Washington Post
Friday, October 7, 2005
The United States and its allies have thwarted at least 10 serious al Qaeda terrorist plots since Sept. 11, 2001, including never-before-disclosed plans to use hijacked commercial airliners to attack the East and West coasts in 2002 and 2003, President Bush and his aides said yesterday. The reported plots aimed to strike a wide variety of targets, including the Library Tower in Los Angeles, ships in international waters and a tourist site overseas, the White House said last night. Three of the 10 were directed at U.S. soil, officials said. The government, they added, also stopped five al Qaeda efforts to case possible targets or infiltrate operatives into the country.
Two sources familiar with intelligence information said the West Coast plot targeted the tallest building in Los Angeles, since renamed the US Bank Tower, and involved Malaysian militants and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who was captured in 2003. Previous reports on Mohammed's interrogations in custody said that before Sept. 11 he mapped out an attack on the tower that was later aborted.
The article is a little biased. Anyway it is a good thing that Bush is discussing this again, just to remind us.
Cripes... he misspeaks on "library" tower and calls it "liberty" tower, and that's probably all we'll hear about, instead of the meat of the story.
Did we uncover plans for these via illegal wiretapping or via illegal waterboarding?