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The Met's former anti-terror chief Andy Hayman talks frankly of his fears, frustrations and failings...
If Andy Hayman is absolutely frank with himself, there is one thing he could have done, he admits, that would have changed the course of history. In the aftermath of the July 2005 bombings and the mistaken shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the man who then led the country's defence against terrorism failed to assert himself in the subsequent tumultuous press conference with his Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair.
As Blair went "off-piste", as former Assistant Commissioner Hayman puts it, and told the media that the shooting was "directly linked to the ongoing anti-terrorist operation" and that "the man was challenged and refused to obey" police orders, Hayman made an error of judgment.
It was an oversight that would later be blown up out of all proportion, he says, and lead to allegations of a deliberate cover-up as well as damage the reputation of the Met and blight his career and that of his Commissioner.
"I could have gone to Blair immediately after the briefing and challenged him directly on his facts but instead I said nothing," says Hayman. "I could have brought him up to speed with what we knew at that moment - which was that we couldn't say for sure either way but it was looking more and more like an innocent man had been shot.
"But in the fog of the most complex operation ever undertaken by the Met, I decided to play it safe and leave it for others to speculate. It created a big void that was deeply damaging and I regret that.
"I am absolutely content that I did not intentionally mislead or misinform anyone, but if I could rewind the clock, I would have been bolder. It would have saved myself, Sir Ian, the Met and the de Menezes family a lot of grief."
Hayman's candid admission, made to the Evening Standard in his first interview following the serialisation of his new book The Terrorist Hunters, is one that, ironically, does not appear explicitly in any of its 334 pages.
In his book, he gives a blow-by-blow account of events as they unfolded and robustly defends himself against the charge by the Independent Police Complaints Commission that he misled Blair but he skirts around the central question: why did he not have the guts and sheer presence of mind simply to put his boss right?
Was it because there existed a culture of fear? "No, on the contrary, Blair was very inclusive," he insists. "But the biggest lesson that came out of 7/7 was that overall our internal communication was an utter shambles."
Hayman says he wrote the book after retiring last year after 30 years in the force because he "wanted to write a true inside account of the aftermath of the July bombings - the drama, the complexity, the turmoil, and the mistakes. A vivid contemporary history that historians could refer to and from which lessons could be learned".
The Essex-born father of two was only months into his appointment as anti-terror chief when the suicide bombers struck. He would later be praised for the skilful operation that led to the capture of the copycat 21/7 bombers and pilloried by the IPCC for his part in the de Menezes shooting.
But on 7/7, his record was mixed: his stellar performance was undermined by the fact that one suicide bomber, Sadique Khan, had cropped up in surveillance before slipping through the net. Does he feel he let Londoners down?
"No, because after reviewing the evidence, it's clear there is nothing we could have done to prevent the attacks," he says. "You can't follow everyone because you spread yourself too thin. I also feel proud that since then, we have foiled 15 terrorist plots and averted further bloodshed."
But the fact that 52 innocent Londoners died on his watch is something that's haunted him, he confesses. "I've had lots of restless nights, tossing and turning, challenging myself and wondering if there was something we missed, something we could have done differently."
The weight of the job has taken a physical toll, too, and Hayman looks gaunt and, if truth be told, about a decade older than his 49 years. He describes the punishing 14-hour days of his £180,000-a-year job that meant he hardly saw his wife, Jane, and two daughters, aged 12 and 10, but says it was a job he "loved and was totally committed to". The abiding image of Hayman in 2005 - flanked by a phalanx of uniformed officers appearing implacably in control - contrasts with the unmistakable sense of pathos about him today.
Poignantly, while posing for photographs on the fourth-floor balcony of his publishers with panoramic views of London, Hayman begins to look increasingly pale and surprises me by suddenly reaching for my hand and saying: "I have a terrible fear of heights. Feel how clammy my hands have gone.
"I regard myself as a tough character," he grins sheepishly, as we head indoors, "but chuck height at me and I go weak at the knees. During my time at Scotland Yard, my office was on the fifth floor but when I visited colleagues on the upper floors, they had to draw the drapes. There were some meetings I couldn't handle because they were too high up and I had to leave. Even bridges give me panic attacks: I cannot drive myself over the Dartford Bridge."
It's an endearing if unexpected admission of vulnerability, especially from the man once charged with securing the safety of Londoners. Chillingly, he thinks the terrorist threat has not receded since 2005 and that "the probability of an attempted spectacular terror attack by al Qaeda on the London 2012 Olympics is high".
