They came by boat, silently and under the cover of night. All the intruders were armed; all had undergone specialist weapons training.
Using only information available on the internet or other public sources, each had studied the external and internal layout of the Palace of Westminster. Now they intended to strike at the very heart of the British Establishment.
No one saw or heard their approach on the Thames during the summer recess of 2016. Being waterborne, the approach was similar to that of the devastating attack on Mumbai eight years earlier. Similarly no one knew they were coming.
But this was the ‘Mother of Parliaments’. In a time of heightened terror threats, surely the world-famous landmark would be among the most closely guarded of potential jihadist targets? Certainly there were, as always, armed officers from the Metropolitan Police’s Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection branch on duty inside the complex that night. To no avail.
Gaining entry from the river, the attackers moved quickly, stealthily, along the warren of corridors and passageways. They penetrated the defences without detection; indeed, so successfully that they were able to reach the chamber of the House of Commons itself, undisturbed.
Armed only with a baton and pepper spray, PC Kieth Palmer (left) was stabbed to death while guarding the main vehicle entrance — Carriage Gates — by terrorist Khalid Masood on March 22, 2017. He was awarded a posthumous George Medal for his bravery in confronting the killer (right, PC Keith Palmer pictured with his wife Michelle)
More than three years after the brutal attack, no one at Met HQ has been held to account for exposing an unarmed police officer to a long-feared murderous assault (pictured, the aftermath of the attack on PC Keith Palmer)
And that is when the exercise — for an exercise it was, thankfully — came to an end: total victory to the intruders who were, in fact, officers from CO19, the Met’s firearms squad.
They had been told by the exercise organisers to identify themselves only if seen and challenged by their unsuspecting Diplomatic Protection Group (DPG) colleagues. They weren’t.
The until now secret ‘Operation Kiri’, of which the armed break-in was a part, had been arranged to test the palace’s defences. The exercise took place amid growing fears among an outspoken few at New Scotland Yard that security at Parliament was unacceptably slack. Operation Kiri brutally confirmed this assessment. But little or nothing was done. Forty recommendations were made as a result of the embarrassingly easy infiltration. None were made public.
According to one of several sources who have spoken to the Mail, only a handful were ever acted upon. ‘The only ones implemented were that our shirt colour be changed from white to blue, as it is less noticeable, (the guards in the palace were seen by the intruders but not vice versa) and that the signpost which had been used as a foothold [for the intruders] to gain access from the Thames was removed,’ one source said. And that was that.
The source said at least one colleague had quit in disgust at the lack of improvement.
This is only one of several damning revelations uncovered by a Mail investigation into the security failures at the Palace of Westminster which contributed, little more than six months after Kiri, to the horrific murder of PC Keith Palmer.
Armed only with a baton and pepper spray, he was stabbed to death while guarding the main vehicle entrance — Carriage Gates — by terrorist Khalid Masood on March 22, 2017. He was awarded a posthumous George Medal for his bravery in confronting the killer.
Khalid Masood (pictured left) murdered five people (including PC Palmer, right) and injured 50 others when he drove his car into pedestrians outside the Houses of Parliament in March 2017
Seconds before, Masood, 52, had killed four pedestrians and injured around 40 on Westminster Bridge by ramming a car into them. It was the first of a number of fatal Islamist attacks carried out on or close to bridges over the Thames between 2017 and 2019.
At PC Palmer’s inquest in October 2018, Chief Coroner Mark Lucraft QC said had armed officers been stationed at the gates, ‘it is possible they may have been able to prevent PC Palmer suffering fatal injuries’. He added: ‘Due to shortcomings in the system . . . the armed officers were not aware of a requirement to remain in close proximity to the gates.
His analysis was born of several testimonies. But the inquest did not hear every useful account.
