We have to understand that the Mayor being completely oblivious to the supposed terror plot most likely means that it was completely invented by Karl Rove and his fellow scriptwriters. That meant that a target had to be chosen and they chose the Library Tower knowing full well that news networks would show images of it being destroyed from the movie Independence Day.

In the mind of the passive viewer this information enters the brain as if it is real, and they suspend disbelief to embrace the notion that the building was destroyed by terrorists. This residue remains in the viewer's psyche and the validity of the government's response to the 'attack,' in this instance passing the soon to expire Patriot Act and justifying spying on Americans, is unquestionable.

This isn't another tin-foil hat conspiracy theory, the suggestibility of television is a scientific fact that has been accepted for decades.

This represents an organized campaign of mind control and fearmongering. They have played the terror card so many times that the fingerprints of deception can be lifted and verified almost immediately.

These are the same people that brought you fake fat bin Laden 'confession' tapes found in a shack in Jalalabad and could psychically predict tapes tying Osama to Saddam airing on Al Jazeera days before they surfaced.

Furthermore, as Kurt Nimmo points out, one of the supposed ringleaders of the operation, Riduan Isamuddin, was “operations chief” of Jemaah Islamiyah, which was a creation of Indonesian intelligence and is widely acknowledged to wholly controlled by the CIA.

If the government has really thwarted an attack on LA you can bet your bottom dollar that they would have waved it in front of the anti-war crowd's face before invading Iraq in March 2003.

This is as obvious a political points scoring move as you're ever going to see. It has been deliberately and synthetically concocted to stifle heated criticism of the NSA spying.

This, despite the fact that the spying debate still circles around foreign phone calls, when the real issue is the admitted fact that the Pentagon and other government agencies have been caught and continue to spy on peaceful anti-war and activist groups entirely made up of American citizens.

He offered as his most compelling example a plot hatched by the architect of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to fly hijacked aircraft into the 72-storey Library Tower - since renamed the US Bank Tower - in Los Angeles.

Within a month of the 9/11 attacks, in October 2001, "the mastermind of the September 11 attacks had already set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoebombs to breach the cockpit door and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast", the president said.

Mohammed, who is in US custody at an undisclosed location, recruited the leader of an al-Qaida affiliate known as Jemaah Islamiyah, for the mission. Jemaah Islamiyah's most prominent operations chief, Hambali - also known as Riduan Isamuddin - was chosen because it was thought that south-east Asian hijackers would be less likely to arouse suspicions than Arab Muslims. "Hambali recruited several key operatives who had been training in Afghanistan," Mr Bush said. "Once the operatives were recruited, they met with Osama bin Laden, and then began preparations for the west coast attack."

Hambali is believed to have gathered a cell of four men for the mission, including a pilot, and collected funds to pay them. The plot was thwarted in 2002 with the arrest of plotters in Malaysia. Hambali, who also planned the Bali bombings, was arrested in August 2003 in Thailand with two of his top lieutenants.

The scenario outlined by Mr Bush yesterday was the fullest public acknowledgement to date of the ambitions of al-Qaida in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 2001 attacks - and their deadly ingenuity.

Originally, Mohammed had planned to stage bicoastal attacks in New York as well as Los Angeles, but was forced to scale back because of the complexity of the operation. Instead, he sought to bypass new security measures by using shoebombs and not the box cutters used by the hijackers who attacked the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - and recruiting outside the Middle East.

"This was going to be the follow-up to September 11," said Vincent Cannistraro, the former director of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre. "We weren't looking in south-east Asia. We were looking at the stereotype of Arab Muslims, so yes it showed creativity on their part."

Since September 11, Mr Bush has issued periodic reminders to Americans of the continued threat of an al-Qaida attack. In a speech last October he said the US and its allies had thwarted at least 10 al-Qaida plots against western targets.

Yesterday's warning, as in the past, comes at a time of mounting public unease about some of the methods the president has adopted in his pursuit of the war on terror - specifically his decision to authorise the National Security Agency to monitor the telephone calls and email of American citizens without resort to a court warrant. Mr Bush has also struggled to force through Congress a renewal of his Patriot Act, the post 9/11 anti-terror legislation. Last night there were signs in Congress that key Republicans who were wary about extending the authorities' powers had swung behind a White House compromise version.

