The LA Shoe Bomb Plot
Charles Johnson
Thu Feb 9, 2006 at 4:20 pm PST • Views: 205
We finally know the reason why TSA screeners are still asking airline passengers to take their shoes off: President Bush Says Cooperation Thwarted 2002 Attack.
He said that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks who was captured in 2003, had already begun planning the West Coast operation in October, just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. One of Mohammed’s key planners was Hambali, the alleged operations chief of the al-Qaida related terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah. Instead of recruiting Arab hijackers, Hambali found Southeast Asian men who would be less likely to arouse suspicion and who were sent to meet with Osama bin Laden, Bush said.
Under the plot, the hijackers were to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of a commercial jetliner, take control of the plane and crash it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, since renamed the US Bank Tower, Bush said. In his remarks, Bush inadvertantly referred to the site as “Liberty Tower,” and immediately afterward, the White House corrected him.
The president said the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaida operative. Bush did not name the country or the operative.
Frank says: