’t help but start to get into the matter a little as we now investigate how Masood got past the second tier of security. The following is from James Ross’ testimony to the inquest [5, 111/112: 9-23]:

Ross: He was hitting him with such force that the blades were bending on impact.

Hough: What were your fellow officers doing at this point?

Ross: I noticed that there was two officers standing in front of me with asps [batons] drawn.

Hough:  What did you do? What was your reaction?

Ross: I went behind them and I thought that maybe possibly without having getting so close to use an asp, you can use CS incapacity spray from a slightly longer distance, so I was trying to get that from underneath my coat and my belt when things changed again.

Hough: What happened next?

Ross: Next, when I next looked up I was also distracted by a car which was leaving the estate, which in turn had lifted the security barriers.

Hough: So if we look at our plan, towards the bottom left, not far from your hut, we see the words “Vehicle barrier raised”. Is that the vehicle barrier you are referring to —

Ross: Yes.

Hough:   that had risen to allow a car to leave. Did that draw your attention?

Ross: Yes, not so much the barrier drawing up, but the car, the black car.

Hough: After your attention had been drawn by that, did you then look back towards the area where Keith Palmer was?

Ross: Yes, I looked back to the area and there was no officers there . Keith and the other officers had all gone and had managed to run round in an arc around towards the members’ entrance, past the car.

Hough:  Now, members’ entrance is on the — towards the bottom righthand side of this plan, isn’t it?

Ross: Yes, it is .

Hough:  So they were running, is this right, through the area where the vehicle barrier had risen?

Ross: That’s correct, sir.

Hough:  And towards the members’ entrance. Just to be clear, if the vehicle barrier is down, is it possible to run through that area?

Ross: You wouldn’t be able to.

From this, we can see that the arrival of a black car is integral to the development of the attack. Without it, Masood could not proceed into the inner area of the yard. In the first image below (with annotation added by the corporate-media publication it was taken from), the car can be seen behind the figure said to be Masood. The second image pretty much shows the same situation from an overhead position. Notice that any crowd that was at the north gate (the one on the right) has dispersed already without prompting. Is this normal? The third image shows the incident very soon after Masood has been shot. The car has gone (it went 29 seconds after the “suspect went down” [19, 16:9-11]), and we therefore suppose that its occupants didn’t get out to assist.

In fact, a whole story emerged at the inquest to account for the behaviour of this very convenient vehicle that comes just as it is required, and leaves offering no assistance, for this – or so we are told – is the car occupied by Sir Craig Mackey, Deputy Commissioner of the Met Police (Acting Commissioner at the time of the incident – so essentially the highest ranking officer in the force). Mackey had to get away to start co-ordinating a response, and didn’t get out of the vehicle because he considered himself not properly equipped for the incident (there’s that culture of disarmed weakness again).

From the transcript, Mackey comes across as none too bright – especially for his exulted position. We should not be surprised, as he looks like the archetypal pig-creature who would be more concerned with the trough and doing anything to have a snout in it than acting with the integrity that would see him overlooked for promotion. Although Mackey’s title is supposed to inspire confidence of his honesty in the blindly obsequient, of which there are many, he actually cannot be trusted to tell the truth at an inquest into the death of one of the victims of his command. The reader may well be aware that Mackey has been vilified in the corporate-media as being a coward for “locking his car door”, and the author suggests that there are two reasons why this is going on. Firstly, it is preparation ahead of Mackey being sacrificed to dampen ire caused by Palmer’s death – but this is not guaranteed to happen. Secondly, it is to reinforce the idea that Mackey was in the car and at the location as he claims he was. The author is of the opinion that he wasn’t. The car was an essential part of the operation – and that fact explains why its occupants did not exit the vehicle, but instead drove away after mission accomplished. Mackey is the cover story.

Now, Mackey reports that he had a meeting at Westminster until 2.45pm (note that officially, Masood was shot at 14:41.30), and one of the “roving” armed police vouches for seeing him on the grounds – but big deal. The evidence for him not being present is in his testimony [19, 7/8: 22-17]:

Hough: After you had heard the bang, seen the officer pressing his radio [presumably Glaze], did you see anything happening outside the grounds of the Palace?

Mackey: Yes, I did , sir . So as we’re sitting literally in that position, I describe it as the street outside, everybody starts moving, and what I mean by that is we’re looking towards Whitehall in that way, so literally the pavement, everybody is running towards the House of Lords end. So they’re running past the gate, some are starbursting into the gate, it’s open at that point.

