THE BOJINKA COVER STORY {masterlist}

This is to link the few posts that will collectively explain a disturbing possibility that the US government essentially scripted out the 9/11 attacks nearly seven years before, planted the idea into the early body of knowledge about the terrorists later to be called al Qaeda, and then reported as a precedent once a similar attack was carried out on 9/11. The plan was again recycled, this time exactly, as the London terror threat of 2006 that banned all liquids from flights after fears of a ten-plane attack using liquid bombs - precisely the idea behind the original "Operation Bojinka," uncovered in early 1995.

Admittedly, this is a bit off the Let it Happen tangent of the blog here as a whole, integrating best with a MIHOP interpretation. But I'm not sure where else to put it, and I'm already covering the hijackers here, so here it goes.

Bojinka intro: From the "cover story" chapter IV of my book "Scenario 12-E: The Philosophy, the Technology, and the Cover Story Behind Shadow 9/11."


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The Perfect Story
Now we have clarified that at the flip of a few switches, it would be technically possible for otherwise ordinary commercial flights to be turned into flying tombs, sealed off from the outside world and locked into their final flight plan by people who would be sitting safely somewhere else, perhaps sipping lukewarm coffee. But what would the eyewitnesses say?

What was needed was the tactic, the fingerprint, to mask the operation and steer the blame in the desired direction. The cover story was already well-developed in advance, not by a government agency or think-tank, but by the natural flow of world events (or at least by some collaborative effort between the two). And the direction of the blame was towards Eurasia and the one enemy in particular who was safely camping out in the heart of that central continent – Afghanistan.

To all eyewitness accounts, Shadow 9/11 would appear like a bin Laden attack, fitting with preconceptions. Ah, the preconceptions… The writers of that Lone Gunmen pilot, as they scratched it out in 2000, had to wonder “if I were a right-wing-faction-type, and I wanted to convince people we’d been attacked by a “tin pot dictator” how would I do it?” When we disregard the PC bias on TV that filters out racial references, it’s pretty clear this would be an Arab dictator, probably bin Laden, maybe supported by Saddam Hussein. What did these sci-fi writers decide? Apparently the same thing the planners of Shadow 9/11 decided.

The cover stories for both Scenario 12-D and for Shadow 9/11 may have been lifted straight from al Qaeda’s famous Operation Bojinka, an early airliner-centered terrorist plot discovered in the former U.S. colony of the Philippines in early 1995. In an interview after the attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed claimed that the 9-11 attacks he allegedly financed were a revived and streamlined version of this six year old plot. Like no other single story, this one looks like the taproot of September 11’s infamous tactic. But the exact degree of foresight, what was known by whom, is a matter of great contention, and the factual record is left fragmented. There are weird forces at work here.

- Bojinka I:Phase One: A Loud Bang in Manila Ramzi Yousef, a chance explosion, a pope spared, and the origins of the plot in the Philippines, early 1995.

- Bojinka II:Phase Two: The Evolution How Bojinks DIDN'T lead to a prediction of the 9/11 tactic - simultaneous suicide hijackings - even though it clearly should have.

- Bojinka III:Before Bojinka: Corder, the GIA, and Cetron’s Scenario The Pentagon report that laid out the Bojinka threat just days before it was discovered in terrorist minds.

- Bojinka IV:A Real and Repeated Threat Before 9/11, suicide hijackings were actually real and didn't need to be imagined. The only thing different about 9/11 is this one wasn't stopped.

- Bojinka V: Florida 2001: Bojinka Becomes 9/11?

- Bojinka VI: Brzezinski's Bombshell/What Was Left Out: A prominent article on bojinka by Zbigniew Brzezinski's nephew, and the general deletion or minimization of the suicide airliner hijacking element.

- Bojinka VII: Professed Ignorance, Maintaining the Focus "I don't think anyone could have predicted..."

