Bush Offers Details of 2002 Terror Plot in Los Angeles

[al-Canine]

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said the U.S.-led global war on terror has ''weakened and fractured'' al-Qaida and allied groups, outlining as proof new details about the multinational cooperation that foiled purported terrorist plans to fly a commercial airplane into the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast.

''The terrorists are living under constant pressure and this adds to our security,'' Bush said. ''When terrorists spend their days working to avoid death or capture, it's harder for them to plan and execute new attacks on our country. By striking the terrorists where they live, we're protecting the American homeland.''

But the president said the anti-terror battle is far from over.

''The terrorists are weakenend and fractured, yet they're still lethal,'' the president said in a speech at the National Guard Memorial Building. ''We cannot let the fact that America hasn't been attacked in 41/2 years since September the 11th lull us into the illusion that the threats to our nation have disappeared. They have not.''

Bush has referred to the 2002 plot before. In an address last October, he said the United States and its allies had foiled at least 10 serious plots by the al-Qaida terror network in the last four years, including plans for Sept. 11-like attacks on both U.S. coasts. The White House initially would not give details of the plots but later released a fact sheet with a brief, and vague, description of each.

The president filled in details on Thursday.

He said that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks who was captured in 2003, had already begun planning the West Coast operation in October, just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. One of Mohammed's key planners was Hambali, the alleged operations chief of the al-Qaida related terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. Instead of recruiting Arab hijackers, Hambali found Southeast Asian men who would be less likely to arouse suspicion and who were sent to meet with Osama bin Laden, Bush said.

Under the plot, the hijackers were to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of a commercial jetliner, take control of the plane and crash it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, since renamed the US Bank Tower, Bush said.

The president said the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaida operative. Bush did not name the country or the operative.

Bush has been on a campaign to defend his controversial domestic monitoring program. But the White House would not say whether the 2002 plot was thwarted as a result of the National Security Agency program to eavesdrop on the international emails and phone calls of people inside the United States with suspected ties to terrorists.

Bush said only that ''subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations'' after the arrest of the unnamed operative led to information about the plot, and to the capture of other ringleaders and operatives involved in it. Hambali, for instance, was captured in Thailand in 2003 and handed over to the United States.

''It took the combined efforts of several countries to break up this plot,'' the president said. ''By working together, we took dangerous terrorists off the streets. By working together, we stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland.''

Bush's speech in October cited two other attacks inside the United States that were foiled, including one to use hijacked planes to attack the East Coast in mid-2003.

The third was the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam and allegedly plotted with top al-Qaida commanders to detonate a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in a U.S. city. Padilla, whose plot never materialized, now is being held without bail in civilian custody on charges that he was part of a secret network that supported Muslim terrorists.

A U.S. citizen, Padilla was arrested May 8, 2002, at O'Hare International Airport on a material witness warrant and was designated an enemy combatant. he was held without criminal charge at a Navy brig in South Carolina.

Padilla was charged in November on terrorism charges and transfered to civilian custody last month before the Supreme Court had an opportunity to take up his case contesting his detention. He is in federal custody in Miami awaiting trial.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Bush.html?

[freeman]

jesus christ man...get yourself a set of these.

His entire speech he managed to only be able to claim "3" terrorist captured..by other countries no less...and a totally bullshit story about shoe bombs to blow open cockpit doors...damn

First it was the liberty tower, now it's something different...idjit can't keep his Rove story straight.

[al-Canine]

The al-Qaeda pilot who got cold feet

By Simon Freeman and agencies

A Malaysian pilot recruited by al-Qaeda to fly a hijacked airliner into the tallest building on the US West Coast pulled out of the plot when he realised it was a suicide mission, security officials in South-East Asia said today.

Further details emerged of the plan to target the iconic 73-storey US Bank Building in Los Angeles, revealed by President Bush yesterday in an address to rally support for the War on Terror.

