Terror Plot Resembles 1995 Operation
Thursday's thwarting of a massive terrorist plan to blow up 10 planes en route to the United States is strikingly similar to an al Qaeda airline-explosion plot hatched — and almost executed — more than a decade ago.
Masterminded in the early 1990s by top aides of Osama bin Laden, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi Yousef — the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center attack — the plot included echoes of the details emerging in Thursday's intended attack, including multi-aircraft trans-oceanic bombings and homemade liquid chemical explosives.
Mohammed began plotting for an attack 12 years ago, with funding from bin Laden, using the code name "Bonjinka." Mixing chemicals in a Manila apartment, Mohammed and Yousef are reported to have planned to carry mixtures onto airplanes and detonate the mixtures on a dozen flights over the Pacific Ocean.
Rodolfo Mendoza, a police intelligence official in the Philippines, said the "modus operandi" of Thursday's foiled attack is the same as al Qaeda used in the past. Mendoza was among the law enforcement officers involved in thwarting the earlier scheme to use liquid explosives to blow up a dozen airliners as they flew across the Pacific to U.S. destinations, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and New York.
In the Manila plot, though, there was one key difference from the recent plot, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports. Back then, the terrorists mixed the explosives ahead of time and conducted a test run by planting one small bomb under a seat aboard a Philippine airliner.
It didn't bring down the plane, but it did kill one passenger and injured several others.
The police foiled the attack, which was to follow the test run, in 1995 when a fire broke out at the apartment where the plotters were mixing chemicals. police also found dolls wearing clothes containing highly flammable chemicals.
As for this week's plot, al Qaeda's call for global jihad clearly acted as inspiration, but there has been no direct evidence that bin Laden or his No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, had advance knowledge of those attacks, that they helped plan them, or that they provided financial or logistical help to those who carried them out.
U.S. counterterrorism officials told CBS News correspondent Sheila MacVicar that United, American and Continental Airlines — all U.S. carriers — were targets of the plot. In 1995, Mohammed and Yousef planned on putting chemical mixtures on flights out of Hong Kong and Seoul heading toward the United States.
Martin reports that the change in tactics over the past decade shows why no one should take comfort from the fact that this latest plot was disrupted. Terrorists learn from their mistakes.