WASHINGTON — President Bush said in his Sept. 11 speech that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other suspected Al Qaeda terrorist leaders now in custody had provided valuable information to the CIA "that has helped stop attacks in America and across the world."
But he didn't specify which attacks had been stopped, or how. Here are questions and answers about terrorist plots discovered by CIA interrogators.
Question: Which foiled attacks was the president referring to?
Answer: Bush did not offer details, but administration officials have said one was an alleged plot by Al Qaeda operatives to hijack an airliner and crash it into the Library Tower (now known as the U.S. Bank Tower) in downtown Los Angeles. And a White House fact sheet issued last week said that a captured terrorism suspect nicknamed Abu Zubeida told authorities that Al Qaeda was planning to launch an attack inside the United States and that "the operatives were detained, one while traveling to the U.S." The fact sheet also said Mohammed told interrogators of planned attacks on buildings in the United States.
Q: Who is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed?
A: Mohammed is the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, a Kuwaiti-born militant of Pakistani descent. He claims to have brought the idea for the multi-plane suicide hijacking plot to Al Qaeda in the mid-1990s after a similar plot was thwarted by Philippine authorities. After Sept. 11, Mohammed became Al Qaeda's operational commander, overseeing attacks on several continents before his capture in Pakistan in March 2003.
Q: Which Al Qaeda members were involved in the foiled attacks mentioned by Bush?
A: Again, the president was not specific. But U.S. counter-terrorism officials said the references apparently involved an alleged plot by suspected Al Qaeda member Jose Padilla to launch an attack in the United States; Padilla was arrested in May 2002 as he stepped off a plane in Chicago. Suspects in the Library Tower plot include the leader of an Al Qaeda affiliate organization in Southeast Asia nicknamed Hambali and two Malaysian men nicknamed Lillie and Zubair.
Q: How far along were those planned attacks?
A: U.S. counter-terrorism authorities have said none of the alleged plots had reached the point where attacks were imminent, and that most if not all were in the "aspirational" stages, rather than operational. They said that Padilla was allegedly scouting locations, and that the men suspected of plotting the attack in Los Angeles were believed to be in the planning stages when apprehended.