Terrorism experts in Malaysia said that Zaini Zakaria, an engineer, was among three men being trained to launch the planned second-wave of Osama bin Laden's assault on the United States, supposed to take place a few months after the atrocities of September 11 2001.

Zaini, 38, visited al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1999, where he met senior figures in the terrorist network including Riduan Isamuddin, the organisation's leader in South-East Asia, also known as Hambali.

When he returned to Malaysia, Zaini enrolled in a flying school and obtained a license to fly a small plane. He then began making inquiries in Australia about obtaining a license to fly a jet.

The official revealed that the recruit had never been told precisely what his mission would entail: when he saw coverage of the September 11 attacks and realised it was a suicide operation he severed his ties with the militants.

He returned to civilian life, doing a series of casual jobs, before he surrendered himself to Malaysian authorities in Kelantan in December 2002, apparently because he was worried about the health of a relative.

He has been detained without trial ever since, due to his alleged links with Jemaah Islamiyah, a proscribed terrorist organisation regarded as al-Qaeda's South-east Asian wing.

Zaini told his interrogators that "he was not prepared to die as a martyr, so he backed out", a senior police officer has told the Associated Press news agency. The officer said that Zaini "didn’t want that kind of Jihad".

He also said that plan never appeared close to the stage where it could be put into execution.

The possible "second wave" attack on America was first mentioned in June 2004, in the US National Commission report on the September 11 attacks. The report quoted Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the reputed terror mastermind who was captured in 2003, as admitting that "only three potential pilots were recruited for the alleged second wave," and identified them as Zacarias Moussaoui, Abderraouf Jdey, and Zaini.

However, Mohammed told his US interrogators that "he was too busy with the 9/11 plot to plan the second wave of attacks," the report said.

Yesterday President Bush gave more details, saying that the plot had been set in motion in October 2001 by Mohammed. But instead of using hijackers of Arab origin, the Los Angeles plot involved terrorists from JI. They were "young men from South-East Asia whom he believed would not arouse suspicion," Mr Bush said. They were going to use "shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door", he added.

Mr Bush said that Hambali had earmarked JI operatives for the plot. The operatives, who had been training in Afghanistan, met Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, and began preparing for the attack. But the plot was derailed in 2002 when a key al-Qaeda operative was arrested, Mr Bush said. It was finally thwarted when Hambali was arrested in Thailand in 2003.

It is not clear if Mr Bush was referring to Zaini.

Mr Bush’s decision to divulge details of the plot, which he had alluded to in much vaguer terms last October, was a direct response to the controversy over the revelation that he has authorised the secret wire-tapping of US citizens in America, without court warrant, for nearly four years.

Mr Bush has aggressively defended the wiretapping programme as being vital to fighting the War on Terror, but it has been called illegal by some senior Republicans and most Democrats. Civil liberties groups have begun comparing Mr Bush to Richard Nixon, who oversaw a secret wire-tapping programme of Americans in the early 1970s.

The Times has learnt that two weeks ago a high-level strategy meeting was held at the White House to discuss how to reshape the debate over the wire-tapping controversy. One of the main goals was to remind Americans that although no terrorist attack has occurred on US soil for more than four years, al-Qaeda is an enemy that has not gone away. White House aides want to emphasise that the War on Terror is a new age, very different from the concerns of the Nixon era, in which Mr Bush needs every tool available to thwart another attack.

The White House is not claiming that the West Coast plot was foiled by extra-judicial wire-tapping, but it was decided that giving details of the plot would help to bring home how high the stakes are, and the importance of rapid intelligence.

"The terrorists are weakened and fractured, yet they’re still lethal," Mr Bush said in his speech at the National Guard Memorial Building in Washington yesterday. "We cannot let the fact that America hasn’t been attacked in four and a half years since September 11, 2001, lull us into the illusion that the threats to our nation have disappeared."