One eyewitness who, infamously, did not give evidence at the officer’s inquest — for which no explanation has been given — was Sir Craig Mackey, who was acting Met Commissioner at the time of the death. Sitting in a car inside the palace gates, Sir Craig watched as PC Palmer, 48, was stabbed to death only yards away. And he did not intervene. Later he would be accused of ‘cowardice’, prompting a string of senior colleagues to come out in his defence.
He did give evidence at the Masood inquest. PC Palmer’s widow was not represented so Sir Craig could not be questioned on her behalf. Nor did PC Palmer’s inquest hear what the Mail has been told by Scotland Yard and Police Federation sources, outraged at what else wasn’t done that day — or before — which might have prevented his death.
More than three years after the brutal attack, no one at Met HQ has been held to account for exposing an unarmed police officer to a long-feared murderous assault.
Then last week came a potentially game-changing development. It was revealed that the PC’s widow, Michelle, is suing the Met for having placed her husband in a situation of unnecessary danger.
The hardest part of her ordeal was having to tell the couple’s six-year-old daughter, Amy, that her ‘daddy was gone’, she said.
Her decision to pursue legal proceedings has encouraged multiple sources to reveal what they believe to be as yet unpublished salient facts behind the failure to adequately protect officers on guard at the gates of Parliament.
One of the abiding images of the aftermath was the Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood (pictured) trying to help revive the dying policeman
Blunders and uncertainty, complacency, power struggles and under-manning had informed their masters’ ‘strategy’, it is claimed.
After what we have learned, it is hard to see how the Met can defend itself against Mrs Palmer.
So what happened that fatal day? Masood was known to security services. Born Adrian Elms, he was brought up in East Sussex and schooled in Kent. A drug user with convictions for violence, he converted to Islam while in prison and was radicalised thereafter.
He had been known to MI5 for 13 years, after his phone number was found on a list belonging to a member of an Al Qaeda-linked plot to build a number of bombs using fertiliser. Five conspirators were given life sentences but Masood’s ties to them were not followed up.
Shortly before his attack, Masood sent a text claiming his actions were revenge for Western military intervention in Muslim countries. Driving a hired Hyundai, he sped onto Westminster Bridge at more than 70mph, striking dozens of pedestrians and killing Kurt Cochran, 54, Leslie Rhodes, 75, Aysha Frade, 44, and Andreea Cristea, 31.
Masood then leapt from the vehicle and, armed with two large knives, ran into Parliament Square and through Carriage Gates — which were open — where he was confronted by PC Palmer. The Commons was sitting at the time.
In the struggle which followed the policeman was stabbed multiple times. No armed member of the Palace of Westminster security detail was close enough to intervene. The attack ended when an armed protection officer, who had been guarding the then Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, ran towards the commotion.
Being approached by Masood wielding a knife covered with PC Palmer’s blood, the officer shot him dead. The entire attack, from start to finish, had lasted only 82 seconds. One of the abiding images of the aftermath was the Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood trying to help revive the dying policeman.
But not everyone ran to help. Where were the two armed police guards on duty at the Palace of Westminster at that time?
And how to explain the actions of Mackey, who was later knighted for his services to the police?
Having just visited a Government minister, he was sitting in a car with a number of similarly unarmed colleagues. He was to tell the Masood inquest that his instinct had been to intervene when he saw him attacking PC Palmer.
‘First and foremost I was a police officer, so I went to open the door to get out,’ he told the jury. ‘One of the PCs [in the car] quite rightfully, said: “Get out (of the Palace of Westminster) make safe, go, shut the door,” and it was the right thing to do. That’s when I thought: “I’ve got to start putting everything we need in place.” We have no protective equipment and I have two colleagues who are traumatised, so we moved out.’ The court heard Sir Craig and his colleagues drove away around 30 seconds after Masood was shot dead.
Massod, 52, who ploughed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before crashing his car and entering the Palace of Westminster, was shot by two close protection officers
A doctored image of Sir Craig holding his knighthood in which a white feather — a Great War symbol of cowardice — had replaced the medal, later went viral and there were calls for him to be stripped of his knighthood.
