wjfox
February 9th, 2006, 10:27 PM
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4697896.stm
Bush spells out 'LA terror plot'
US President George W Bush has given details of what he said was a foiled al-Qaeda plot to fly a plane into the tallest building on the US west coast.
Mr Bush said the plan - uncovered in 2002 - involved using shoe bombs to blow open the plane's cockpit door.
The intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles, renamed the US Bank Tower.
Mr Bush said al-Qaeda recruited the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) to carry out the attack.
Arrests
The president said the alleged mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was behind the west coast plot.
Mr Bush said that instead of using hijackers of Arab origin, as in the attacks on New York and Washington, Sheikh Mohammed recruited "young men from South East Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion".
Planning began in October 2001, but it was derailed in early 2002 "when a South East Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaeda operative", Mr Bush said.
It was finally thwarted in the summer of 2003, when the suspected head of JI, an Indonesian known as Hambali, was arrested in Thailand.
The Bush administration first mentioned the alleged plot last October, without giving details, saying it was among 10 disrupted al-Qaeda plans.
Thursday's further revelations came in a speech at the National Guard Memorial Building in Washington.
Phone tapping
While Mr Bush plainly meant to warn Americans of the continuing danger posed by international terrorism, the only really new detail was that of the shoe bombs, says the BBC's Justin Webb in the capital.
It comes as the White House is under pressure from some of the president's own supporters to be more aggressive in talking up the successes of intelligence gathering, our correspondent says.
The administration needs to persuade Americans that measures such as the highly controversial tapping of phones without court warrants are fully justified.
In briefings after the speech officials would not say whether these domestic US phone taps contributed to information gained about the Los Angeles plot, our correspondent says - but they left open at least the possibility that they did.
Democratic congressman Brad Sherman told the BBC that he had concerns about why the information was being released now.
He questioned whether the president's obligation to "manage secrecy" had been over-ridden by his "natural desire to create a vivid picture of 'Bush the protector' for political reasons".
"The political considerations should not govern," Mr Sherman said, adding that he did not believe it would harm anti-terror operations to reveal more details of arrests.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/LosAngeles06.jpg
Bush spells out 'LA terror plot'
US President George W Bush has given details of what he said was a foiled al-Qaeda plot to fly a plane into the tallest building on the US west coast.
Mr Bush said the plan - uncovered in 2002 - involved using shoe bombs to blow open the plane's cockpit door.
The intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles, renamed the US Bank Tower.
Mr Bush said al-Qaeda recruited the militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) to carry out the attack.
Arrests
The president said the alleged mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was behind the west coast plot.
Mr Bush said that instead of using hijackers of Arab origin, as in the attacks on New York and Washington, Sheikh Mohammed recruited "young men from South East Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion".
Planning began in October 2001, but it was derailed in early 2002 "when a South East Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaeda operative", Mr Bush said.
It was finally thwarted in the summer of 2003, when the suspected head of JI, an Indonesian known as Hambali, was arrested in Thailand.
The Bush administration first mentioned the alleged plot last October, without giving details, saying it was among 10 disrupted al-Qaeda plans.
Thursday's further revelations came in a speech at the National Guard Memorial Building in Washington.
Phone tapping
While Mr Bush plainly meant to warn Americans of the continuing danger posed by international terrorism, the only really new detail was that of the shoe bombs, says the BBC's Justin Webb in the capital.
It comes as the White House is under pressure from some of the president's own supporters to be more aggressive in talking up the successes of intelligence gathering, our correspondent says.
The administration needs to persuade Americans that measures such as the highly controversial tapping of phones without court warrants are fully justified.
In briefings after the speech officials would not say whether these domestic US phone taps contributed to information gained about the Los Angeles plot, our correspondent says - but they left open at least the possibility that they did.
Democratic congressman Brad Sherman told the BBC that he had concerns about why the information was being released now.
He questioned whether the president's obligation to "manage secrecy" had been over-ridden by his "natural desire to create a vivid picture of 'Bush the protector' for political reasons".
"The political considerations should not govern," Mr Sherman said, adding that he did not believe it would harm anti-terror operations to reveal more details of arrests.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e3/LosAngeles06.jpg