Mr Cannistraro said the plots outlined by Mr Bush were foiled by human intelligence and not the NSA surveillance, and Mr Bush did not refer directly to the domestic spy programme yesterday. Instead he opted for a more general defence of his stewardship of the war on terror, saying that Washington had worked with its allies to block the attack on Los Angeles. "It took the combined efforts of several countries to break up this plot," the president said. "By working together, we took dangerous terrorists off the streets. We stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland."

Although none were willing to allow use of their names, saying doing so would place them in legal jeopardy, we were able to confirm that at least four of the 23 who contacted us currently work, or had worked, within the U.S. intelligence community.

But Los Angeles Mayor Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is willing to go on the record, claiming Bush blind-sided his city with the claims.

"I'm amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels," the mayor says. "I don't expect a call from the president — but somebody." Villaraigosa also said he has twice requested meetings with Bush to discuss security issues for Los Angeles and was turned down both times.

Intelligence pros say much of the information used by Bush in an attempt to justify his increased spying on Americans by the National Security Agency, trampling of civil rights under the USA Patriot Act, and massive buildup of the Department of Homeland Security, now the nation’s largest federal bureaucracy, was “worthless intel that was discarded long ago.”

“A lot of buzz circulated in the months following the September 11, 2001, attacks,” says an NSA operative. “Snippets here and there were true but most were just random information that could never be confirmed. One thing we do know about al Qaeda is that they seldom use the same technique twice. They tried a car bomb to bring down the World Trade Center and it failed. Then they went to planes. The next time will be something different because we’ve geared up to prevent hijacking planes and using them as flying bombs.”

In August 2004, just as the Presidential campaign was about to heat up, the Bush White House raised the terror alert, claiming attacks were imminent on major financial institutions. The alert, apparently timed to steal thunder from Democrat John Kerry’s nomination for President, was withdrawn after administration officials admitted it was based on old information from a discredited informant.

The discredited information dated back to the same period when intelligence agencies began receiving reports of a planned attack against Los Angeles.

Former DHS secretary Tom Ridge admits the U.S. raised terror alerts for the wrong reasons and now says he often disagreed with the timing of such alerts but was overruled by the White House.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge says. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on alert, There were times when the White House was really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' We often lost the argument."

Ridge left DHS in February 2005 and Bush replaced him with Michael Chertoff who agrees with the “cry wolf” strategy of the White House.

“Chertoff is a lackey,” says Kevin Riley, a retired New York City Detective who knew Chertoff during his days as a U.S. Attorney in New York. “He’ll do whatever Bush tells him to do.”

Intelligence pros at established Washington agencies laugh at DHS operatives, calling them “Keystone Kops” and “overpaid rent-a-cops,” saying they lack any real expertise in dealing with terrorism.

“DHS is a political police force,” says a retired CIA agent. “They exist to enforce the political propaganda program of George W. Bush. That’s all they’re good for and they’re not very good at that.”

© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

An alleged Al-Qaeda plot to crash an airplane into a Los Angeles skyscraper but foiled with the help of Asian nations never got beyond the discussion stage, security analysts said.

President George W. Bush and other US officials could have revealed new details of the plot Thursday in an effort to forge tighter international cooperation in the so-called "war against terror", the analysts said.

Bush said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed planned to have operatives hijack an airplane, use shoe bombs to breach the cockpit doors and fly the jet into Los Angeles' tallest building, the 310-metre (1,017-foot) US Bank Tower, also known as Library Tower.

Bush said that instead of using Arab hijackers, as in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the plot called for "young men from Southeast Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion."

"I think he is gilding the lily a little," said Clive Williams, adjunct professor at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University.

He said that although Al-Qaeda had thought about such an attack, "I don't think they got very far in their planning process."

Bush said the operatives met with Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden before beginning preparations for the attack, which started to unravel in early 2002 when "a Southeast Asian nation" caught a key Al-Qaeda operative.

The president did not name the operative or the country. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is sometimes called the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

Bush said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's key co-conspirator was Hambali, a leader of the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) which authorities have blamed for numerous attacks in Southeast Asia, including the 2002 Bali bombings which killed more than 200 people.