- Bojinka VIII: Operation Brzezinski? the Brzezinski article and the word "Bojinka" get me thinking to a bizarre and probably useless observation that still gives me a chill and I thought it worth sharing. (coming soon)
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BOJINKA part VI: BRZEZINKSI'S BOMBSHELL / WHAT WAS LEFT OUT

Much of the information I’ve drawn on so far in analyzing Bojinka is from an excellent article on the plot published in December 2001. It was by Matthew Brzezinski, ordinarily a writer of fiction known for his 2001 novel Casino Moscow: A Tale of Greed and Adventure on Capitalism's Wildest Frontier, which was praised by Foreign Affairs magazine as “a shake-your-head, laugh-out-loud book, but one with a good deal to say.” [1] Yet he has also written one of the most widely read factual accounts of Bojinka’s discovery, originally published as “Bust and Boom” in the Washington Post magazine, and published elsewhere as “Operation Bojinka’s Bombshell.” In the article, Brzezinski noted “the suicide attacks coincided, almost to the day, with another fifth anniversary: the 1996 conviction, in a Manhattan court, of Bojinka's original plotters.” [2] September 11 is hardly close enough to the 5th to constitute much of an anniversary, but it does help Brzezinski close his article on an ominous note that ties this fantastic plot yet closer to the far more fantastic 2001 attacks. He also took a hard line in the new “War on Terror.” He said of suspects captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere “the last thing we want is having these guys back in circulation.” But he advised patience in taking them out; “we would be better served interrogating the life out of them rather than carrying out any sort of ‘swift justice.’” [3]

Aida Fariscal, whom Brzezinski describes as “a disgruntled former cop,” and his primary source for the article, was cited by the CIA for her leading role in busting up Bojinka and saving perhaps thousands of lives. After 9/11 she said “this should have never, ever been allowed to happen. All those poor people dead.” [4] (Does she know of another way to get “useful casualty lists?”) In a Washington Post Q and A session with Brzezinski following release of his story, one question pitched was “how much of the evidence that was documented in the Philippines […] could have been fabricated? I'm not questioning the veracity of your reporting. I'm just wondering if the Philippine government is seeking for a handout to “combat terrorism” when in reality they might use it for other operations.” Brzezinski admitted money was a factor, but noted of Fariscal’s account “I tend to believe its authenticity since her interests and those of the Philippine [government] don't necessarily coincide. Besides U.S. intelligence sources have not disputed any of its validity, even though the material is clearly embarrassing to them.” [5]

While we might wonder what the Filipinos did with the money they were given (Clinton, the Pope, and eleven airliner bombings, all narrowly averted in one arrest! That’s gotta be worth some Benjamins), one could also wonder what American authorities would get out of the bargain. The embarrassment from Brzezinski’s “bombshell” may have seemed a small price to pay for such a coup of a cover story for Shadow 9-11. And it could’ve been more embarrassing, but Matt had damage control in mind. Despite Bojinka in both its phases, as he had just reported it, he said after his story was published, “no one imagined something like this [was] possible, and there was no US precedent to justify heightened security. Bojinka was about blowing planes up, not hijacking them.” [6]

As Matthew noted: “Bojinka was about blowing planes up, not hijacking them.” From Matt’s account were missing two key elements that might have made the connection unavoidable. Suicide attack from the air was there, but it was one guy in a small plane – the missing links to become 9/11 would be an increase in scale - hijacking an airliner - and multiplying that into synchronized suicide hijackings.

Peter Lance, a veteran investigative reporter with ABC News, TV writer (Miami Vice, Missing Persons, etc.), and a regular guest on Coast to Coast AM, is a respected expert the massive government “cover-up” over its incompetence and underestimation of al Qaeda. [7] Lance is not a subscriber to Shadow 9-11 by a long shot, but his analysis of the Bojinka plot is worthy of note. In his book 1,000 Years for Revenge (2003) he explained that Murad’s phase two was from the beginning centered not on crop dusters with bombs but on a suicide hijacking of an airliner. Lance cites as clear evidence a January 20, 1995 memo written by Col. Rodolfo Mendoza, Murad’s main interrogator:

”What the subject [has] in his mind is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit, and dive it at the CIA headquarters. He will use no bomb or explosives. It is simply a suicidal mission that he is very much willing to execute.” [8]