"Not a year has gone by since 2003 without an attack or a thwarted attack by Al Qaeda. It will be up to our intelligence agencies to stop them. Having been in that role until last year, I can say that there is a good security plan but what worries me is that the budget is under-funded by a huge amount."
Interestingly, Hayman uses his book to suggest a direct link between the sudden escalation of teenage knife crime in recent years and petty infighting, allied to poor strategic choices, within upper echelons at the Met.
He describes how Blair, supported by his top team (including himself), rode roughshod over the advice of the UK's highest-ranking Muslim officer, Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, and inadvertently set knife and gun crime soaring in the capital.
"Blair wanted to tackle gang culture through ward-based policing and this meant taking detectives away from Ghaffur's centralised Specialist Crime Directorate and putting them on the beat. Ghaffur vehemently argued it was a mistake, that the grip we had on street gangs would be dissipated if we dispersed the cops too widely.
"I wholeheartedly supported Blair's ward-based policing plan, siding against Ghaffur, but with hindsight I regret it. I should have bowed to Tarique's specialist knowledge. After that, Tarique was moved sideways, and knife and gun crime surged in London."
The relationship between Blair and Ghaffur would never recover and this had wider implications for public safety, says Hayman. "Just when we needed Ghaffur to bring on side moderate Muslims to help tackle extremism, he and Blair had fallen out."
It would also lead to claims that the Met is racist. Does Ha yman believe this to be true?
"I never personally saw racism against Ghaffur, though the sheer number of officers who have brought testimonies seems to indicate a systemic problem that the Met needs to address. I don't think we got to the bottom of whether racism in the Met is real, or whether it's perceived and used by ethnic-minority officers who play the race card to advance."
Some say that Hayman is not the person to assess racism in the Met. He had been in charge of Operation Helios, the three-year investigation into the probity of the controversial Iranian officer Ali Dizaei. When Dizaei was later cleared at the Old Bailey of wrongdoing, the Helios team was attacked as being "motivated by racism".
Hayman admits that Helios was not his finest hour. "The investigation was disproportionate, we went too far, we wasted a lot of money, and lessons have been learned," he says. But they were not racist, he insists: "We would have gone down the same route if Dizaei had been white."
One thing Hayman rails against in his book is the creeping politicisation of policing, especially the "unhelpful interference of politicians" in the Government's emergency crisis committee known as Cobra. So what did he make of Boris Johnson sacking Blair?
"Ah, that's a tough one," he muses. "I should be against it but on balance I think it was the right decision because Blair had become gaffe-prone and you can't have a Commissioner who the Mayor has no confidence in."
Hayman and Blair, the son of a carpenter with O-levels and the erudite Oxford graduate, had once made an improbably happy team but by the end, there was no love lost between them.
In April last year, amid allegations that Hayman had been cavalier with his expenses and had enjoyed an improper liaison with a female member of the IPCC, he retired. An internal inquiry would later clear him of wrongdoing, but what stung was the failure of Blair to support him and the leaks of his expenses by colleagues who had become his enemies.
Some officers, such as Dizaei, used their books to settle old scores. Was Hayman tempted? "No, it's not in my nature," he says. "All my life I've known nothing but the police force.
"But now," he smiles, "my life is more balanced. I do media consulting, I attend my daughters' school plays, I spend time with my wife. It's fabulous. When I look back, I feel a deep sadness about 7/7. My book is my way of addressing that but also of moving on."
The Terrorist Hunters by Andy Hayman with Margaret Gilmore is published on 2 July by Bantam Press at £18.99.
Reader views (3)
Hayman, Blair, Dizaei and Ghaffur. Elsewhere in the apper two other names are mentioned. All have contributed to the decline of the Metropolitan police Service and the Briths Police Service as a whole. Hayman was not regarded well by the vast majority of Met staff, whjen he had his moustache it was the best thing about him. He had his day and messed it up, like the rest of them, yesterday's men - please fade away - no one is interested in what you have to say now.
- Ranter, Maidstone, UK, 25/06/2009 15:51
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Andy said: 'I can say that there is a good security plan but what worries me is that the budget is under-funded by a huge amount' - which is contradictory since how can you have a good plan without the necessary funds for it?
Furthermore, and far far worse, is that since he states underfunding as a fact, then should anything happen as a result of this, those in government who have the power to provide the funding would then be guilty of criminal negligence at least.
Not to mention all the money wasted and being wasted on ID cards, the funds should be transferred from that to the Met and the security services.
- Fred, London, 25/06/2009 11:02
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Frankly, not fit to fill the boots of David Venness. A chancer who was not up to it and his conduct demonstrated it. How he got to where he did is the question that should be asked of Blair
- Petula, Dorking, 24/06/2009 22:31
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