About week after September 11, 2001, I flew to Los Angeles to see my Ohio State Buckeyes play at UCLA. I did a jaunt down to San Diego to see a friend of mine, then returned to LA after dark. Driving up the 5 approaching downtown, it was very, very comforting to see the crown of LA's Library Tower lit up in red, white and blue. There were a lot of Spanish-language "We Stand United" signs ("Estada Unidos," I think). I was very proud of LA and all of Southern California that weekend, particularly for all the crap they take from people around here about not being "American."
For those of you who don't know, the Library Tower is the tallest building in Los Angeles -- tallest building west of the Mississippi, actually -- and is also the tallest building in the world located on a major seismic fault line. (Um, that's nice ... ) It's kind of a cylindrical, offset telescoping building. Used to be occupied by First Interstate Bank (before it was bought out by Wells Fargo) and is now technically called the US Bank Building. It is traditionally called the Library Tower after the LA central library across the street, from whom it had to "borrow" airspace for construction. It was the first building destroyed by the aliens in the movie Independence Day. A beautiful building.
That, as W revealed, was targeted by al Qaida:
In the weeks after September the 11th, while Americans were still recovering from an unprecedented strike on our homeland, al Qaeda was already busy planning its next attack. We now know that in October 2001, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad -- the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks -- had already set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door, and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We believe the intended target was Liberty [sic -- Library] Tower in Los Angeles, California.*I guess I would have been particularly vulnerable emotionally to such an attack, given my love for Southern California, the Apex of Western Civilization.
Rather than use Arab hijackers as he had on September the 11th, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad sought out young men from Southeast Asia -- whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion. To help carry out this plan, he tapped a terrorist named Hambali, one of the leaders of an al Qaeda affiliated group in Southeast Asia called "J-I." JI terrorists were responsible for a series of deadly attacks in Southeast Asia, and members of the group had trained with al Qaeda. Hambali recruited several key operatives who had been training in Afghanistan. Once the operatives were recruited, they met with Osama bin Laden, and then began preparations for the West Coast attack.
Their plot was derailed in early 2002 when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative. Subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations made clear the intended target, and how al Qaeda hoped to execute it. This critical intelligence helped other allies capture the ringleaders and other known operatives who had been recruited for this plot. The West Coast plot had been thwarted.
Smash (via Michelle Malkin, to whom I've been linking a lot lately) has the details.
Couple of thoughts here:
1. I do not know that al Qaida could have used the same tactics that too out the World Trade Center (bastards -- we better rebuild them) to take out the Library Tower, or, if they tried, if it would have been anywhere near as effective. For starters, the Library Tower was completed 18 years after WTC, with more up-to-date construction and engineering technology.
More importantly, though, is simply the height of the Library Tower and its position within the skyline of downtown Los Angeles. The Library Tower does not dominate downtown LA like the WTC dominated lower Manhattan. The WTC collapsed in part because one of the towers (Two World Trade Center, I think) was hid midway up. The other tower (again, One World Trade Center, I think) had been hit too far up to guarantee a structural collapse, but when the second tower was hit with a "knee-buckling" effect and collapsed, it structurally weakened the first tower. The intense heat caused by the fires from the planes' gas tanks finished the jobs.
I'm no engineer -- in fact, I bailed on engineering at Ohio State because I hated it so much -- but I do not see how a knee-bucking attack could succeed on the Library Tower. WTC was vulnerable in part because it was so much taller than the buildings around it; it was exposed. The Library Tower is smack dab in the middle of downtown LA, largely blocked by skyscrapers around it (I have had extreme difficulty getting a good picture of it for that reason, and you will note that pictures of the Library Tower are mostly from close up, because it is so screened that you can't get a good long range shot of it.) To hit the Library Tower at an effective height for a knee-buckling effect, one would have to maneuver around the skyscrapers surrounding the tower, which may not be possible for a large commercial passenger jet. That would leave only the very top of the tower vulnerable, but at that height there would have probably been no knee-buckling effect.
Don't get me wrong -- an al Qaida attack on the Library Tower would have been horrible, but it would likely not have been nearly as materially devastating as the attack on WTC. More than likely, the Library Tower would have been damaged, but remained standing and structurally sound and parts would have even remained operable.
2. Why was this plot revealed now? I've seen this question asked around, mainly by those on the left. It is a fair question, to which we can only speculate as to the answer, but the left would definitely disagree with my take on it.
You typically don't get news of terrorist plots foiled. it would bring good press, to be sure, but it would also reveal intelligence-gathering methods and assets, rendering them useless and removing them from your arsenal for the remainder of the war.
So, assuming one does not reveal these foiled plots to protect intelligence, one must assume that revealing the Library Tower plot have revealed no intelligence-gathering methods and assets ... or that the intelligence-gathering methods and assets used were already burned.
Like, say, the NSA intercept program.
So, the next time we have an al Qaida attack here, be sure to send a note of thanks to Senator Jay Rockefeller and the New York Times.
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