While Brzezinski’s two-phase Bojinka collectively hinted at 9/11, Mendoza’s account is of a plan that Lance accurately calls “a virtual blueprint of the 9/11 attacks,” if one simply multiplies by four - or divides by three. Lance also cites Murad mentioning ten other men receiving flight training at the time of his arrest, indicating that phase two was more ambitious even than what happened, planning eleven suicide hijackings to match the lofty number in the famous phase one. [9] Murad’s “more trained pilots” were already hitting the books and the simulators at the time of his arrest, and pending the provision of eleven teams of backup “muscle” hijackers, the plan was set. Philippine authorities say they passed all this information on to their U.S. counterparts. [10]

So why the earlier reports from U.S. and Philippine sources referring to a bomb-laden crop-duster or Cessna at the heart of Murad’s plot (when the plot is mentioned at all)? Was Mendoza’s memo, or the batch of terrorists earning their wings, suppressed from the record for some reason? Why didn’t Brzezinski’s investigation turn up this exaggerated 9-11 script written up in 1994, instead offering a muted, distanced version like a Muslim Frank Corder?

BOJINKA V: FLORIDA 2001: BOJINKA BECOMES 9/11?

Clearly the U.S. government knew, and had been reminded, that suicide pilots presented a serious threat. But if they’d been watching for Bojinka, they’d have seen 9/11. Murad’s “more trained pilots” would be widely reported to be training inside the U.S. in the months before the attacks, in Minneapolis, Phoenix, and elsewhere, but these reports would go ignored and buried. One famous arrest was made, but no leads beyond that were followed, and all evidence points to purposeful top-down counter-counter-terrorism.

The three out of four 9/11 suicide pilots that trained in Jeb Bush’s Florida were apparently never even reported or noticed at all, even as their plot, it seems, took a serious turn there. In fact, they didn’t seem to know what they were doing at first. While they pursued flight training for big jets, or anything they could get enrolled for, they also were looking at buying their own small planes.

As ABC News reported, ringleader Mohammed Atta, supposedly financed by Saudi billionaires, went to the United States Department of Agriculture in Spring 2001 for a $600,000 loan to buy their first crop-duster. He was turned down, which might have had something to do with his dozen or so not-so-subtle hints he dropped to the loan agent that he wanted to use the plane to attack America. The agent, one Johnelle Bryant, described Atta’s eyes as “black” and “evil,” and she passed a polygraph test. Her superiors placed some sort of gag order on her, but she bravely defied it to sit down and tell her story to ABC (“Face to Face with Evil”). Perhaps it was Atta’s alleged threat to slit Bryant’s throat and steal the money that had something to do with getting turned down, but luckily it didn’t get him reported. She didn’t say a word until after she saw his face on the news in mid-September.

The ABC story explained:
“Being turned down for the loan altered the hijackers' plans. According to law enforcement officials, packing twin-engine planes with explosive chemicals, making it a flying bomb, had been the terrorists' plan since the mid-1990s. When Atta reported to his group that he could not get a loan to buy smaller planes, the plan was switched to hijacking passenger jets, according to what Abu Zabaydah, a top lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, has told American interrogators since his capture.”

We are to believe the evolution from Bojinka to 9/11 happened right there, in front of Johnelle Bryant’s USDA office in mid-2001, as the plotters regrouped from their failure to fund the project with American government loans. One can only wonder how Johnelle feels about this, or whether she even believes her own story or Zabayadah’s extracted confession.

Source: Ross, Brian. “Face to Face With a Terrorist: Government Worker Recalls Mohamed Atta Seeking Funds Before Sept. 11.” ABC News. June 6, 2002. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/ross_bryant020606.html

BOJINKA VIII: OPERATION BRZEZINSKI

Adam Larson
Caustic Logic/They Let It Happen
Written late 2005
Posted 1/20/07

As he was asked repeatedly in his Q and A session, "Bust and Boom" author Matthew Brzezinski is indeed the nephew of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the Polish-born former National Security Adviser to President Jimmy Carter. A cold and calculating thinker who has been described as the Democrats’ Henry Kissinger, the elder Brzezinski has tried his hand at non-fiction, writing many books, including his 1997 The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geo-Strategic Imperatives. In this book he noted, among other things, the strategic role of securing Afghanistan (as well as Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and - surprise - Poland) in relation to the American empire to hedge in Russia or any other rival to control of the “Grand Chessboard” of Eurasia.

