According to captured Al Qaeda freakazoid Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, there were plans after September 11 to attack Chicago and Los Angeles—but the terror cells were thrown into disarray by the Bush administration’s unexpectedly strong response to 9/11: Chicago, L.A. towers were next targets.

LONDON — Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaeda’s purported operations chief, has told U.S. interrogators that the group had been planning attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles and the Sears Tower in Chicago on the heels of the September 11, 2001, terror strikes.

Those plans were aborted mainly because of the decisive U.S. response to the New York and Washington attacks, which disrupted the terrorist organization’s plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators.

Mohammed told interrogators that he and Ramzi Yousuf, his nephew who was behind an earlier attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, had leafed through almanacs of American skyscrapers when planning the first operation.

“We were looking for symbols of economic might,” he told his captors.

He specifically mentioned as potential targets the Library Tower in Los Angeles, which was “blown up” in the film “Independence Day,” and the Sears Tower in Chicago.