FWD: Western intelligence knew of Laden plan since 1995: Report

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http://hindustantimes.com/nonfram/081201/dlame10.asp

Western intelligence knew of Laden plan since 1995: Report 

AFP 

Berlin, December 7 

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Western secret services knew as far back as 1995 that suspected terror 
mastermind Osama bin Laden planned to attack civilian sites using commercial 
passenger planes, German newspaper Die Welt said Friday. 

Quoting sources close to western intelligence services, Die Welt said that 
authorities did not take seriously the threat of the plan, known as Project 
Bojinka. 

The plan was discovered in January 1995 by Philippine police who were 
investigating a possible attack against Pope John Paul II on a visit to 
Manila. 

They found details of the plan in a computer seized in an apartment used by 
three men who were part of Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. 

It provided for 11 planes to be exploded simultaneously by bombs placed on 
board, but also in an alternative form for several planes flying to the 
United States to be hijacked and flown into civilian targets. 

Among targets mentioned was the World Trade Center in New York, which was 
destroyed in the September 11 terror attacks in the United States that killed 
thousands. 

Other targets mentioned were CIA offices in Virginia and the Sears Tower in 
Chicago, Die Welt said. 

The plot re-surfaced during the trial in New York in 1997 of Pakistani Ramsi 
Youssef, the mastermind of the attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. 

Die Welt said the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and CIA would have known 
about the plan at the latest at this time. 


Kurt-Werner Pörtner