Zbig’s own earlier role in Afghanistan was pivotal, encouraging and provoking the Soviet invasion of December 1979 that triggered the Jihad where bin Laden and the other future al Qaeda leaders met and learned the tools of the terror trade. This was a conscious plan of Brzezinski’s to give the USSR “its Vietnam War” to “make the Soviets bleed for as much, as long as possible” but with no American deaths. [1] President Carter agreed, approved funding, and sent Zbig to Islamabad in January 1980 to show support for Pakistan’s resistance against the Soviet occupation. He took a little side-trip to the Afghan border to rally the international coalition of radical Islamists; dressed in a parka at the Khyber Pass, Zbig told them “your fight will prevail because your cause is right and God is on your side.” [2]

Whatever works at the time works, including dirty tricks like creating terrorist networks; but Zbig continued to boast of this as “an excellent idea” even as late as an early 1998 interview in which he asked his interviewer “what is more important in world history, the Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?” [2] At the time it may have seemed a toss-up, but later that year two US embassies blew up in Africa and bin Laden declared holy war on the US – his crusade started taking on its eventually convincing global dimensions as a replacement for the Soviet threat.

Zbig’s son Ian Brzezinski is now helping the Pentagon keep Central Europe “liberated” from Russian domination as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs, appointed shortly after 9/11, in November 2001. Ian is at virtually every Pentagon meeting where European diplomats are present, usually seated right next to the top U.S. official. A longtime NATO insider, he spearheaded the effort to shape its expansion into Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. All seven “North Atlantic” states were approved for membership in March 2004, followed by Brzezinski’s capstone article “An Alliance Transforming.” [4] His advising record and his catalog of writings indicates that Ukraine, once the second most powerful Soviet Republic, is the final prize in this campaign, a play right out his dad’s 1997 book!

Ian's brother Mark Brzezinski has also helped in this process, as a possible Secretary of State if John Kerry had won in 2004, and otherwise devoted to the “Democratic transformations” wracking the former Soviet Space in the early years of this “new American Century” - notably the dioxin-induced Orange Revolution that turned Ukraine, of all places, upside down.

Ian’s and Mark’s sister Mika Brzezinski had worked as a reporter and host for CBS News for a few years until 2000, when she went over to MSNBC for a bit. Her return to CBS in early September 2001 was rewarded with the post of top New York correspondent. She was already reporting from the WTC before the second plane hit, and continued throughout the weeks after, anchoring millions of viewers to the latest from Ground Zero from the first moments of shock and awe through the early and raw phase of the “War on Terror” mentality. [5] Thus her timely return allowed her to have no small role in shaping the “widely perceived” part of what her father had four years earlier called the “direct external threat” that would allow “imperial mobilization.” [6] She later vied for an anchor slot on the back of such notable reportage, but lost the bid to Katie Kouric.

And then there’s nephew Matthew’s article that claims to expose the roots of al Qaeda’s sinister plan that led to all this. Some, like Matt, explain that the name Bojinka is a Serbo-Croatian slang word for “loud bang.” Some sources interpret it as meaning “chaos in the sky” or something to that effect. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the suspected financier of both this plan and September 11, explained in a 2003 interview that Bojinka is simply a nonsense word he picked up in the international bazaar that was the Afghan Jihad. [7]

Maybe this is coincidence, but I think it also sounds a little like “Brzezinski” (pronounced Brr-jhin-skee). If I let my imagination run for a minute, and I will, I can visualize “Bojinka” starting out as a nonsense nickname Osama gave Zbigniew when they met in Pakistan in 1980. They were both in country at the same rough time and for the same reason. As we’ve seen, Brzezinski visited the bustling Khyber Pass on a side-trip from his mission to Pakistan in January. Meanwhile, the Soviet invasion had made Osama “furious,” as he later recalled, and he was far from alone. As one of many sons from the Saudi Kingdom’s second richest family, he was the top export they had at the time. He first arrived at Peshawar, near the Khyber Pass, within weeks of the invasion - January. [8]

