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Officials in
London and Washington said the
alleged plotters, many believed to
be British-born, had their sights
on United, American, and
Continental flights. Simultaneous
explosions were to have been
caused by chemicals in carry-on
luggage. Officials monitored the
plot for months before deciding
they had to move.
Experts say that
the foiled attack suggests Al
Qaeda involvement. Aviation is
still a favored target for Al
Qaeda acolytes bent on taking
terrorism to new heights.
"The best way to
top the 9/11 event is to do it
with civilian aircraft with a lot
of people on board," says Rolf
Tophoven, a German terrorism
expert. "This will create huge
damage on all kinds of economic
and commercial levels."
Bruce Hoffman, an
expert on terrorism at the RAND
Corp. in Washington, notes that
it's typical of Al Qaeda to go
back to targets and improve their
techniques on past attacks. The
successful attack on the USS Cole
in 2000 followed a failed bid to
sink the USS Sullivan in 1999. The
9/11 attack came eight years after
the limited attack on the World
Trade Center in 1993.
This latest
effort, he adds, is a carbon copy
of the failed 1995 "Bojinka" plot
by Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, convicted
of being the mastermind of the
1993 World Trade Center attack, to
blow up 11 American airliners over
the Pacific, using plastic
explosives.
Britain raised its
terror alert levels to the highest
notch, while the US put a red
alert - the first time that level
was invoked - on flights from
Britain. All other US flights were
one step below, at "orange."
US Homeland
Security Secretary Michael
Chertoff and Peter Clarke, deputy
assistnant commissioner for
Scotland Yard, said the plot was
international in scope and
involved many people.
President Bush, in
Wisconsin, said that the US was
safer than it was before 9/11.
"We've taken a lot of measures to
protect the American people but
obviously we're not completely
safe," he said. But, he added, "It
is a mistake to believe there is
no threat to the United States of
America."
Officials would
not say exactly how many aircraft
were targeted, nor when precisely
they thought the plotters would
strike. French officials said
Thursday that the plotters were
probably of Pakistani origin.
British officials refused comment.
The number of
suspects involved points to a far
bigger operation than the
post-9/11 terror attacks in
London; Madrid; Bali; and
Casablanca, Morocco. Paul
Wilkinson, a security expert and
author of "Terrorism Versus
Democracy," says: "It's the scale
of conspiracy that is so worrying
because it's much larger than most
things we've seen since 9/11."
Yet attacking
aviation targets has proved harder
since 9/11 because of heightened
security. To subvert that
vigilance, the plotters arrested
Thursday were allegedly planning
to smuggle aboard different liquid
chemicals that may appear
innocuous but could be explosive
if mixed.
As a result,
passengers with babies Thursday
were ordered to take a swig of
their baby formula in front of
security guards to demonstrate its
integrity. Personal documents,
medication, and all other hand
luggage was banned from flights
out of Britain.
The unravelling of
the plot marks another apparent
success for British
counterterrorism, which already
claims to have foiled a dozen or
so attacks since 9/11, four in the
past year. While some of these
have produced no convictions and
inconclusive evidence, security
expert Bob Ayers says this one
should be taken seriously.
"You don't take a
decision to shut down all flights
to America lightly," says Mr.
Ayers, an expert with the Chatham
House think tank. "It would
suggest they have substantial
evidence."
He adds that
British intelligence must have
somehow infiltrated the plotters -
a major success for organizations
that are scrambling to get up to
speed with the new terror threat
from radical, disenchanted
segments of the Muslim community.
"There could be more than one cell
involved here, but this means [the
intelligence services] have
penetrated more than one group or
the supporting infrastructure."
Security officials
had a delicate task knowing when
to move, said Home Secretary John
Reid said. "Move too early, you
may not know the full scope of who
is involved and you may provoke
those you don't know into taking
the action you don't want. If you
don't move, you run the risk of
terrible consequences."
But while the
"underresourced and
underappreciated" security
services have done commendable
work, says M.J. Gohel, a terrorism
analyst at London's Asia Pacific
Foundation, they've had less
success finding out who is
providing "homegrown" terrorists
with direction.
British officials
regularly warn the public of the
threat. Wednesday, Mr. Reid said
that the country faced its most
sustained period of threat since
World War II.
Britain is a
particular target because of its
backing for US foreign policy in
the Middle East. RAND's Hoffman
also notes that the fifth
anniversary of 9/11 is looming.
Despite comments that Al Qaeda may
be in retreat, he says, "nothing
is further from the truth. At
least in Europe, Al Qaeda has put
down an organizational structure
to sustain these attacks."
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Correspondents Christa Case and
Faye Bowers contributed to this
report. |