Five men arrested near RAF Fairford may have planned a complex, coordinated VBIED attack on U.S. strategic bombers, a former intelligence official says.
Page A5From§Eachthe milkman edition — 28 September 2026
DHS's 2,000 deported terrorists account for none of the five men British police just arrested.
As it ran on the front
This page's last edition, filed earlier today at 06:32 UTC, tracked one British arrest count: nearly four thousand people held for supporting a banned protest group, the latest a 94-year-old lawyer taken outside Andy Burnham's first Labour conference as prime minister. That count is still running. A second one opened the same day.
On Sunday, British police arrested five men as they approached RAF Fairford, an airfield the United States has used in its war against Iran, and are holding them on suspicion of terrorism, the New York Times reported. Fox News quoted a former intelligence official who said the men may have planned a coordinated attack on U.S. strategic bombers stationed there — the kind of plot that, if the assessment holds, would have hit American war matériel on British soil without a single American agency involved in stopping it.…
…(cont) Representative Kat Cammack didn't wait to find out who had stopped it. On NewsNation, she said the Iranian government was "clearly" involved, then added, in the same breath, that the question would "of course" be investigated and determined — verdict first, evidence to follow. President Trump gave the credit somewhere else entirely: he called the arrests "fantastic" and praised law enforcement in the U.K. for "an amazing job," working, in his telling, alongside Britain.
Seventeen days earlier, the Department of Homeland Security had praised itself for the same category of threat. On September 10th it announced that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had deported "over 2,000 known or suspected terrorists" ahead of the 25th anniversary of September 11th. The number was supposed to stand as evidence of an agency at work. None of the five men in custody at Fairford are on it — they were never inside the deportation pipeline that number describes, because British police caught this one, and America's terror-removal apparatus had nothing to do with it.
The next day, that apparatus did find something to do: the first-ever use of the 30-year-old Alien Terrorist Removal Court, deployed against an Afghan woman already inside the country and already admitting what she was. One machine works on people who are already here. A poll that same week found more Americans call domestic terrorism the bigger threat than foreign — 33 percent to 20 percent — which does not change what Homeland Security chose to count, or where the count came up empty. A bomb plot near a base full of American aircraft got broken up by somebody else's police entirely, and the 2,000 number still gets read out like it covers this.
“They spent three weeks bragging about two thousand deported terrorists so there'd be a number ready before the anniversary. The actual plot near an actual American bomber base got stopped by British cops who never needed that number, and Homeland Security's only contribution was the countdown clock. When the count has nothing to do with the catch, the count isn't security, it's marketing, and marketing budgets don't stop a truck bomb.”
“Look, the Congresswoman said it would be investigated, she covered herself right there in the sentence, that's just due diligence with a headline attached. And the deportation number is a totally separate program, you can't expect every terrorist stat in government to line up with every terrorist arrest — wait, isn't that kind of the whole point of counting them? Forget I said that.”
Earlier in this story
- High Court clears first Garvaghy Road march since 1998, Belfast marches out to stop it instead By Mort · the wee small hours edition, 28 September 2026
- Britain's arrest count for a banned protest group nears four thousand; the latest one is 94 years old. By Sal · the wee small hours edition, 28 September 2026
- Belfast judge clears first Garvaghy Road march in 28 years, city marches out to stop it instead By Mort · the midnight edition, 28 September 2026
- Labour arrests its 4,000th protester, a 94-year-old lawyer, same conference that calls unions democracy's last line. By Sal · the midnight edition, 28 September 2026
- Labour conference arrests hundreds for backing banned group, hears fascism must be organized against, same day. By Sal · the late evening edition, 27 September 2026
The receipts
Five men were arrested Sunday as they approached R.A.F. Fairford, a British installation used by the U.S. in its war against Iran.
Rep. Kat Cammack (R-Fla.) said Sunday the Iranian government was “clearly” involved in an alleged terror attack authorities in the United Kingdom thwarted earlier in the day.
President Trump on Sunday praised law enforcement in the U.K. for its work in arresting five men suspected of planning a terror attack on a U.S. air base “The arrest in the U.K.
· DHS hails ICE deportation of over 2,000 terrorists ahead of 9/11 anniversary from the morgue, 10 Sep 2026
· First use of Alien Terrorist Removal Court sends Afghan woman back after Election Day ISIS plot: DOJ from the morgue, 11 Sep 2026
· More see domestic terrorism as bigger threat than foreign terrorism: Survey from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.