US: Asian countries helped foil LA attack

WASHINGTON — A pair of South Asian countries and two others in Southeast Asia helped the United States foil an al-Qaeda plot to crash a hijacked plane into Los Angeles’ tallest skyscraper, US officials said yesterday.

United States President George W. Bush credited robust cooperation between the United States and its allies in Southeast Asia for dismantling the operation, and said global pressure had left Osama bin Laden’s terrorism network "weakened and fractured" and short of cash.

A Malaysian was to be trained as a pilot by al-Qaeda to crash a plane into the 1,017-foot US Bank Tower, also known as Library Tower, but told officials he pulled out after witnessing the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, a former security official said yesterday.

White House counterterrorism adviser Frances Townsend said that all four members of the cell have been caught, but declined to name the two South Asian countries and two Southeast Asian countries that helped foil the plot "because our partners want to have it kept a secret."

"The good news is, we have strengthened our relationship throughout that region in South Asia and Southeast Asia with our partners since 9/11," she said.

The US has an anti-terror pact with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

ASEAN members Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, together with non-member Pakistan have all been cooperating closely with the United States on terrorism.

Townsend said the four traveled to Afghanistan, where they swore an oath of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, but declined to spell out how far along the plot had gone before being disrupted.

Townsend said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – sometimes called the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks – started planning the US west coast plot in October 2001.

Working in Asia with Hambali, a leader of al-Qaeda’s Southeast Asian affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), Mohammed recruited four operatives to form a terror cell for the attack, she said.

Bush said that "subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations made clear the intended target and how al-Qaeda hoped to execute it" and led the United States and its partners to catch the conspirators.

Bush has said that Mohammed planned to hijack a plane and fly the jet into the US Bank Tower.

Bush said that instead of using Arab hijackers, as in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the plot called for "young men from Southeast Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion."

A former top security official in Malaysia said yesterday that Malaysian engineer Zaini Zakaria was among three men who were being trained by bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network to take part in the attack.

Zaini, 38, traveled to al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1999, where he met senior figures in the terrorist group including Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin, or Hambali, a Malaysian security official said on condition of anonymity.

When he returned to Malaysia the same year, Zaini enrolled in a flight school and obtained a license to fly a small plane. He then began making inquiries in Australia about getting a license to fly a jet, the official said.

But Zaini was never told what his mission for al-Qaeda would be. When he saw media coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks, he severed his ties with the militants.

Zaini, who has been detained without trial in Malaysia since he surrendered in December 2002, told Malaysian interrogators that he "didn’t want that kind of Jihad," an official familiar with the interrogation said.

A senior police officer involved in the interrogation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Zaini told his Malaysian interrogators "he was not prepared to die as a martyr, so he backed out."

The possible "second wave" attack was mentioned briefly in the June 2004 US National Commission report on the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

It quoted Mohammed as admitting that "only three potential pilots were recruited for the alleged second wave," and identified them as Zacarias Moussaoui, Abderraouf Jdey, and Zaini.

However, Mohammed told his US interrogators that "he was too busy with the 9/11 plot to plan the second wave of attacks," the report said.

Zaini, a native of the northeastern state of Kelantan, was doing some odd jobs before he surrendered himself to Malaysian authorities in Kelantan in December 2002, apparently because he was worried about an ill family member, said his former lawyer Saiful Izham Ramli.

Saiful said Zaini never told his lawyers about ever taking flight classes, and his arrest records do not describe him as a pilot or being a suspect in a "second wave" attacks.

He said Zaini was principally wanted by authorities for his links with Jemaah Islamiyah, a common charge for which scores of suspects are being held in a high-security prison in Kamunting under a law that allows indefinite detention without trial.

Zaini’s financial assets, and that of several other suspects,

were ordered frozen by the US in 2003. His family is now so poor that they cannot even afford to travel to Kamunting in central Malaysia to visit him, Saiful said.

Zaini’s wife hails from the southern Johor state’s Ulu Tiram district, the site of a school where Hambali and other Indonesian terror leaders allegedly were based for some years.

Malaysia is holding over 100 people under the legislation, more than 80 of whom are alleged Islamic militants.

Disclosure

The White House had described the plot in October 2005, but Bush disclosed an unprecedented amount of newly declassified information.

The disclosure came amid negotiations with Congress over renewal of the controversial USA Patriot Act. Republican and Democratic leaders announced Thursday that they had agreed to extend it.

The operatives met with bin Laden before beginning their preparations for the attack, which started to unravel in early 2002 when "a Southeast Asian nation" caught a key al-Qaeda operative, said Bush. He did not name the operative or the country.

Mohammed’s key co-conspirator was Hambali, said Bush. The plotters were captured in 2003 in Pakistan and Thailand, respectively.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan denied any linkage between the new details and Bush’s aggressive campaign to defend his secret domestic spying program, which some lawmakers have called illegal.

But McClellan said the administration had worked to declassify the new material "probably at least three weeks" — right as the controversy over the warrantless surveillance mushroomed.

Bush said the plot and the way it was thwarted highlighted the nature of the global war on terrorism and especially the importance of robust international cooperation.

"From the vantage point of a terrorist sitting in a cave, the future seems increasingly bleak," he said. "Across the world, our coalition is pursuing the enemy with relentless determination. And because of these efforts, the terrorists are weakened and fractured. Yet they’re still lethal."

The official investigation into the 2001 attacks also alluded to the skyscraper, saying that Mohammed had originally hoped to fly jets into "the tallest buildings in California and the state of Washington."

Townsend said Mohammed had trained the cell leader in the use of shoe-bombs, the same device used by British "shoe-bomber" Richard Reid in his failed attempt to blow up an airliner in December 2001.

Townsend said it was unknown whether Reid, who is serving a life sentence in a US prison, and the cell members knew each other.

After the cell leader was arrested in February 2002, Townsend said, "At that point, the other members of the cell believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled."

The three other operatives were subsequently arrested, though Townsend refused to name them, say where they were detained or where they were being held.

Mohammed was arrested in Pakistan in March 2003, while Hambali was caught in Thailand in August 2003.

Townsend said the Los Angeles plot displayed the link between Al-Qaeda and JI.

"The chronology of it makes very clear that these people continued to plot against us, not only past 9/11, but Hambali continued, through JI and his operatives, to plot other attacks," she said.

JI’s goal is to unite Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and the southern Philippines in a fundamentalist Islamic state, and it uses attacks to destabilize regional governments.

It was behind the 2002 and 2005 bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali that killed more than 200 people. — AFP, AP