He and Brzezinski were both there to boost the funding and the morale of the frontline troops and to show the unity of purpose in the anti-Soviet alliance: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the U.K., and the U.S. Thus as the top representatives of their respective allied nations, it would in fact be a bit odd if the two men hadn’t met. It is a hard name to pronounce. “Ah, here he is now, our American friend Mr. Buruz… zuzzuz.. Mr. Baarrjjuzzz… Mr. Bojinka!” (big hearty laughs all around, it evolves among the Muj into a little frontline joke, one thing leads to another…) Both men would, and have, denied such meetings; bin Laden claims he never knew he was serving America’s interests at all. But it’s an intriguing thought, and vaguely possible. Weird things abound, I’ve found, around this weird name.

Sources:
[1], [2] CNN. Cold War Experience. Episode 20. Soldiers of God. Accessed November 9, 2005 at: http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/cold.war/episodes/20/script.html
[3] Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998 Posted at globalresearch.ca 15 October 2001http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
[4] U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda. Volume 9, Number 2. June 2004. (CIAO Date 9/04 - ?) Accessed November 10, 2005 at: http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/fpa/fpa_jun04/
[5] Mika Brzezinski profile. CBS News. Copyright 2002. Accessed November 9, 2005 at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/28/broadcasts/main527208.shtml
[6] Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives. New York. Basic Books. 1997. Pages 210-211
[7] 9/11 Commission Final Report. p 488-489
[8] Frontline: “A Biography of Osama Bin Laden.” PBS. 2001. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/bio.html

BOJINKA III: CORDER/GIA/CETRON

Some claim to have predicted the threat of Muslim terrorists with hijacked airliners even before Bojinka was discovered, and here is where we enter the possible cross-over of think tank and real world. First the real world, in the second half of 1994, provided some concerns for air security. These started with Frank Eugene Corder, a 38-year-old unemployed truck driver, Army veteran, and depressions-plagued alcoholic and cocaine user whose estranged wife had just died of cancer. For what it’s worth, one anagrams of his name is “DRUNK GONE CAREFREE.”

Another anagram of Corder’s name, for what it’s worth, is “NRO RENEGADE FUCKER.” The CIA-connected National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) runs the nation’s spy satellites and aircraft reconnaissance. They dabble at least in automated flight and drones, and are closely connected with the Air Force. In yet another inexplicable curiosity, on the seven year anniversary of Corder’s little escapade, the NRO was running a simulation of a small plane-related accident on their own headquarters near both the Pentagon and Dulles Airport, from which American Airlines 77 had just taken off. The drill was reportedly cancelled once the attacks in New York became known. [1]

Late on the night of September 11, Corder apparently decided to say “goodbye, cruel world,” in a big way. He allegedly stole a Cessna airplane from a Maryland airport, drunk as a skunk, and flew out towards Washington D.C. At about 2:00 am on the 12th, his plane finally came into the restricted, supposedly well-defended airspace around the White House. No defenses showed themselves, and the plane crashed into the South Lawn unopposed, taking out part of a porch and an old tree, killing only Corder. President Clinton and his family were staying elsewhere while the executive mansion was being renovated. [2]

And then a few months later, another event on a much larger scale cast the danger from the sky in a more ominous light. On Christmas Eve, an Air France jetliner was hijacked on the ground in Algiers. After killing three passengers, the hijackers were cleared to take off, and flew their missile towards Paris. Investigators later found that the men, part of the al Qaeda-linked Armed Islamic Group of Algeria (GIA), planned to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower in protest of French control in Algeria. The hijackers were killed during a re-fueling stop in Marseilles and their plot was stopped before it could make the front page with grisly Christmas fireworks over Paris. [3]

