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W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 26 — An ambitious terrorist plot to attack a host of American interests overseas was foiled by the capture of a key Osama bin Laden operative, sources tell ABCNEWS. Intelligence sources in Europe and the United States say the intended targets included the American embassy in Paris, the U.S. consulate in Marseilles, France, buildings at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium and the European Parliament building in Strasbourg, France. The outlines of the plan were known to French and American authorities before Sept. 11, but the attacks were not ...

Baghdad leaders reveal that coup plot duped MI6 Julie Flint explains how rumours of Saddam's overthrow caused British intelligence to miss vital information about Iraq's weapons programme British intelligence took its eyes off Saddam Hussein's weapons programmes because it had been duped into believing a military coup would leave Sunni Muslims in power in Iraq. Sources in the country say what they missed was a push to convert chemical and biological organisms into dry agents that could be hidden until pressure on the regime was lifted. 'From the second half of 2000, the focus of the British was not on...

U.S. and international air forces are becoming interested and open to utilizing off-the-shelf equipment in low-intensity, counter-insurgency and counter-drug operations in remote areas. The U.S. Navy is already evaluating an armed version of Embraer’s EMB-314 Super Tucano under a classified evaluation program known as ‘Imminent Fury’. The Navy is currently evaluating a single aircraft and is seeking a budget of $44 million to embark on a larger program. The Special Operations Command, Air Force and US Marine Corps are also interested in employing off the shelf assets for low-intensity Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance and rapid target engagement. Armed Super Tucanos...

FBI Warns of Potential Terror Attacks The FBI and Department of Homeland Security today issued an analytical "note" to U.S. law-enforcement officials cautioning that al-Qaida terrorists have in the past expressed interest in attacking public buildings using a dozen suicide bombers each carrying 20 kilograms of explosives. Authors with the U.S. Office of Intelligence and Analysis added that they have "no credible or specific information that terrorists are planning operations against public buildings in the United States." The FBI and DHS analysts said they were releasing the note because "it is important for local authorities and building owners and...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Armed men stole five small planes from a private airstrip in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa on Tuesday by overpowering a police officer and flying away, security forces said. The group of around 20 men stormed the small airstrip at dawn, seized the officer's gun, tied him up, filled the planes with fuel and flew off, said Emma Quiroz, spokeswoman for the government's anti-organized crime operations in Sinaloa. It was not clear if there was a link to drug gangs who use small aircraft to spirit cocaine through northern Mexico toward the United States. Quiroz's...

Calculating the Risks in Pakistan A small group of U.S. military experts and intelligence officials convened in Washington for a classified war game last year, exploring strategies for securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal if the country's political institutions and military safeguards began to fall apart. The secret exercise — conducted without official sponsorship from any government agency, apparently due to the sensitivity of its subject — was one of several such games the U.S. government has conducted in recent years examining various options and scenarios for Pakistan's nuclear weapons: How many troops might be required for a military intervention in...

Compiling a list of suspicious incidents nationwide, including train derailments, chemical/oil refinery fires and or explosions, etc. Don't forget to include news link for source. Please send to my attention.

FBI Special Agent: Trained "Jihadists" are in OregonThe FBI knows of "jihadists" who have trained in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and are now living in Oregon, the agency's Oregon chief said in an exclusive Tuesday interview with The Associated Press. "We don't have an imminent threat that we're aware of. But I will say this: We have people here in Oregon that have trained in jihadist camps in bad areas. In the bad neighborhoods of the world," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Robert Jordan. Asked what he meant by "bad neighborhoods," he said Afghanistan, as well as several other...

The wave of locusts that hit Israel over the weekend intensified Saturday evening, with a fresh swarm of relatively large locusts being spotted over the southern city of Eilat and with the insects reaching as far north as the southern section of the Dead Sea. Swarms of large locusts landed on Saturday evening near Faran in the Arava region and Neot Hakikar south of the Dead Sea. Agriculture Ministry workers have been scanning the area in order to find the exact location of the swarms. A wave of relatively large locusts was spotted flying over the southern city of Eilat...

The Transportation Security Administration issued an advisory on Friday that a Piper PA 25 Pawnee crop-dusting aircraft was stolen from Ejido Queretaro, near Mexicali, Mexico, on Nov. 1. "Although there is currently no indication that this has any connection to terrorist activity," the TSA said, "the theft is cause for concern. Past information indicates that members of al-Qa'ida may have planned -- or may still be planning -- to disperse biological or chemical agents from cropdusting aircraft." The stolen aircraft is registered in Mexico and bears the tail number XBCYP. If you see the aircraft, the TSA says you...

