WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2003, Los Angeles police officials were summoned to a briefing with the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force and told that the 73-story Library Tower might have been the target of a terrorist plot similar to that of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackings.
When the plot was disclosed last year, authorities said publicly that they had viewed the claims by captured Al Qaeda chieftain Khalid Shaikh Mohammed with skepticism. They said that, at best, the alleged plot was something that had been discussed but never put into action.
By the time anybody knew about it, the threat -- if there had been one -- had passed, federal counter-terrorism officials said Friday.
Still, the broader idea for attacks on West Coast buildings that included the Library Tower was one of the cases President Bush was referring to when he said that three potential terrorist plots within the United States had been "disrupted" since Sept. 11, 2001. In his policy address Thursday, Bush spoke at length about terrorists and their organizations, saying that at least 10 plots had been foiled worldwide by the U.S. and its allies, including plots in the U.S.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan had said a day earlier that Bush's speech would provide "unprecedented" detail about terrorist threats, some of them never before disclosed.
However, Bush did not detail the foiled plans, and hours later, the White House released a sketchy list of "plots, casings and infiltrations" that had been disrupted or stopped by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11 attacks. It did not explain whether any of the incidents were new or disclose how advanced the plots were, although most experts said they did not represent plans that had been put into operation.
On Friday, the White House responded to questions seeking clarification on the potential attacks by referring inquiries to the FBI or other counter-terrorism agencies. The FBI referred the questions to the White House.
"I'm not going to have more to say on those matters at this point," McClellan said.
He said the list of foiled plots had been prepared by "the intelligence community" and was released late in the day, hours after Bush's speech, because officials needed to make sure the information it contained would not jeopardize national security.
