Scale, detail of aborted plan recall al-Qaida, terror experts say
Scott Shane
New York Times
Aug. 11, 2006 12:00 AM
Intelligence and counterterrorism officials on Thursday said that the scale and sophistication of the reputed scheme to blow up jetliners over the Atlantic could mean that al-Qaida, whose central command has been severely damaged since 2001, is again able to direct attacks.
But some specialists on the shifting networks of international terrorism said the alternative explanation, that home-grown British jihadists had conceived a plot of such ambition, might hold even graver implications for the future.
"The great problem is that al-Qaida has moved far beyond being a terrorist organization to being almost a state of mind," said Simon Reeve, author of a 1999 book on Osama bin Laden and his associates. "That's terribly significant, because it gives the movement a scope and longevity it didn't have before 9/11."
FBI Director Robert Mueller said in an interview that the scope and targets of the thwarted plot were "suggestive of al-Qaida direction and planning," and other top officials said the plan reflected the terrorist network's penchant for spectacular and simultaneous assaults.
"It has all of the earmarks of an al-Qaida plot," said Mary Jo White, the former U.S. attorney whose office successfully investigated and prosecuted the so-called Bojinka plot to bring down airliners over the Pacific in 1995.
The Bojinka plot was devised by Ramzi Yousef, who had carried out the largely ineffective 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the 2001 attacks that toppled the towers, an earlier example of al-Qaida repeating an attack against the same targets.
Michael Sheehan, a former National Security Council official who served as the New York City Police Department's top counterterrorism official until May, said the Bojinka plot clearly served as a blueprint for the British plotters.
"This is a repeat; this is clearly Bojinka-inspired," said Sheehan. "This is almost an identical plot. The only difference is the Atlantic Ocean, not the Pacific."
Sheehan said the hands-on training in explosives and trade craft that al-Qaida or another organized group can provide are what can "graduate a home-grown cell of people that are in the minor leagues to the major leagues of terrorism, as well as providing some strategic direction."
Those arrested in Britain are all citizens of the United Kingdom, primarily of Pakistani descent, and with possible ties back to Pakistan, according to British officials. Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are believed to be in hiding in Pakistan, which counterterrorism officials fear has become a center of terrorist plotting.
John O. Brennan, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said al-Qaida connections for the alleged plotters could cover a range of possibilities, from direct ties to the group's leaders to links with people who may at some point have trained in a Qaida camp. The latter was more likely, he said.
Whether it was hatched in Britain or Pakistan, Brennan said, the thwarted plot suggests the long-term nature of the threat posed by the movement bin Laden helped found. Al-Qaida, the name bin Laden gave to his organization in 1988 when it was fighting Soviet troops in Afghanistan, means "the base" or "the foundation" in Arabic, he noted.
"The intention of al-Qaida was to create a base or foundation for a long-term struggle," Brennan said. "Its leaders are thinking in terms of the Crusades and a conflict that lasts for many, many years."
Even if the airliner plot turns out to be home-grown, its design was more ambitious than even the most destructive attacks since 2001, including the 2004 train bombings in Madrid and the subway and bus attacks in London last year.
Those involved simultaneous explosions, but the explosives were conventional and the death tolls - 191 in Madrid and 56 in London - were a fraction of the Sept. 11 toll.