White House counterterrorism adviser Frances Townsend said all four members of the cell had been caught, but declined to name the two South Asian countries and two Southeast Asian countries that helped foil the plot.

Hambali was arrested in Thailand in 2003.

Rohan Gunaratna, head of terrorism research at Singapore's Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, said Hambali was certainly assisting Al-Qaeda "and they were discussing the operation to strike in the United States ... but it didn't move beyond the discussion stage."

Indonesian analyst Kusnanto Anggoro said that while it is very likely Southeast Asian radicals inspired by Al-Qaeda could become involved in such a plot, it was difficult to verify Bush's allegations.

"The problem is why Bush at this time made this kind of statement," said Anggoro, a researcher with Jakarta's Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

Bush is likely using the plot to help push for wider cooperation with Asia in the "war on terror," Anggoro said.

Williams also saw it as an effort to underline the co-operative nature of the "war".

"I think it's all part of US policy to try and underline that it's a global threat and not just a threat that's directed against the United States and Israel," he said.

Williams and Anggoro suspected that Pakistan, India and Singapore were the Asian countries Bush said helped to foil the skyscraper plot. "And maybe Indonesia," Willams said.

Gunaratna, the Singapore analyst, said he did not know which countries but added he did not think Bush was exaggerating details of the plot.

"Hambali was a very capable man," he said.

Williams said Al-Qaeda and JI clearly had very close links.

The situation in Southeast Asia in the early part of this decade "provided a very significant breeding ground" for potential attackers, Kusnanto said.

He said the would-be pilot, Zaini Zakaria, was arrested in 2002, and the others were probably chosen to play supporting roles in the hijacking.

Members of the cell fled to Malaysia from Afghanistan after the United States began bombing al Qaeda and Taliban forces there in October 2001.

"They were told to... await instructions. They were supposed to meet up again to carry out a second (suicide airliner) operation," the official said.

MALAYSIA HOLDING 66

Diplomats say security agencies in mostly Muslim Malaysia were very cooperative in sharing counter-terrorism intelligence information with their U.S. counterparts after September 11, 2001.

Malaysia is holding 66 detainees suspected of links to al Qaeda and its Southeast Asian branch, Jemaah Islamiah.

The Malaysian government declined to comment.

"We don't comment on detainees or divulge information concerning detainees," a spokesman for the office of Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said.

According to Frances Townsend, Bush's homeland security and counterterrorism adviser, the West Coast plot was initially to have been part of the September 11 attacks.

But al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden decided to focus on the East Coast as it was too difficult to get operatives for both.

The planned attack on Los Angeles was hatched by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and is in U.S. custody.

The hijack team was recruited by Jemaah Islamiah commander Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali, who was arrested in August 2003 near Bangkok and is also in U.S. custody.

The hijackers were to use bombs hidden in shoes to breach the cockpit door of an airplane before flying it into Los Angeles' 1,017-feet (310-meter) high Library Tower, now the US Bank Tower.

The cell was broken and the arrests made between 2002 and 2003.

MORE ALERT TO ARABS

"It was a legit plot," said Ken Conboy, a Jakarta-based security expert who has written several books on defense, intelligence and security issues. "Whether they would have been able to get these guys actually in the States is another deal.

"It was envisioned as a second wave after 9/11, and he (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed) wanted to use Southeast Asians because he thought they could get into the U.S. and hijack the planes more so than Arabs because the U.S. would be more on alert to Arabs after 9/11," Conboy said.

In December 2001, Malaysia made its first breakthrough against al Qaeda in Southeast Asia with the arrest of Yazid Sufaat, a former Malaysian army captain, who recently returned from Afghanistan.

Sufaat hosted two of September 11 hijackers, Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, when they passed through Kuala Lumpur almost a year before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

He is also believed to have supplied money and travel documents in Malaysia to Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan descent who was arrested in the United States before the September 11 attacks.

Moussaoui denies he was to have participated in the September 11 strikes but says he was part of a broader conspiracy to conduct subsequent attacks.

