Posted on 02/11/2006 4:06:17 AM PST by Neville72
A Malaysian pilot recruited by al-Qaeda to fly a hijacked airliner into the tallest building on the US West Coast pulled out of the plot when he realised it was a suicide mission, security officials in South-East Asia said today.
Further details emerged of the plan to target the iconic 73-storey US Bank Building in Los Angeles, revealed by President Bush yesterday in an address to rally support for the War on Terror.
Terrorism experts in Malaysia said that Zaini Zakaria, an engineer, was among three men being trained to launch the planned second-wave of Osama bin Laden's assault on the United States, supposed to take place a few months after the atrocities of September 11 2001.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesonline.co.uk ...
How on earth would a shoe bomb be used to breach a cockpit door?
No virgins for you, pal.
Not to bright. First he agreed, THEN he realized it was a suicide mission.
Osama should have just given him a parachute.
Yeah, no kidding. At what point did this genius figure that out. Al Qaeda, planes! What did he think, that they were going to drop leaflets around LA. Oy! I think the intelligence level of these people really shines here.
A Malaysian pilot recruited by al-Qaeda to fly a hijacked airliner into the tallest building on the US West Coast pulled out of the plot when he realised it was a suicide mission, security officials in South-East Asia said today.
How many hours of pain-staking analysis did he perform?
I think he contracted out to some Arab due diligence team. LOL
Blowing up a door without damaging anything around it isn't terribly difficult, so long as you know how thick it is, and what it's made of.
Yeah, no kidding. At what point did this genius figure that out.
Back when he was recruited, he probably thought it was for a regular hijacking, like many of the 19 9/11 hijackers apparently thought. It's very likely that only the pilots knew for sure it was a suicide mission.
It looks like once the guy realized that the mission wasn't really 'We're taking this plane to Cuba!', he got a lot less motivated.
But the plot was derailed in 2002 when a key al-Qaeda operative was arrested, Mr Bush said. It was finally thwarted when Hambali was arrested in Thailand in 2003.
It is very possible to do, but only a dim bulb would attempt it.
My suspicion is that mostly dim bulbs apply for the job (aviation terrorist) anyway, so the threat is real.
How about the other fat load who was too busy planning P1 to have the knockout punch P2 planned. I still remember his photo after being rousted out of bed and I have to wonder about the overall quality of the bad guys at the upper management level.
"Ted: The tempermental passive-agressive terrorist"
I was guessing that he'd take the shoe off first, but, if they're going to fly a plane into a building, precautions like that would be kind of meaningless anyway. Shoe on, or shoe off, they're all going to die.
If that was the case w/ the 9/11 hijackers, wouldn't they have simply refused to fly into the buildings?
What's there to refuse? The only terrorist with a say in it was the guy in the pilot seat. The other hijackers were almost certainly doing crowd control, and wouldn't know the truth until the last second.
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