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Khalid Shaikh Mohammed: Chicago and LA were next after 9/11
By Paul Martin, Washington Times. EFLA bit behind the curve, are we? I guess it adds detail to last year's story... Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, al Qaedaâs 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 organizationâs plans so thoroughly that it could not proceed, according to transcripts of his conversations with interrogators. . . . "The original plan was for a two-pronged attack with five targets on the East Coast of America and five on the West Coast," he told interrogators, according to the transcript. "We talked about hitting California as it was Americaâs richest state, and [al Qaeda leader Osama] bin Laden had talked about economic targets." He is reported to have said that bin Laden, who like Mohammed had studied engineering, vetoed simultaneous coast-to-coast attacks, arguing that "it would be too difficult to synchronize." Mohammed then decided to conduct two waves of attacks, hitting the East Coast first and following up with a second series of attacks. "Osama had said the second wave should focus on the West Coast," he reportedly said.
Posted by: Mike 2004-03-30 |
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