Asian airliners were also targets in original Sept. 11 plan: Repots

Asian airliners were also targets in original Sept. 11 plan: Repots

Rohan Sullivan, Associated Press, Kuala Lumpur

The mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks originally conceived
a two-part plan that included hijacking airliners in Southeast
Asia and blowing them up in mid-air as planes crashed into their
targets in New York and Washington, U.S. investigators say.

Al-Qaeda leaders also considered crashing hijacked planes into
American targets in Japan, Singapore or South Korea as part of a
"scaled-up" version of what became the Sept. 11 strikes,
according to a staff report to the U.S. congressional committee
investigating the attacks.

Osama bin Laden rejected the Asian part of the plan because it
would be too hard to coordinate with the U.S. side, says the
document, one of two reports into al-Qaeda's operations and the
Sept. 11 plot released on Wednesday in Washington and posted on
the Internet.

The report, citing information gleaned by U.S. interrogators
from alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, reveals
a much wider role for Asia in the 2001 attacks than was
previously known.

Mohammed, a Kuwaiti who claims to have first proposed flying
commercial airliners into high-profile targets in the United
States to bin Laden in 1996, is in U.S. custody at an undisclosed
location after being captured in Pakistan last year.

In the mid-1990s, Mohammed was based in the Philippines and
was a key figure in the so-called "Bojinka" plot to blow up 12
U.S. airliners over the Pacific. The plot fell apart when
Philippine authorities discovered the bomb-making equipment in
January 1995.

Mohammed told his U.S. interrogators that in 1996 he pitched
several ideas to bin Laden to attack the United States, including
a "scaled-up" version of the Sept. 11 attacks, the report says.

The U.S.-based part involved suicide hijackers, 10 planes and
targets on both coasts. The second part was a revived and
modified version of the Bojinka plot, the report says.
"Operatives would hijack U.S. commercial planes flying Pacific
routes from Southeast Asia and explode them in mid-air instead of
crashing them into particular targets," the report says. "An
alternate scenario, according to (Mohammed), involved flying
planes into U.S. targets in Japan, Singapore or Korea.

"All planes in the United States and in Southeast Asia,
however, were to be crashed or exploded more or less
simultaneously, to maximize the psychological impact of the
attacks," the report says.

Mohammed met with bin Laden again in 1999 to develop a list of
targets, and bin Laden assigned four al-Qaeda operatives - Saudi
citizens Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar and Yemenis Walid
Muhammed bin Attash and Abu Bara al-Yemeni- to the plot, it says.

After undergoing specialized training at terrorist camps in
Afghanistan, the four traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where
they held meetings in January 2000.

In Malaysia, Attash and al-Yemeni were "directed to study
airport security and conduct surveillance on U.S. carriers" and
al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were "to switch passports," the report
says.

The al-Qaeda operatives were hosted in Kuala Lumpur by Riduan
Isamuddin, an Indonesian better known as Hambali, and Yazid
Sufaat, a former Malaysian army captain and chemical engineer.

Both were senior members of Jamaah Islamiyah, an al-Qaeda
affiliate in Southeast Asia, and had received training in bin
Laden camps in Afghanistan, the report says.

From Malaysia, Attash, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar traveled to
Bangkok, Thailand, for further meetings.

From Bangkok, Attash flew to Hong Kong aboard a U.S. airliner
with a box cutter - the hijacking weapon used on Sept. 11 -
hidden in a bathroom bag. He later admitted to "casing" the
flight in preparation for the Asian hijacking plot, the report
says.

But in April or May of 2000, "bin Laden decided to cancel the
Southeast Asia part of the plan's operation because he believed
it would be too difficult to synchronize the hijacking and
crashing of flights on opposite sides of the globe," the report
says.

Al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar traveled from Bangkok to the United
States, where they eventually became two of the hijackers aboard
the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11. Attash
became involved in the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in
October 2000. It is not clear what happened to al-Yemeni.

Scores of suspected members of Jamaah Islamiyah have been
jailed in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines in a
regionwide anti-terrorist crackdown over the past three years.
Most are alleged to have plotted or assisted in locally organized
attacks in the region, including the 2002 nightclub bombings on
Bali island that killed 202 people.