Referring to fresh threats to America made last month in an audiotape by Osama bin Laden, Mr Bush added: "Our military, law enforcement, homeland security and intelligence professionals take those threats very seriously, and they’re working around the clock day and night to protect us."

Mr Bush also said that the arrest of one of the South-East Asian operatives in early 2002 had led to critical intelligence that "helped other allies capture the ringleaders and other known operatives who had been recruited for this plot".

One ringleader Mr Bush is believed to have been referring to is Abu Zubaydah, captured in Pakistan in March 2002. Regarded as al-Qaeda’s third in command, he knew every important plot al-Qaeda had lined up to follow the September 11 attacks.

Democrats accused Mr Bush of cynically exploiting September 11 to divert attention from the wire-tapping controversy.

"Why are we hearing about this four years later other than to change the subject back to Bush’s favourite topic?," said Jennifer Palmieri, of the Centre for American Progress, a Democrat think-tank.

THE PLOTTER

For a time Khalid Sheikh Mohammad lived the life of an all-American boy. As a teenager he went to a Baptist school in North Carolina before going on to university there to study mechanical engineering

After his graduation in 1986 he drifted to Afghanistan to join the Muslim holy war against the Soviet invasion. He lasted only three months before heading for an office job with an electronics company

He was, the CIA says, a planner rather than an action man. As a front for his terrorist activities he worked for the Qatar government as an engineer in its electricity headquarters, from where he shunted money to extremist groups

He helped to fund the first attack on the World Trade Centre, in 1993. He also helped to organise a plot to assassinate Bill Clinton


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-2034344,00.html

[al-Canine]

More on Bush's speech, and the subsequent reporting...

NY Times, AP, USA Today ignored experts' doubts about threat posed by foiled L.A. terror plot

Summary: Reporting on President Bush's February 9 account of how the government successfully thwarted a 2002 Al Qaeda plot to crash a hijacked airplane into a Los Angeles skyscraper, numerous media outlets -- including The New York Times, Associated Press, and USA Today -- ignored doubts among counterterrorism officials that the proposed attack ever advanced beyond the initial planning stages and ever posed a serious threat.

Reporting on President Bush's February 9 account of how the government successfully thwarted a 2002 Al Qaeda plot to crash a hijacked airplane into a Los Angeles skyscraper, numerous media outlets -- including The New York Times, Associated Press, and USA Today -- ignored the division within the intelligence community over the severity of the threat posed by the plot and over whether the proposed attack ever advanced beyond the initial planning stages. By contrast, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times reported challenges to the administration's claims articulated by some intelligence and law enforcement officials.

AP's Deb Riechmann uncritically reported on February 10 that Bush highlighted the terrorist plot, which targeted Los Angeles' Library Tower (since renamed U.S. Bank Tower), to illustrate how the United States, in conjunction with several other nations, "stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland." USA Today's David Jackson and Richard Benedetto similarly reported on February 10 that Bush used the incident as an example of how "[s]ince Sept. 11, the United States and our coalition partners have disrupted a number of serious al-Qaeda terrorist plots, including plots to attack targets inside the United States."

The February 10 article by New York Times reporters Elisabeth Bumiller and David Johnston cited only counterterrorism officials who initially doubted the severity of the threat but later "conclude[d] that the plot was genuine and potentially serious":

Several American counterterrorism officials said Thursday that, at the time the plot was broken up in early 2002, the authorities believed that they had disrupted an active terrorist planning effort, but that they possessed only fragmentary evidence and were unsure whether the threat was significant.

Only later did they conclude that the plot was genuine and potentially serious. The outline of the plot became clear, the officials said, primarily through the interrogations of captured Qaeda figures like Mr. Mohammed, who was apprehended in March 2003, and Hambali, captured in August 2003.

But as the Post and Los Angeles Times documented, some national security officials and the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee still question whether the Al Qaeda plot on Los Angeles ever developed into a credible threat.