(Additional re[porting by Jerry Norton in Jakarta)

The funeral for civil rights leader Coretta Scott King on Tuesday was quite a sight to see. The depth of sadness in the room could not be overcome by the happiness that came with the celebration of her life and accomplishments. It was the measure of Mrs. King's impact upon our society that four presidents - Carter, Bush, Clinton and Bush - sat before her flower-draped casket and spoke of her life.

And then, of course, the foolishness began. The nattering nabobs of network nonsense blithered into their cable news studios to deplore all the political statements that were served up before the appreciative crowd in that church. It was the Wellstone funeral all over again.

Let's be clear. The life of Coretta Scott King was one that involved politics from every angle. Any lifelong struggle against poverty, racism and war is going to be a life immersed in politics. That is simply the way it is; because so many politicians and political ideologies center around statements and legislation that directly add to the burdens of the poor and minorities, any person choosing to fight poverty and racism is going to wind up dealing in politics.

Gandhi was elected to no office in his entire lifetime, but every action he took involved politics. The same can be said for Martin Luther King Jr., who won no elections but changed politics in America forever. Coretta Scott King held no office, but her work affected the politics of this country in every way. Ask Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan, who received a warm telephone call from Mrs. King while standing vigil outside George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford last August. If this was not a political act, then political acts do not exist.

Politics belonged in that church on Tuesday. Period.

A good deal of the humbug arising from the political statements at the funeral are based upon the fact that George W. Bush changed his schedule to appear at the event. Because he did this, the thinking goes, he should be above the pointed criticism he absorbed up on that stage. Smart money says he came to the funeral only to avoid the criticism he would have received had he not shown up with those three other presidents. Smart money likewise says he came to try and shore up his poll numbers with African Americans; his support among this constituency stands in the low single digits, well within the margin of error in any poll, suggesting his actual support among this group is zero. This is, however, an issue for another day.

The central tenet of the civil rights movement has, is and will always be one simple truth: one must speak truth to power in order to affect change. This was the maxim by which Coretta Scott King lived her life, and the maxim by which her husband lived and ultimately died by. Had her funeral not involved speaking truth to power, the ceremony would have been incomplete. George W. Bush heard on Tuesday some hard truths that his fanatical insulation has to date spared him from. It may have been the healthiest moment this republic has absorbed in years.

President Jimmy Carter, who has come to be one of the harshest critics of Mr. Bush, hurled fire across the stage over the deplorable administration response to Hurricane Katrina. "This commemorative ceremony this morning and this afternoon is not only to acknowledge the great contributions of Coretta and Martin, but to remind us that the struggle for equal rights is not over," said Carter. "We only have to recall the color of the faces of those in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, those who were most devastated by Katrina, to know that there are not yet equal opportunities for all Americans."

Carter also took a moment to drop a brick over the recent revelations that the NSA has been spying on Americans, without court approval or warrants, at the behest of Mr. Bush. "It was difficult for them personally," said Carter, "with the civil liberties of both husband and wife violated as they became the target of secret government wiretapping, other surveillance, and as you know, harassment from the FBI."

By far, the harshest criticism came from Rev. Joseph Lowery, a King protégé, who spoke of Mrs. King's staunch opposition to the occupation of Iraq. "She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar," said Lowery. "We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there. But Coretta knew, and we knew, that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor."

Would Coretta Scott King have approved of this? One can be certain that the woman who said "If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children" would have certainly approved.

This was a day for speaking truth to power, but it was more than that. Mr. Bush and his people have worked incredibly hard to keep this president from hearing anything that rubs against what he believes to be true. He speaks before hand-picked crowds of adoring supporters, never once seeing the face of someone who thinks he is running the nation into the ground. Millions upon millions of protesters have followed his every move, and yet it is almost certain he has never laid eyes upon a single one of them.

On Tuesday, by his own design. George W. Bush was trapped like a rat on that stage. He was forced to listen to eloquent denunciations of his politics and his policies, perhaps for the first time since he took office. The effect upon him was clear; during the speeches delivered by Rev. Lowery and president Carter, Bush looked as if he was sucking on a particularly bitter lemon.

When one speaks truth to power, especially arrogant power, that is usually the effect. Coretta Scott King would have approved.

William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.