But it was not ignored by those whose job it is to scour the news for new ideas and new dangers. In early 2002, ABC News interviewed Marvin Cetron, a “terrorism expert” with military and engineering credentials who had written a report for the Pentagon in 1994. Cetron is a noted “futurist” thinker, President of Forecasting International, and a regular guest on CNN talk shows predicting trends in everything from education to science and engineering to business and global economics. Along with Robert McNamara, (who has also served as World Bank President since his Defense Secretary days), Cetron is a Director at the World Future Society, a Bethesda-based “neutral clearinghouse for ideas about the future,” including “forecasts, recommendations, and alternative scenarios.” The website explains “when people can visualize a better future, then they can begin to create it.” [4]

So what alternative scenario did he help the Pentagon visualize with his 1994 report? Cetron was concerned with the danger of an airborne suicide attack on the Capital, including such a warning in his report. Cetron told ABC:

“We saw Osama bin Laden. We spelled it out and we said the United States was very vulnerable. You could make a left turn at the Washington Monument and take out the White House. And you could make a right turn and take out the Pentagon.” [5]

ABC reported that the Pentagon brass wanted that particular warning deleted from his report. “It's unclassified, everything is available,” Cetron recalled his response. But they told him, as he summed up, “we don't want it released because you can't handle a crisis before it becomes a crisis, and no one is going to believe it anyhow.” Even after he deleted the kamikaze warning, the report was scrapped and not released to the public. [6]

ABC explained that the 1994 report had cited two events “earlier that year” as precedents to ponder: “the crash-landing of a small airplane at the White House by an apparently unstable man” (Corder, September 11-12), and “French authorities’ storming of a hijacked airliner that Algerian terrorists had planned to fly into the Eiffel Tower” Thus he was aware these attack planes could be airliners. But the timeline here is odd; the GIA’s failed attack was on Christmas Eve. Is it normal for Cetron to compose an entire report in less than a week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve?

This felt like a seam to me, so I though about it a minute. At that very time but half a world away, Yousef and Murad were just days away from getting busted for Bojinka on January 6. Within a couple of weeks, interrogators in the Philippines would be extracting from Murad, via torture, something remarkably like Cetron’s double-deleted warning. Was there a mix-up somewhere? And just as Cetron’s Corder/GIA-inspired scenario was cut from the wider report before it too was deleted, Murad’s similar phase two has been largely erased from the wider Bojinka story. This alleged prediction perhaps helped the Pentagon visualize the world they wanted and now have, but Cetron apparently wasn’t allowed to talk about it until after it came true.

Sources:
[1] “Agency planned drill for plane crash last Sept. 11” Associated Press. August 22, 2002. Accessed December 8, 2005 at: http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/cia-simulation.htm
[2] CNN. “Past security incidents at the White House.” February 7, 2001. Accessed May 4, 2003 at: http://www.cnn.com/2001/ALLPOLITICS/stories/02/07/whitehouse.incidents.02/index.html
[3] Gunaratna, Rohan. “Terror from the Sky.” Jane’s Intelligence Review. September 24, 2001. Accessed at: http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir010924_1_n.shtml
[4] World Future Society. Frequently Asked Questions. 2005. Accessed November 16, 2005 at: http://www.wfs.org/faq.htm
[5] “Early Warnings: Pre Sept. 11 Cautions Went Unheeded.” ABC News. February 18 2002.http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/DailyNews/wnt_missedsignals_1_020218.html
[6] See [5].

BOJINKA IV: A REAL AND REPEATED THREAT

Even without phase two or its predecessor report, Al Qaeda’s and others’ shift to suicide hijackings was not a theoretical – it actually happened and manifested itself in the real world. Numerous reminders of the tactic had popped up since 1995 in the form of foiled attempts, intercepted plots, and ominous warnings from various quarters. In November 1996, for example, Ethiopian terrorists hijacked an airliner and tried to crash it into a beach resort in the Comoros Islands for unclear reasons. Reports from the time explained that the pilots were able though to dive the plane into the sea, saving the resort by a bare 500 yards, but killing all but 52 of the 175 souls on board. [1]