Hough: So do we take it that you are describing crowds running from right to left from your viewpoint?

Mackey: Yes, sir. Yes, sir.

Hough:  Did a time come when you became aware of a particular person outside?

Mackey: Yes, sir. So the gates were open, people were coming in, and all of a sudden I became aware of a large male and I remember — I think I said it in the transcript “Oh my God, he’s got a knife”, and at that point I thought he was about 8 to 12 feet into — and I see a person coming forward with a knife, a large male.

Of course, according to Ross, Masood was in the grounds attacking Palmer before Mackey’s car arrived. Then there is the conflicting evidence of the CCTV footage on the exit barrier itself, as discussed by Hough with Detective Superintendent Crossley, the senior investigating officer (who affirms Hough’s questions), on the first day of the inquest:

Pause at the start of this footage. I think we’re now going to see footage from a camera positioned at the vehicle exit barrier near where the car in the other footage was, and this will be the camera from which we see Masood run through with his knives in sharp focus, as we saw on a still earlier?

[1, 118, 19-24]

And we’ll see, I think, in order, first of all, the barrier rise to allow a car to move through, which is on its way out, moving from right to left?

We’ll then see a number of officers running through this area from left to right, and then at the upper edge of the screen, we’ll see Masood running across from left to right with the knife visible?

[1, 119, 1-8]

Quite clearly, the attack has already started before the car arrives. Mackey claims he was in position before the attack. Apparently, he is lying.

 

† There is other evidence of witness material being altered to suit a rationale for behaviour and events. During his appearance, Ross told of a radio message that Glaze sent after a loud bang was heard (nominally, Masood’s vehicle crashing) [5, 109:1-9];

Hough: Were you aware of any of your colleagues using his radio?

Ross:  Yes, I was aware of PC Glaze using his radio .

Hough: Can you recall what he was saying?

Ross: From — what he said and what I think I heard are two completely different things , because in my original statement I said that I thought he put up saying it was a car crash, and I’ve since heard that he said no, he definitely thought it was an IED.

This is an incredibly important detail. We discover from the testimony of Carlisle that since the incident certain police officers have been played a tape of Glaze’s radio transmissions; an official rationale for this is given, as we shall see, but surely the ulterior motive is to help the officers get their stories straight. Carlisle’s testimony only assists an arrival at this conclusion.

Himself believing there to have been a crash, Carlisle reports hearing Glaze, in person, speak into the radio “words to the effect of ‘possible explosion Bridge Street, control room get the cameras on it’” [5, 6: 11-13]. What this possibly tells us is that Carlisle, unlike Ross, has been convinced that what he heard after the fact on a recording was what was originally said. However – and this is very interesting – Carlisle would not verify that another four transmissions by Glaze were radioed during the incident:

Carlisle: I don’t recall hearing it but I believe that I recognised Doug’s voice on the radio transmission on the tape.

Hough:  You were, just to be clear, no mystery about this, you were played this transcript, as other officers were, and you helped identify some of the speakers?

Carlisle: That’s right, sir, yes.

[15, 11/12: 20-1]

The final nail in the coffin with regards this very revealing episode of detail was a question put to Carlisle by a Ms Susannah Stevens, the lawyer for the Palmer family (his parents and siblings). Now, it appears to the author, at least, that Ms Stevens was operating on crumbs of time that the Chief Coroner deigned to throw to her – this is completely understandable as her clients had obviously not hired her to signal their consent in a Met Police white wash. Stevens got Carlisle to say that there wasn’t any smell that indicated a bomb going off (Day 15, pages 23-24).

So here’s the conclusion that we must make. There was no way that anyone could interpret the car crash as a bomb going off, and Glaze apparently didn’t either initially – Ross tells us. Thus, we can reasonably suspect that Glaze’s original radio transmission did not feature mention of explosives. As such, it very much appears that, after the incident, and presumably for reasons of enhancing, at inquest, the sense of drama and perceived threat to the (retreating) police men, Glaze was made to record a “radio transmission” that mentioned an explosion.

Update 17th October:

Further inspection shows that even Glaze didn’t recognise at least one of his supposed radio transmissions: “knives attacking, people with knives attacking” [5, 167:7]. It appears, then, that the fake radio talk may have featured a Glaze impressionist. A well known phenomenon of coming to believe played-back and therefore “authoritative” recorded media, and abandoning overridden memories of actual experience, may explain how Glaze eventually recalled his talk of an explosion.

Hearing transcripts

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