Bush Tells of Al-qaida Plot to Fly Jet Into Tallest Building in Los Angeles

President George Bush, on the defensive over controversial measures in the war on terror, yesterday gave new details of a foiled al-Qaida plot to use Asian recruits and shoebombs to hijack an airliner and fly it into the tallest building on America’s west coast.

In a speech to the National Guard Association in Washington, Mr Bush claimed that the conspiracy was evidence of al-Qaida’s determination to launch a new attack on US soil. "We cannot let the fact that America hadn’t been attacked in four-and-a-half years since September 11, lull us into an illusion that threats to our nation have disappeared," he said.

He offered as his most compelling example a plot hatched by the architect of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to fly hijacked aircraft into the 72-storey Library Tower - since renamed the US Bank Tower - in Los Angeles.

Within a month of the 9/11 attacks, in October 2001, "the mastermind of the September 11 attacks had already set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoebombs to breach the cockpit door and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast", the president said.

Mohammed, who is in US custody at an undisclosed location, recruited the leader of an al-Qaida affiliate known as Jemaah Islamiyah, for the mission. Jemaah Islamiyah’s most prominent operations chief, Hambali - also known as Riduan Isamuddin - was chosen because it was thought that south-east Asian hijackers would be less likely to arouse suspicions than Arab Muslims. "Hambali recruited several key operatives who had been training in Afghanistan," Mr Bush said. "Once the operatives were recruited, they met with Osama bin Laden, and then began preparations for the west coast attack."

Hambali is believed to have gathered a cell of four men for the mission, including a pilot, and collected funds to pay them. The plot was thwarted in 2002 with the arrest of plotters in Malaysia. Hambali, who also planned the Bali bombings, was arrested in August 2003 in Thailand with two of his top lieutenants.

The scenario outlined by Mr Bush yesterday was the fullest public acknowledgement to date of the ambitions of al-Qaida in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 2001 attacks - and their deadly ingenuity.

Originally, Mohammed had planned to stage bicoastal attacks in New York as well as Los Angeles, but was forced to scale back because of the complexity of the operation. Instead, he sought to bypass new security measures by using shoebombs and not the box cutters used by the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - and recruiting outside the Middle East.

"This was going to be the follow-up to September 11," said Vincent Cannistraro, the former director of the CIA’s counter-terrorism centre. "We weren’t looking in south-east Asia. We were looking at the stereotype of Arab Muslims, so yes it showed creativity on their part."

Since September 11, Mr Bush has issued periodic reminders to Americans of the continued threat of an al-Qaida attack. In a speech last October he said the US and its allies had thwarted at least 10 al-Qaida plots against western targets.

Yesterday’s warning, as in the past, comes at a time of mounting public unease about some of the methods the president has adopted in his pursuit of the war on terror - specifically his decision to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor the telephone calls and email of American citizens without resort to a court warrant. Mr Bush has also struggled to force through Congress a renewal of his Patriot Act, the post 9/11 anti-terror legislation. Last night there were signs in Congress that key Republicans who were wary about extending the authorities’ powers had swung behind a White House compromise version.

Mr Cannistraro said the plots outlined by Mr Bush were foiled by human intelligence and not the NSA surveillance, and Mr Bush did not refer directly to the domestic spy program yesterday. Instead he opted for a more general defense of his stewardship of the war on terror, saying that Washington had worked with its allies to block the attack on Los Angeles. "It took the combined efforts of several countries to break up this plot," the president said. "By working together, we took dangerous terrorists off the streets. We stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland."