Bush: Recycling the News

10 February 2006 |permalink | email article

President Bush disclosed yesterday new details of a foiled terrorist plot to fly a highjacked jet into a Los Angeles skyscraper, the tallest building on the West Coast, and crediting international cooperation in the war on terrorism with thwarting the 2002 scheme.

His speech appeared to confuse and stun many, gave the impression that Republicans want to make national security the #1 issue in the midterm elections and caused a peevish Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to vent that the White House had not given him advance notice.

While some details are new - the planned use of a ìshoe bombî by hijackers to access the cockpit door - neither Bush nor the White House gave any real reason beyond Rovian spin for releasing details of a plot they first disclosed last October. In fact, most of what Bush said about the plot was already recycled news.

The Sunday Times (London) reported on March 28, 2004 that Osama Bin Laden ordered his operations chief, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to prepare for an attack on Heathrow soon after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S. as part of a two-pronged assault, with a cryptic reference to the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

On March 31, 2004, the Los Angeles Times confirmed that an attack on the Library Tower was planned but never carried out. ìWe were made aware of that information last spring,î said John Miller, the LAPDís top anti-terrorism official (now a rising figure in the FBI) who detailed a number of immediate measures to heighten security and implement high-rise evacuation drills after the plot was uncovered.

Miller said the Joint Terrorism Task Force first learned of Al Qaedaís aborted plans for a second wave of attacks in 2003, according to the Times story. It noted that ìtwo law enforcement sources said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, captured in March 2003, reportedly told his interrogators that the Library Tower ñ now known as the U.S. Bank Tower ñ was targeted along with Chicagoís Sears Tower.î

It is known that L.A. public officials, including then-Councilman Villaraigosa, were privy to briefings on the Al Qaeda plot by Miller three years ago, making his rant a little disingenuous. The mayor told AP that he was amazed that the president would make an announcement on national TV without informing his office. But his office said the White House made such a disclosure on Wednesday.

Villaraigosa issued a reassuring statement updating many of the precautions detailed by Miller in 2003. But Kevin Roderick, editor of laobserved.com, was not reassured by the mayorís math that LAFD helicopters can evacuate 350 people an hour off the roof of a burning building. ìHow many hours would it take to clear a sixty-story office tower?î

The mayor did get a live shot on CNN, but so what? Bush daily plays the network like a fiddle.

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