Bush elaborates on reported plot

WASHINGTON – With pressure mounting on the White House to more fully explain its anti-terrorism strategy, President Bush on Thursday offered new details of a reported plot against downtown Los Angeles as evidence of success in foiling attacks.

Authorities had revealed two years ago that they believed al-Qaida operatives, in a West Coast follow-up to the Sept. 11 attacks, had planned to hijack an airliner and crash it into what was then called the Library Tower.

Bush said Thursday that the terrorist operatives planned to use “shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door.” He said that Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed had recruited and trained young Asian men to carry out the plot because suspicions of Arabs were running high, but that the plan was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaida operative.

Bush did not name the nation or the operative, but his decision to reveal even the most incremental details of the reported plot underscored the effort the White House has undertaken recently to defend its anti-terrorism policies. The details did little to counter skepticism from Democrats and some law enforcement officials who have questioned whether the scheme had ever been put into operation before it was thwarted.

One U.S. official familiar with the operational aspects of the war on terrorism said he believed the Library Tower plot was one of many al-Qaida operations that had not gone much past the conceptual stage.

In his speech Thursday to the National Guard Association, the president cited the reported plan as evidence of the ongoing danger of terrorism and of the success of his anti-terror strategy.

The president did not link the foiling of the scheme to his controversial program of warrantless wiretaps, conducted on certain international communications by the National Security Agency.