Free Republic

JERUSALEM – Israel's internal security agency says it has foiled an Al Qaeda plan to attack the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and hit other targets in the country.

A written statement, declassified Thursday, from CIA Director George J. Tenet provides new insight into al-Qaida's preparations for Sept. 11 attacks. Some of its conclusions: - In 1996, Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, Mohammed Atef, studied the feasibility of hijacking U.S. planes and destroying them in flight. Tenet suggested he may have been inspired by the 1995 plot to crash a plane into CIA headquarters. The CIA only learned this after Sept. 11. Atef was killed in a U.S. airstrike last November. - A top al-Qaida operative, known as Mukthar or Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, has been linked to planning both the...

Monday, 10 June, 2002, 23:22 GMT 00:22 UK Morocco 'uncovers al-Qaeda plot' Reports from Morocco say three Saudi members of al-Qaeda have been arrested as they prepared attacks on American and British naval ships in the Straits of Gibraltar. There has been no formal announcement from the Moroccan authorities, but officials are quoted as saying the three had been arrested in May with the help of the intelligence services of several friendly countries. The names of the detainees were not released. The men, aged between 25 and 35, are reported to have links to the al-Qaeda, the organisation suspected of...