BOGUS - Details of foiled '02 plot revealed

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: BOGUS - Details of foiled '02 plot revealed
Date: Fri, 10 Feb 2006 17:51:19 -0600
From: John Ray johnray1776@wowway.com

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/terror/20060210-9999-1n10plot.html

Details of foiled '02 plot revealed

Bush: Terror plan targeted L.A. tower
By Toby Eckert
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

February 10, 2006

WASHINGTON – President Bush said yesterday that extensive intelligence efforts helped thwart a 2002 terrorist plan to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of an airliner and crash it into the tallest skyscraper on the West Coast.

Under fire for eavesdropping on Americans, Bush provided new details of the plot in a speech to the National Guard Association. Afterward, his top counterterrorism adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, said the address had no connection to the domestic surveillance controversy.

But Democrats and some outside analysts said the speech was clearly meant to bolster the administration's case that its aggressive surveillance tactics are justified. Despite the details outlined yesterday, Townsend told reporters, “We don't know when it was planned to actually be executed” or if the plotters intended to seize a plane from Los Angeles International Airport, leading some experts to question how far the plot had developed.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa complained that he first learned of the additional details while watching Bush on television.

“I'm amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels,” said Villaraigosa, a Democrat.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said local officials had been apprised before the speech and that there was “great appreciation for the notification that we provided.”

Villaraigosa acknowledged that his office learned from the California Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday that additional information about the plot would be released. Nevertheless, he complained that as the “mayor of the second-largest city in the country” he should have been made aware of the details.

While refusing to speculate about why Bush released the plot's details yesterday, Villaraigosa said the timing “makes you wonder what the motivation was.”

Some information about the foiled attack was disclosed last year, but Bush said the episode, in which the 73-story Library Tower was targeted, illustrates the continuing danger the nation faces.

“As the West Coast plot shows, in the war on terror we face a relentless and determined enemy that operates in many nations, so protecting our citizens requires unprecedented cooperation from many nations as well. It took the combined efforts of several countries to break up this plot,” Bush said, adding that the plan was derailed when a key al-Qaeda figure was arrested in Southeast Asia. The president didn't identify the operative or the country where he was arrested.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, airliner attacks on New York and Washington, started planning the West Coast attack in October of that year, Bush said. Working with the head of an al-Qaeda-affiliated group in South Asia, Jemaah Islamiyah, four terrorists were recruited for the plot and flew to Afghanistan to swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden.

Mohammed “set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door, and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We believe the intended target was Liberty Tower in Los Angeles, California,” Bush said. Aides later clarified that the president was referring to the Library Tower, now called the U.S. Bank Tower.

The plan was disrupted when the terror cell's leader was arrested in February 2002. All four of the cell members are in custody, Townsend said. Mohammed and the Jemaah Islamiyah leader, known as Hambali, were arrested in 2003.

“We unraveled this over a period of years,” Townsend said, adding that it highlighted the importance of “real-time information sharing” between the intelligence agencies of the United States and those of four South Asian and Southeast Asian countries, which she wouldn't identify.

Townsend said the speech was meant to highlight international cooperation in the war on terror and not to deflect criticism of the surveillance program, which was the subject of congressional hearings this week. She declined to say whether the eavesdropping program played any role in thwarting the Los Angeles plot.

However, Townsend said the episode “reminds us that we must continue to gather as much information as possible and from all sources, especially detainee debriefings and intelligence operations, to reveal the evolving terrorist networks and plots.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said Bush's comments were “scare tactics.” She criticized cuts he recently proposed in some homeland security spending.

“The independent, bipartisan 9/11 Commission's final report card indicted the continued failure by the Bush administration and the Republican Congress to meet the security needs of our nation and make Americans safer,” Pelosi said in a written statement. “President Bush missed a critical opportunity today to explain why, more than four years after the 9/11 attacks, the American people are not as safe as we should be.”

McClellan said the speech had been planned for weeks and that “we were looking for an example to highlight a . . . plot that was disrupted.”

Bush first alluded to the Los Angeles plot in an October 2005 speech. At the time, terrorism experts said it was difficult to tell whether the plan posed an actual threat or was merely discussed as a possibility by al-Qaeda operatives.

Some said that was still the case after yesterday's disclosure.

“It was more tantalizing for what it didn't tell us. It didn't flesh out the picture,” said Bruce Hoffman, who heads the Washington office of the RAND research group. “Was it just daydreams and thoughts, or had it been set in motion?”

But Townsend said: “There is no question in my mind that this is a disruption. It's not about credit; it's about protecting the American people. (They) are absolutely safer because of these arrests.”

The most specific piece of information Bush revealed about the plot was the intent to use shoe bombs to gain access to the cockpit. After the Sept. 11 attacks, airlines started reinforcing cockpit doors to make them more difficult to enter forcibly.

Townsend said it was unclear whether there was any relationship between the Los Angeles plot and the attempt by Richard Reid, a Muslim extremist from England, to ignite explosives in his shoe aboard a Paris-to-Miami flight in December 2001.

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Jonathan Turley
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