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| KSM, Hambali planned to hit West Coast in 2002 |
| 2005-10-08 |
| Government counterterrorism officials gave new details on Friday of what the White House said was a foiled 2002 plot to fly hijacked airplanes into targets on the West Coast, but their account suggested that the Bush administration might not have understood the dimensions of the plot until two major terror suspects were caught in 2003. Both suspects, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, had been involved in plans for such an attack, they said. President Bush referred obliquely to the planning in a speech on Thursday, when he said the United States and its partners had stopped three potential attacks on American soil, and seven more around the world. The White House cited it later Thursday in a list of the 10 failed plots. While several of those alleged plots had been disclosed before, officials said that the 2002 effort had not been publicized until now. Another foiled plot, the White House said, was aimed at East Coast cities in 2003. The plan to attack Los Angeles appears to have grown out of a larger plan for attacks on both coasts, not just New York and Washington, on Sept. 11, 2001. As described by investigators on Friday - in an account that parallels the findings of the commission that investigated the 9/11 attacks - Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of the 9/11 plan, was told to delay parts of the broader plan until later. It is not clear how far any subsequent planning against Los Angeles advanced after the attacks of Sept. 11, or exactly how it was headed off during the broad international campaign against terrorists that ensued. "It basically got subcontracted out to Jemaah Islamiyah," Mr. Isamuddin's radical Islamic group based in Indonesia, said a senior counterterrorism official, who had read an account of Mr. Mohammed's interrogation after his capture in Pakistan in 2003. "They found a pilot, and some others to overpower the plane. But it never came together." One apparent target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles, now known as the U.S. Bank Tower, but three counterterrorism officials said they believed there were other targets in mind as well. All the officials interviewed about the plots declined to speak on the record, because the White House had declassified a very limited amount of information to substantiate Mr. Bush's statements. But a senior administration official familiar with the case said the administration knew "the plot had been disrupted before" Mr. Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003. Mr. Isamuddin was arrested that year in Thailand. "But we didn't understand the details at that time," the official said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |