Eiffel Tower seen in background on right, laying on crushed Arc de Triomphe.
Posted on 01/11/2008 1:09:44 PM PST by camerakid400
A plot by Islamic terrorists to blow up the Eiffel Tower has been uncovered.
A scrambled short-wave radio conversation exposing the planned attack on the world's most visited monument was picked up by Portuguese air traffic controllers and passed on to French spy chiefs.
The 1,060ft high tower has more than six million visitors a year - an average of more than 16,000 a day.
A successful strike on the 7,500 ton iron tower, which was looked down on Paris since 1889, would be a French 9/11 and could cost thousands of lives.
The threat was uncovered in a "vague and muffled" radio conversation picked up by air traffic controllers in Lisbon on Thursday.
It comes after a spate of other threats made in recent days on the websites linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network, calling for the "brothers of Islam to strike Paris".
A police source close to France's DST intelligance agency said last night: "It was a muffled conversation in Arabic that was passed on to us as a matter of course, but our analysts clearly identified the threat.
"The sheer number of visitors going up the tower every day means a bomb blowing up there could cause the most massive loss of life. We've been at our red security alert for several months."
The source added: "Security at the tower was already tight, but is now being stepped up."
Paris's socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, has been given extra security protection after an Islamist website used by Al Qaeda members listed him as a target.
Mr Delanoe - one of France's few openly gay politicians - was stabbed in an anti-gay attack in 2002.
In January 2005, French intelligence officers arrested three French-born Algerians suspected of plotting to blow up the Eiffel Tower.
Smart work!
Wonder if such an event would inspire the French to send some of their youths back to their ancestral hell holes? Probably not.
Another TROP plot to protest peacefully foiled.
The James Bond music just kicked in!
Even the nazis refused to destroy that structure.
Eiffel Tower seen in background on right, laying on crushed Arc de Triomphe.
But the French LOOOOVVVVEEEEEEE the Jihadalistinianites.
Not to be picky but I think it was more like one Nazi (Dietrich von Cholitz) who, as commanding general, did not follow Hitler's orders to blow up the city.
Terrorist #1: Damn! They discovered our plot to blow up the Eiffel Tower!
Terrorist #2: Don’t worry- there’s still plenty of Renaults to car-be-cue....
This story doesn’t make any sense. Air traffic controllers don’t relax in their towers by scanning the shortwave radio bands.
And if the ATC’s weren’t “scanning,” then the terrorists would have to have been transmitting on a frequency reserved for aircraft? It’s hard to believe even the stupidist terrorist would do such a thing.
Also, the language of international aviation is ENGLISH. Of course, the Portugese ATC’s also speak Portuguese and they undoubtedly can understand a lot of Italian and Spanish, maybe even a little French. But who really thinks they can understand a bunch of terrorists talking in Arabic or Persian or Urdu?
Bottom line: Seems to me like a hoax.
-Traveler
But I do agree that you have a cogent point about the source of the transmission. The ATC guys wouldn't be scanning the bands and terrorists would hardly put up a planning session on a frequency that is a party line for the aviation industry in Southwest Europe and Northwest Africa.
How stupid. If they wait a few years, they’ll be the majority in France and can simply turn it into a minaret on the worlds largest French speaking mosque.
THANK YOU to those swift-thinking Portuguese air traffic controllers!
“Not to be picky but I think it was more like one Nazi (Dietrich von Cholitz) who, as commanding general, did not follow Hitler’s orders to blow up the city.”
No problem FRiend. That was the scenario I was referring too.
Thank you for supporting my post with more info on the subject.
He was quoted I believe as saying “I will not go down in history as the man who destroyed the Eiffel Tower.”
I’ve talked to co-pilots in the air on my HF rig before.
“Is Paris Burning” a great read. Read it 40 years ago when I was HS.
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