Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
at least 12 U.S.-flagged airliners over the Pacific as part of Op-Plan Bojinka.
Bojinka focused not only on airliners but also called for the assassinations
of Pope John Paul II and President Clinton during visits to the Philippines.
A laptop recovered by authorities contained a plan to hijack a commercial
flight in the United States, where the lone hijacker would seize controls of
the plane and crash it into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The twist
that Yousef added was that the attacker would board the plane, assemble the
bomb, and depart the plane on a layover, circumventing any screening proce-
dures. Yousef and associate Wali Khan Amin Shah worked on building these
liquid devices and did a test run in a Manila theater that, when it exploded,
wounded several people. Ten days later, Philippine Airlines Flight 434 left
Manila for New Tokyo Airport. The flight had one stop in Cebu before head-
ing to Japan. One of the passengers on this first leg was Ramzi Yousef. Yousef
assembled the liquid device and placed it under seat 26K near the right fuse-
lage. He set the timer for four hours later and departed the plane when it
reached Cebu. As the plane approached Okinawa, the bomb exploded, kill-
ing Japanese tourist Haruki Ilkegami and tearing a hole in the plane.
Al-Qaeda's “Great Raid” of September 11, 2001, is just one example of how
this group displays innovation by refining its tactics based on previous attacks and
plots. The 9/11 attacks were so simple in nature, yet so complex. Using commercial
airliners as weapons against simultaneous domestic targets was, according to one
Al-Qaeda member, similar to “me tightly holding your finger, turning it toward
you and poking it into your own eye.” On the heels of 9/11, Richard Reid, another
operative sent by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, attempted to light an explosive device
hidden in his shoe on board American Airlines Flight 63 traveling from Paris to
Miami in December 2001. August 2006 saw an even further twist on Bojinka and
9/11 as British authorities arrested 20 men planning on using triacetone triperox-
ide placed in a sports drink bottles on flights leaving the United Kingdom for the
United States and Canada. Whereas Yousef used timers, these cell members were
geared to act as martyrs over the Atlantic or North America. The plot was foiled,
and Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, the plot's ringleader, was given a minimum of 40
years in prison. Assad Sarwar, 29, and Tanvir Hussain, 28, were imprisoned for a
minimum of 36 and 32 years, respectively.
In 1932, British MP Stanley Baldwin addressed the House of Commons in
1932 and made an astonishingly frank admission. “I think it is as well for the
man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can protect him
from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get
through.”
43
Baldwin was speaking of the threat of German bombers, yet his words
have been echoed by others in relation to terrorism. The terrorists have and will
continue to get through as they are unpredictable and have time on their side. They
