LONDON, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- British police feared al-Qaida might try to kill Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife during the celebration of the Queen's half century on the throne.
Former Metropolitan Police Commissioner Lord Stevens says in his forthcoming memoirs that reports of the plot surfaced just weeks before the elaborately choreographed 2002 Golden Jubilee celebrations in London.
He also says in the book -- "Not for the Faint Hearted" -- that the war in Iraq has made the terror threat in Britain worse. And he outspokenly attacks Blair's then-interior minister David Blunkett as "duplicitous and intimidating."
According to extracts serialized in the News of the World -- one of Britain's notorious "red top" tabloids -- Stevens warned the Blairs about the plot against them, but they remained "absolutely unfazed" and spurned advice to wear bulletproof vests.
Stevens ordered a special detachment of plain clothes police, "covertly armed" to protect the couple from sniper attack during the June 2002 parade.
Stevens, who has a column in the paper, says he was particularly worried as the dignitaries gathered near Buckingham Palace: "I felt acutely nervous as the procession approached.
"I was constantly scanning faces in the crowd for signs of trouble and thinking, I hope to God nothing comes from somewhere."
Stevens, who held the job as London's top police officer and the most senior law enforcement official in the country from 2000 to 2005, has previously said eight attacks were thwarted in the last five years.
But in the News of World he likens the looming terror threat to "a storm rumbling on the horizon, with occasional outbreaks of thunder and lightning". And he stated that the Iraq war has "undoubtedly lent terrorism enormous impetus".
He says Iraq became "an attractive venue for people who wanted to gain combat terrorist experience -- as, to some extent, did Afghanistan from the late 1990s until 2001."
Both Downing Street and Scotland Yard declined to respond to requests for comment from the British news media.