In a February 10 article, the Post reported that U.S. intelligence officials "said there is deep disagreement within the intelligence community over the seriousness of the Library Tower scheme and whether it was ever much more than talk." The Post also noted that Rand Corp. terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman and Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, questioned whether the plot ever posed a significant threat:

Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism specialist who heads the Washington office of Rand Corp., said Bush's account adds some interesting detail to the Library Tower episode. But he said it still leaves key questions about the case unanswered.

"It doesn't really give us any more indication of whether this was a plot that was derailed or preempted, or a plot that was more in the realm of an idle daydream," Hoffman said.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, mocked the idea of raising the alleged Library Tower plot. "Maybe they're tired of talking about [the] Brooklyn Bridge and they're trying to find a different edifice of some sort," he said, referring to another alleged terrorist plot that some have said was inflated by the government.

The February 10 report by the Los Angeles Times similarly quoted a law enforcement official's assessment that the Al Qaeda plot "didn't go" and "didn't happen," and paraphrased his determination that the plot "was one of many Al Qaeda operations that had not gone much past the conceptual stage":

The details did little to counter skepticism from Democrats and some law enforcement officials who have questioned whether the reported scheme had ever been put into operation before it was thwarted.

"It didn't go," said one U.S. official familiar with the operational aspects of the war on terrorism. "It didn't happen."

The official said he believed the Library Tower plot was one of many Al Qaeda operations that had not gone much past the conceptual stage. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying that those familiar with the plot feared political retaliation for providing a different characterization of the plan than that of the president.

Additionally, no media reported a February 9 exchange between a reporter -- apparently National Journal White House correspondent Alexis Simendinger -- and White House press secretary Scott McClellan, in which Simendinger questioned whether there was "something missing" from the administration's account of the terrorist plot. Simendinger asked McClellan how a terrorist could use a shoe bomb to hijack an airplane without "blow[ing] off the cockpit." From the February 9 White House press briefing:

SIMENDINGER: Scott, I wanted to just ask a follow-up about the L.A. plot. Is there something missing from this story, a practical application, a few facts? Because if you want to commandeer a plane and fly it into a tower, if you used shoe bombs, wouldn't you blow off the cockpit? Or is there something missing from this story?

McCLELLAN: I don't know what you're referring to about missing. I mean, I think we provided you a detailed briefing earlier today about the plot. And Fran Townsend, our homeland security adviser, talked about it. So I'm not sure what you're suggesting it --

SIMENDINGER: Think about it, if you're wearing shoe bombs, you either blow off your feet or you blow off the front of the airplane.

McCLELLAN: There was a briefing for you earlier today. I think that's one way to look at it. There are a lot of ways to look at it, and she explained it earlier today, Alexis, so I would refer you very much back to what she said, what she said earlier today.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200602100011

[NYer]

How the US stopped Hambali. (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,18109832%5E2703,00.html)

According to terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna, Hambali played a key role in Operation Bojinka. He said the plot was to involve a sequence of events from the assassination of Pope John Paul II in The Philippines on January 15 to the bombing of 11 airliners on January 21 and 22 followed by the flying of a Cessna packed with explosives into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

But the plot came undone after a fire in a Manila apartment on January 6, 1995. Police discovered evidence of the plot on a computer in the apartment and the operation was abandoned. But plans to blow up planes and fly them into buildings continued. And in the wake of the September 11 attacks, Hambali and Mohammed began hatching the Library Tower plan.

It has been revealed that they established a cell and four terrorists were being trained to carry out the attack, which included using shoe bombs to break into to an aeroplane cockpit.

The JI operatives trained in Afghanistan and met Osama bin Laden.

The head of the cell also received instructions on the use of shoe bombs from Briton Richard Reid, who in December 2001 tried to blow up an airliner with explosives planted in his shoes.

But the plan was thwarted early in 2002 when a key al-Qa'ida operative was arrested in Southeast Asia. In the subsequent debriefings of this operative, enough information was gleaned to round up the terrorists involved in the plot.