Did al-Qaeda try to infiltrate MI5???

A frightening thought...

The head of a British parliamentary counter-terrorism committee called Saturday for the government to clarity whether al Qaeda operatives had tried to infiltrate the MI5 domestic security agency.

Patrick Mercer, a Conservative and chairman of parliament's sub-committee on counter-terrorism, said he had been told up to six Muslim recruits had been ejected from the spy agency because of concerns about their backgrounds.

Two of the men who had attempted to join MI5 after the July 7, 2005, London suicide bombings had attended training camps in Pakistan while the others had unexplained gaps in their curricula vitae, Mercer told the Daily Telegraph.

"I would be very, very surprised had our enemies had not tried this but I would like some clarification from the government to see how successful we've been at detecting them," he told Sky News.