He retired in late 2018 with, according to reports, a pension pot at least 12 times larger than that of widowed Michelle Palmer.
That is the kind of statistic which enrages those more junior officers who had noticed security failings before the tragedy happened.
Multiple sources told the Mail that in the months leading up to the attack there had been tension between the police and the civilian authorities at the Palace of Westminster responsible for security.
The police were there only to ‘assist’ the civilian Parliamentary Security Team which ran a control room in the palace. The Met provided the civilian security guards who, among other duties, search the bags of visitors.
But according to sources the PST took over the recruitment of these personnel, ‘diluting’ the Met’s role in keeping Parliament safe. There was also antagonism from MPs. ‘The attitude from many was that we were an inconvenience and the sight of firearms undermined the notion of the British bobby,’ said one source.
‘Comments were made when overt firearms officers were at the Carriage Gates. The rule around the gates was that [when Parliament was sitting] they were to be kept open. This was clearly for the benefit of MPs, to save them having to wait. They went ballistic if the gates were ever shut and the Met management just capitulated. The actual threat was never properly appreciated.’
At the time of Operation Kiri, the parliamentary estate was divided into a number of sectors. Each had a static post, to which a pair of armed officers was assigned to stand guard or patrol along with their unarmed colleagues.
But some sectors were ‘too large for two Authorised Firearms Officers (AFOs) to cover adequately’ said one source. The police post on the terrace facing the Thames — where the Kiri intruders came ashore — had even been removed altogether. So too had the static post at the Carriage Gates, according to one source.
The Mail was told that at the time of the attack the policy for armed policing at the Palace of Westminster had been moving from static posts to patrolling.
This was to be formalised shortly after PC Palmer’s murder, but was already being implemented on the day with tragic consequences.
The two armed officers assigned to the Carriage Gates sector were 80 yards from the attack when it happened and took no part in the apprehension of Masood. The policy was then reversed, but too late for the dead officer.
The Mail has been told that the armed police presence at Westminster was already inadequate.
‘We were told that the armed team would need to expand to make the working hours legal,’ said another well-placed source.
‘In the new shift pattern 47 police per day were required. But it actually needed 68 on the permanent team to make it work properly.
‘So we were back to using officers on overtime from other parts of the Met [firearm teams] to fill vacant posts. This meant officers with possibly little or no experience of working at Parliament.’
The source added: ‘I remember a tabletop exercise where the scenario was that a male armed with a knife gets in to the visitor search area and attacks people, making his way in to New Palace Yard and the Carriage Gates causing multiple casualties.
‘It was to demonstrate the weakness to everyone, and was for the benefit of [police] management, but nothing was done.’
An independent review of security in the Palace of Westminster since PC Palmer’s murder has not been published, ‘although it is patently obvious the firearms footprint has been increased after the attack, to what it should have been during the attack,’ said a source.
‘It was only by chance an armed protection officer stopped the terrorist. Had he not been there the terrorist would have had unfettered access to the palace.’
The source added: ‘The whole episode is just embarrassing and an example of where real security threats have been overlooked time and again for the vanity of the MPs, by spineless senior officers who were more concerned about not blighting their copybook rather than actual security, and ultimately the safety of the public and their officers.’
Mrs Palmer must now hope that Met Commissioner Cressida Dick recognises the follies of the past and acts accordingly.
Last night Scotland Yard declined to answer a series of questions from the Daily Mail about security concerns at the Palace of Westminster in the run up to PC Palmer’s murder. It said in a statement: ‘The Metropolitan Police Service unreservedly accepted the Chief Coroner’s findings of shortcomings in the security system at the Palace of Westminster.
‘Security arrangements have substantially changed since the attack and the Met continues to work closely with the Palace of Westminster, local authority and other agencies to strengthen security measures.
‘However, we are not able to discuss what changes have been made, as to do so would only serve to undermine the measures in place.’