The Transportation Security Administration has issued an advisory that a Piper PA 25 Pawnee crop-dusting aircraft (similar in appearance to the aircraft shown above) was stolen from Ejido Queretaro, near Mexicali, Mexico, on November 1st, 2004. "Although there is currently no indication that this has any connection to terrorist activity," the TSA said, "the theft is cause for concern. Past information indicates that members of al-Qaeda may have planned -- or may still be planning -- to disperse biological or chemical agents from cropdusting aircraft." The stolen aircraft is registered in Mexico and bears the tail number XBCYP. If...

Hijackers' Interest in Crop Dusters Still Puzzles Terrorism Investigators By JOHN J. FIALKA, TOM HAMBURGER and GARY FIELDS Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL WASHINGTON -- Seven months before he crashed an airliner into the World Trade Center, Mohamed Atta was asking crop dusters in Florida an odd question about their planes: How far can they fly? Such aircraft normally aren't flown long distances. But this summer, a Middle Eastern man who gave his name as "Sam" hung around crop-dusting firms in Saskatchewan, Canada, for days -- and asked the same question. And sometime before he was arrested ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top al Qaeda planners of the Sept. 11 hijackings might have canceled the attack had they known that Zacarias Moussaoui -- chosen by Osama bin Laden as one of the pilots -- had been arrested, the commission investigating the attacks said on Thursday. The commission said news of Moussaoui's Aug. 16, 2001, arrest did not reach bin Laden and top al Qaeda planners like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before Sept. 11. "According to (attack coordinator Ramzi bin al-Shaibah), had bin Laden and KSM learned prior to 9/11 that Moussaoui had been detained, they might have canceled the operation,"...

Posted on Sun, Apr. 21, 2002 BY JENNIFER BABSON jbabson@herald.com BOCA CHICA KEY - They worry about allergies and immune system difficulties and ailments yet to be diagnosed. A few bolted for points north; others shuttered windows and stayed inside. Word that the U.S. Army was conducting biological and chemical detection tests off Key West last week -- using a crop duster to spray what it says are benign substances over a small swath of the Gulf -- set alarm bells ringing for some on this island chain. ''Monday I had my house closed up all day and the air...

A BRITISH terror suspect held by the Americans at Guantanamo Bay has confessed to plotting to kill Tony Blair in an anthrax strike on the Commons, it was claimed last night. Moazzam Begg, one of nine Britons detained at Camp Delta in Cuba, has agreed to plead guilty over an elaborate Al Qaeda plot as part of the deal returning him to the UK, his lawyer said. The 36-year- old father- of-three has allegedly confessed to planning to fly an unmanned plane from Suffolk to London and drop the bacteria over Westminster. The confession would be in exchange for a...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The FBI has questioned more than 3,000 pilots and aircraft owners, most of them in the past year, amid persistent concerns that terrorists might use crop-dusting planes to mount a biological or chemical attack, newly released documents show. The interviews have not produced any arrests, according to a senior law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity, but have resulted in terrorism investigations that are still under way. The effort, outlined in documents submitted to the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, is more extensive than previously disclosed and underscores how seriously the threat is viewed...

<p>The government seems hell-bent in its effort to limit the suspects in the anthrax mystery to a domestic loner. First, the FBI's behavioral analysis came up with the profile of a lone wolf based on its "exacting handwriting and linguistic analysis" of one letter that contained 18 words and another that contained 27 words. It suggested that the writer of these two letters was a single disgruntled American, not connected to the jihadist terrorists of Sept. 11 (even though the letter used the plural pronoun "we" and began with an underlined "9-11").</p>

<p>WASHINGTON — The FBI is working on a theory that a previously unmentioned man was meant to be the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Fox News has confirmed.</p> <p>"We are fairly confident we know who No. 20 is," a top law-enforcement official told USA Today, which first reported the story.</p>

A Second Attack Planned French Authorities: Moussaoui Plotted Another Series of Attacks By Brian Ross and David Scott Sept. 5— Zacharias Moussaoui, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, was part of a second wave of suicide hijackings planned for early 2002 in Europe and the United States, French intelligence authorities told ABCNEWS, and they say the U.S. Justice Department is making a mistake in identifying him as the so-called 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. <! -- begin print page / send page box --> Moussaoui is the only person charged by the United States government as an...

WASHINGTON - Zacarias Moussaoui, the only defendant U.S. prosecutors have charged with complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks, contends he was not part of that day's hijackings but was preparing for a later operation outside the United States, court papers revealed Tuesday. In a separate development in the case, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va. ordered that the public and news media be admitted to portions of a June 3 court session to consider whether Moussaoui can interview an al-Qaida member also held as a prisoner. The government had argued the hearing should be closed because classified information would...