|
Bush reveals terror plot to pass patriot act { January 2006 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/13834044.htmhttp://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/13834044.htm
Posted on Thu, Feb. 09, 2006
Bush reveals details of foiled terror plot
BY MARK SILVA
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - Facing challenges to his domestic surveillance program and difficult negotiations over renewal of the Patriot Act, President Bush on Thursday emphasized new details of a previously foiled plot to strike a high-rise in Los Angeles as he defended aggressive tactics to combat terrorism.
In revealing facts about the aborted 2002 plan to slam a hijacked airliner into the tallest building in Los Angeles - a West Coast sequel to Sept. 11 - the White House seemed to underscore both successes in the war on terror and the persisting threat that terrorists pose to the United States.
"We are not yet safe," said Bush, flanked by paintings of colonial-era Minutemen in a speech delivered in a flag-lined hall of the National Guard Memorial Building in Washington.
This is not the first time Bush has cited the West Coast plot. He mentioned it among several other instances of averted attacks when he sought in October to confront growing opposition to the war in Iraq, a point at which his own job-approval ratings were nearing their nadir.
This time the White House has released details about four unnamed Asian terrorists recruited by the al-Qaida mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks to commandeer an airliner with shoe bombs and attack the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles.
The White House disclosure came at the height of congressional negotiations over renewal of the controversial USA Patriot Act. Republican and Democratic leaders announced Thursday that they have agreed to an extension.
The White House declined to say whether the National Security Agency surveillance that Bush repeatedly has authorized without court orders since Sept. 11 played any role in uncovering the West Coast plot or arresting the leader of the Asian cell in February 2002 and thus thwarting it.
But invoking that plot followed a pattern for the president, who has frequently talked about the possibility of additional terror attacks, a message echoed by other top administration officials.
Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, has told Republican National Committee members that the party's political fortunes this year rest on assuring Americans that Republicans are tough on terrorism.
And some Democrats have accused the administration of exploiting fear.
"Two weeks ago, Karl Rove ... was telling the National Republican Committee, `Here's your game plan, folks, here's how you're going to win - we're going to win by getting everybody scared again,'" Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., told the United Auto Workers this week.
The administration is under growing congressional pressure to more fully explain its rationale for the eavesdropping program.
"If they came with the idea that this is going to stop an investigation on the part of the Senate Intelligence Committee, they were wrong," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., vice chairman of the committee, emerging from a closed-door briefing on surveillance Thursday. The president, and later his homeland security adviser Fran Townsend, offered a more complete narrative of the planned attack on Los Angeles:
Al-Qaida wanted to carry out simultaneous attacks on the East and West Coasts of the United States. Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader who has evaded capture to this day, decided to delay the West Coast assault for "a follow-up attack." Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the al-Qaida mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, started planning the Los Angeles attack in October 2001 with Hambali, chief of a related terrorist group, Jemaah Islamiyah.
To avoid arousing suspicion after the Sept. 11 hijackings carried out by Arab terrorists, Hambali recruited four terrorists from Southeast Asia. Mohammed personally trained the leader of a four-man cell in the use of shoe bombs for a plot to breach the pilot's door of an airliner.
The four terrorists traveled to Afghanistan in October 2001 to meet with bin Laden. But, with the help of intelligence services in four unnamed South Asian nations, the leader of the cell was arrested in February 2002, foiling the plot. He and the other three are being detained in a classified location.
In addition, Mohammed was captured in March 2003 and Hambali was arrested in August 2003.
Asked why Bush is offering more details of a four-year-old event now, Townsend said, "The president is always looking for opportunities to share with the American people the details and the texture of the ongoing war on terror."
|
|
