Bush: US surveillance helped stop attack
(AP)
Updated: 2006-02-10 08:27

Bush press secretary Scott McClellan said that the White House did reach out before the speech to officials in California and that there was appreciation for the notification.

As the plot was described, the hijackers were to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of a commercial jetliner, take control of the plane and crash it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, a 73-story building since renamed the US Bank Tower. In his remarks, Bush inadvertently referred to the site as "Liberty Tower."

The president said the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaida operative. Bush did not name the country or the operative.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, left, is interviewed Thursday, Feb . 9, 2006, at The Associated Press Los Angeles Bureau.[AP]

Frances Fragos Townsend, assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said Mohammed, working with Hambali in Asia, recruited four members of the terrorist cell and trained its leader in how to use shoe bombs.

Townsend said it was not clear whether there was any connection between the West Coast plot and shoe bomber Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight in December 2001. After that, the Transportation Security Administration began asking passengers to take off their shoes for inspection.

The Sept. 11 attacks originally were planned to include both the East and West coasts. "It was bin Laden who decided that it should just focus on the East Coast, and that the West Coast should be held in abeyance ... as a follow-on attack," Townsend said. "It's our understanding now that it was too difficult to get enough operatives for both the East and West Coast plots at the same time."

She said all four of the West Coast planners went to Afghanistan in October 2001 and met with Osama bin Laden.

Townsend said all four members of the cell have been apprehended. She declined to disclose their names or say where they were being held. She also would not identify the two South Asia and two Southeast Asian nations that helped foil the attack.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Bush's speech failed to lay out a comprehensive strategy to fight terrorists.

"As is too often the case with this president, the rhetoric does not match the reality," Reid said. "The fact is this White House has committed a series of national security mistakes that have made America less secure."