Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2006. My castaway this week is the former metropolitan police commissioner John Stevens. As a fresh-faced Bobby on the beat in the early

60s, he patrolled London's Tottenham Court Road with nothing more than a whistle in a truncheon

to keep rascals at bay. In the 70s, the hard-working and hard-drinking culture of the

Flying Squad suited him well. His impressive ability to nail the villains won in the

nickname Swiftie Stevens. He took over at the Met in 2000. It had just been branded institutionally racist

and the morale and reputation of the force was at rock bottom. He's widely credited with

turning it around and regaining public confidence.

Even in retirement though he's heading two major investigations,

one into the death of Diana, Princess of Wales,

and the second, due to report any week now, on football buns.

But one of the most extraordinary tasks he's faced

was in the aftermath of 9-11 developing our own response

to terror attacks.

So Lord Stevens, how in earth do you start drawing up a response to what is essentially

an unknown threat? Well, you have to remember of course this city and country had been under attack for a very long period of time from IRA terrorism so we were used to that. However, there's no doubt about it. I remember coming back I was mid-Atlantic on 9-11 and then going straight to COBRA and one of the members of the cabinet saying

the world would never be the same place again. I arrogantly thought he was wrong

because we dealt with terrorism. He was right and I was wrong and we had to rethink our response to terrorism.

COBRA then just to be clear that that's the government's emergency response

committee that they set up at these times of extreme national emergency.

That's right.

...