Posted on 12/29/2003 12:57:57 PM PST by EsclavoDeCristo
Al-Qaeda blueprint exposed By Ben English, Ian Gallagher and Jef Sommerfield 29dec03
AL-QAEDA has turned its terror sights to the sea, targeting luxury cruise liners in an expansion of its "jihad" against the West.
Owners of the recently launched $1.3 billion Queen Mary 2 yesterday confirmed threats of terror hang over its maiden voyage early next year. The Osama bin-Laden terrorist group is also adopting new tactics to destroy commercial aircraft.
British MP Patrick Mercer has revealed Saudi authorities arrested two Islamic suicide pilots. He said the pilots were preparing to crash two light aircraft into a packed British Airways passenger jet while it was still on the tarmac at the airport in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.
Both light planes had been crammed with explosives. And Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said he had received reliable intelligence of a Christmas Day plan to assassinate the Pope and destroy the Vatican by flying a hijacked plane into it.
News of the terror plots emerged after US authorities upgraded their national terror alert status before Christmas.
US intelligence officials also found evidence Al-Qaeda was planning to attack the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal as it passed through the Gibraltar Straits en route to the Gulf War earlier this year.
Plans for the attack emerged after a US spy plane discovered scores of acoustic sea-mines had disappeared from a naval base in North Korea.
US intelligence services believe the mines could be aboard 28 "terror ships" Osama bin Laden has assembled in the past year. The capture of Al-Qaeda's chief of naval operations, Ahmad Belai al-Neshari, has helped to reveal the extent of the organisation's maritime ambitions.
Al-Neshari was found carrying a 180-page dossier that listed "targets of opportunity". These included large cruise liners sailing from Western ports.
Anti-terrorism expert and former Sydney Olympics security chief Neil Fergus said yesterday that he was not convinced Al-Qaeda could launch sea attacks.
"I don't know where Al-Qaeda would have got the armada. The Tamil Tigers (separatist fighters in Sri Lanka) have a fleet of about a dozen ships but they are in an island enclave and that was a difficult exercise," Mr Fergus said.
"I also don't think anyone would have a clue about sea mines from North Korea regardless of U2 flights or satellites."
An Australian aviation industry official said stealing a light aircraft was "as easy as stealing a car if you know what you are doing".
In Australia there have been two recent examples of light planes being stolen one at Parafield in Adelaide and one in Alice Springs. A light plane was also hijacked in central Queensland.
However the official said it would be "extra-ordinarily difficult" for a light plane to crash into a large passenger plane due to collision avoidance systems in larger airliners.
A P&O spokesman last night said exactly the same standard of security for the airline industry was applied for cruise ships.
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I wondered if you might shed more light on an incident that happened yesterday at the Houston Airport.
As our very fully loaded plane was in line for take-off....very close to engaging the engines....
...the captain came on and told us another plane had spotted a 'door' open around the fuel tank, and they would need someone to close it.
A few minutes later, he said they couldn't close it there, but would have to taxi back to the terminal.
After 20, 25 minutes of silence, we finally lined up again....(this time way in back of the pack)...and took off.
The airplane seemed to gain momentum, but leveled off shortly after....then proceeded to resume climbing.
Is this normal stuff.....or is my imagination runnning overtime?
Stolen?
Sold?
On loan?
With Kim's knowledge? [...most likely].
I suspect it was simply they didn't get it latched securely after
fueling so it popped open during taxi. They wouldn't be able to close it
and check for a functioning latch on the taxi line. Return to the terminal was prudent.
Bet some "fuel technician" caught hell.
It didn't hinder us, as we were on our last leg home, but others might have had connecting flights to catch, and the delay was a good 30, 35 minutes total.
Please be advised that the words journalists and think are mutually exclusive terms. You should never use them together in the same sentence!
It was not a good flight.
Reminds me of an old Air Force safety training film from back in the 60's.
A B-52 was on taxi.
The Copilot was in a sour gloomy mood (hints at family problems,) so was not paying full attention to his duties.
The Captain said to him, "Cheer Up."
The Copilot said, "Roger, gear up," and proceeded to bring the gear up.
That's not a real good policy during taxi. The damage to the B-52 cost several thousand dollars, but luckily no one was hurt.
Without going into a lot of details on system capabilities, let me say that the H-camera and ASARS can cover virtually all of North Korea from Pyongyang to the DMZ. If these mines disappeared from a DPRK naval base, they were probably observed at Nampo or Wonsan, North Korea's major naval facilities on the Yellow Sea and Sea of Japan, respectively.
But the story's still a little fuzzy, in a couple of respects. First, acoustical mines are relatively small, and wouldn't be observed on imagery unless they were placed outside a known storage facility, or observed in a distinctive shipping container associated with that type of weapon. Unique or distinctive shipping containers are often our first tip-off to the shipment of larger items, such as aircraft components, missile sections, etc. I was never an imagery analyst or a naval specialist, so I'll defer to anyone who knows more about the imagery signature of naval mines. However, it would be difficult to detect such a shipment unless the mines were in the open in large quantities, or (the other possibility) we got some other intelligence that cued the imagery systems to begin looking for the mines.
One more thought: if we can trace this shipment to one of bin Laden's boats, it needs to be boarded, searched and sunk immediately. It's also worth noting that another, troublesome, Middle Eastern country makes regular flights to North Korea to pick up weapons. I hope our intel folks are watching that country, to see if they made a pick-up for Osama and the boys.
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