From CNN:

Shortly after 9/11, al Qaeda began planning to use shoe bombers to hijack a commercial airplane and fly it into the tallest building in Los Angeles, President Bush said Thursday.

The details were the first about the West Coast airliner plot, which was thwarted in 2002 and initially disclosed by the White House last year, Bush said.

The plot was set in motion by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, a month after those happened, Bush said. It involved terrorists from al Qaeda’s Southeast Asia wing, Jemaah Islamiyah. (Watch what specifics Bush disclosed on timing and location—1:45)

“Rather than use Arab hijackers, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed sought out young men from Southeast Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion,” Bush said.

Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003.

Al Qaeda’s Southeast Asia leader, known as Hambali, had recruited Jemaah Islamiyah operatives for the plot, Bush said. Hambali was arrested in 2003 in Thailand.

The operatives met with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and then began preparing for the attack, which was derailed in early 2002, Bush said.

The purported plot was one of 10 on a list first released by the White House in October 2005.

The intended target of the attack was a building then known as the Library Tower. It was renamed the U.S. Bank Tower in 2003 and, at 1,018 feet, is the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.

Bush credited international cooperation in the war on terrorism with saving American lives.

Of course, a natural question to ask given the timing of the release of these specifics is whether the NSA foreign intelligence surveillance program (or, if you are the NYT or Nancy Pelosi, the “domestic spying on ordinary American citizens just for kicks” program) played any role in the thwarting of the attack against the Library Tower.  The program, a military operation designed to collect and cull communications from terrorists into and out of the country, is currently the subject of congressional hearings.  Certain lawmakers have professed outrage at the use of signals intel inside the US, and are suggestinbg that the NSA, the DoJ, and the administration has overstepped its powers and broke the law—even as they now say they support the program, provided the President asks Congress for permission, a gambit that would give the Congress de facto extraconstitutional powers to act as co-CiCs.

But Bush remained coy about any part the NSA program may have played in thwarting the atttack (or, to borrow the words of one my progressive commenters in characterizing AG Gonzales’ NSA testimony, Bush was “not forthright” about the use of the highly classified program, perhaps fearing that such “forthrightness” could jeopardize the “highly classified” nature of the program—the specifics of which are no doubt know to our war cabinet, but the release of specifics about which could alert our enemies about how the program specifically works, which could have negative national security repurcussions, the efforts of the Times and Russ Feingold, et al, to disabuse us of this notion notwithstanding).  From ABC News:

Bush has been on a campaign to defend his controversial domestic monitoring program. But the White House would not say whether the 2002 plot was thwarted as a result of the National Security Agency program to eavesdrop on the international e-mails and phone calls of people inside the United States with suspected ties to terrorists.

Bush said only that “subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations” after the arrest of the unnamed operative led to information about the plot, and to the capture of other ringleaders and operatives involved in it. Hambali, for instance, was captured in Thailand in 2003 and handed over to the United States.

“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. By working together, we stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland.”

Bush’s speech in October cited two other attacks inside the United States that were foiled, including one to use hijacked planes to attack the East Coast in mid-2003.

The third was the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam and allegedly plotted with top al-Qaida commanders to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in a U.S. city. Padilla, whose plot never materialized, now is being held without bail in civilian custody on charges that he was part of a secret network that supported Muslim terrorists. He was arrested in May 2002 and had been held as an enemy combatant without criminal charge at a Navy brig in South Carolina until last month.

Another question that remained undiscussed, but which was beating just beneath the surface of Bush’s remarks, is how effective was the coercive interrogration [TORTURE!] of, say, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed or other higher ranking al Qaeda captures, in garnering useful intel that helped thwart subsequent attacks.  What techniques netted that useful information?  And have we subsequently, in a fit of self-righteous picque and absent new attacks on the homeland, rendered those techniques technically (wink wink) illegal?

And finally, the timing of these thwarted attacks should give lie to the suggestion (made over and over by many on the left as a way to mitigate the effectiveness of the current administration’s anti-terror program) that the lack of follow-up attacks on the US homeland since 911 are more to do with al-Qaeda’s “patience” and their history of waiting many years between attacks than they are to do with our own proactive approach to stopping such attacks—an approach that includes the use of new (and still highly classified) techniques of foreign surveillance that many civil libertarian absolutists, partisans on the left, and self-important lawmakers unhappy with the current separation of powers would like to hear Gen Hayden or the President or AG Gonzales outline in a manner that is “forthright” (and, of course, televised on C-Span).  Because toughness on terror only matters if its done in such a way that it is fair to the terrorists.  Otherwise, they have already won.  Yawn.

Ironically, Bush’s speech comes on the heels of a speech by 2008 Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton that accused the administration of “playing the fear card” on terrorism while “failing to kill ‘the tallest man in Afghanistan,’ Osama bin Laden.

[Hillary’s] speech was intended to road-test stump themes for her upcoming Senate re-election bid, but most of the issues Clinton invoked were national, including unusually blunt criticisms of Bush’s homeland security and terrorism policy.

“Two weeks ago, [White House political director] Karl Rove … was telling the National Republican Committee ‘Here’s your game plan, folks, here’s how you’re gonna win – we’re gonna win by getting everybody scared again,’” Clinton said. “This crowd [says] ‘All we’ve got is fear and we are going to keep playing the fear card.’”

Saying she takes “a backseat to nobody when it comes to fighting terrorism,” Clinton accused the White House of portraying critics of Iraq and Afghanistan policy as comforting the enemy.

Ms Clinton, who evidently assumed her audience too enraptured to recognize the irony of claiming that the GOP is “playing the fear card” (a tactic we can presume she meant to suggest was deplorable)—even while trumpeting that she takes “a backseat to nobody when it come to fighting terrorism”—“drew thunderous applause when she mocked the administration’s failure to track down the 6-foot-5 bin Laden. ‘You cannot explain to me why we have not captured or killed the tallest man in Afghanistan,’ she said.”

Which, of course, is not true—as Daryl Zero has already done so, and in so doing fairly accurately anticipated the Bush doctrine for fighting terror.  To wit:

Now, a few words on looking for things. When you go looking for something specific, your chances of finding it are very bad. Because of all the things in the world, you’re only looking for one of them. When you go looking for anything at all, your chances of finding it are very good. Because of all the things in the world, you’re sure to find some of them.

But be that as it may.

And of course, she may try asking her husband, as well.  If they still talk, I mean…

Coda:  The fallout?  Democratic spinsters will call this old news and, as they are wont to do, “question the timing”; Republicans spinsters will note that this is an expansion, with specifics, of previous general reports on thwarted attacks meant to remind us of the ferocity of our enemy—and they will admit that, yes, of course there’s reason to bring this out now:  Democrats are holding hearings suggesting that the President acted too aggressively in thwarting terror attacks after 911.  So reminding the American people why such aggressiveness is a good idea makes political sense.  Similarly, the Democrats are reverting to their charge that the GOP is using “scare tactics” with regard to the threat of terrorism.  So noting that terrorism and terrorists are real—and that, despite the absense of followup attacks here at home—terrorists are actively trying to attack the homeland, seems like a sound rebuttal strategy.

update:  Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa used the opportunity to ask for additional funding from DHLS, and to stress a threat-based allegation of funds.  Can’t say I disagree with the latter—but hey, we require a “randomness” in searching potential terror suspects getting onto planes, so why would we change course now and pretend that some cities are at a greater risk of terrorist attacks than others. 

That’s not very “fair,” after all—and the fight against terror is all about affecting the appearance of nonjudgmentalism.

Sigh.