Suicide hijacking was a fear at both the 1996 and 2000 Olympics (in Atlanta, GA and Sydney, Australia, respectively). In the 1996 case, Richard Clarke personally toured Atlanta looking for security breaches. He was horrified. Among his concerns was air security; ”mindful of Ramzi Yousef’s plot to blow up 747s and the images of Pan Am 103, I asked about aircraft. “What if somebody blows up a 747 over the Olympic Stadium. Or even flies one into the stadium?”” [2] Clarke could see in 1996 someone hijacking an airliner and crashing it into the stadium, and he was thinking Bojinka. In fact, this was not just a thought in Clarke’s head – security for the ’96 Olympics was actually beefed-up to meet the threat. The Chicago Tribune reported in November 2001:

”In an extraordinary aerial dragnet, launched quietly that summer and kept largely under wraps ever since, Black Hawk helicopters and U.S. Customs Service jets were deployed to intercept suspicious aircraft in the skies over the Olympic venues [...] Agents monitored crop duster flights within hundreds of miles […] Law-enforcement agents also fanned out to regional airports throughout northern Georgia "to make sure nobody hijacked a small aircraft and tried to attack one of the venues," said Woody Johnson, the FBI agent in charge of the Atlanta office at the time.”[3]

A handful of government-commissioned reports highlighted the threat of aircraft as weapons in the hands of terrorists, or at least tried to. One was a September 1999 report called “Sociology and Psychology of Terrorism: Who Becomes a Terrorist and Why?” It was prepared for the CIA-connected National Intelligence Council and shared with other federal agencies. CBS News cited it in May 2002: “Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House.” Author Rex Hudson explained at the time “Ramzi Yousef had planned to do this against the CIA headquarters.” [4] This is one of the very few pre-9-11 admissions of phase two that I’ve seen.

The Bojinka fears that should have been closest on president Bush’s mind on the morning of 9-11 had come less than two months earlier, in Late July. As reported in the Los Angeles Times, Italian authorities felt that there was a serious possibility of an attack against Bush and other world leaders attending the G8 Summit in Genoa by “crashing an airliner” into the venue. The threat was considered unsubstantiated by U.S. officials, but Italian authorities closed the airspace over Genoa and placed antiaircraft guns around the summit complex to enforce the order. For added security, the Secret Service had Bush sleep every night on an aircraft carrier just off the coast. [6] He had to have been told why he was drifting in the steel belly of that big boat instead of lying on fine linens in a posh Genoese resort.

Sources:
[1] Thompson, Paul and the center for Cooperative Research. “The Terror Timeline.” 2004. Page 18.
[2] Clarke, Richard. “Against All Enemies.” Page 106.
[3] Fineman, Mark and Judy Pasternak. “'96 Games warned of air threat.” Chicago Tribune. November 18, 2001http://www.chicagotribune.com/search/chi-0111180092nov18.story
[4] “'99 Report Warned Of Suicide Hijacking.” CBS News. May 17, 2002.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/17/attack/main509471.shtml
[5] “Italy Tells of Threat at Genoa Summit” LA Times. September 27, 2001. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-092701genoa.story

BOJINKA II: PHASE TWO / EVOLUTION

But there was more to Operation Bojinka: a second phase, barely mentioned if at all at the time. In all the evidence and arguments in the 6,000-page transcript of the 1996 trial, there is not a single mention of this second phase, even though one of the defendants was to be the perpetrator. [1] When Philippine interrogators pressed Abdul Murad about his pilot's license, they found out that his years training at multiple American flight schools had been in preparation for one final mission. A 2002 article from the Washington Post explained. “he was to buy, rent, or steal a small plane, fill it with explosives and crash it into CIA headquarters.” [2] Murad was ready to do this, knew how to fly, had plenty of bombs in the works, and only needed a plane.

But had hoped for more, and provided his interrogators with a broader phase two plan complete with a wish list of secondary targets for simultaneous suicide plane attacks. The possible targets mentioned included the U.S. Congress, the White House, the Pentagon, and “possibly some skyscrapers,” like, for example, the ones he and Yousef had failed to bring down the first time. The only problem with carrying out this more ambitious version, Murad complained, was that “they needed more trained pilots to carry out the plot,” and of course more planes – Cessnas, Learjets, crop-dusters, anything small. [3]

Bojinaka was a famous case at the time, and had a grand scale to it that captured imaginations and the attention of writers like Tom Clancy and “John Gilnitz.” If largely forgotten as a real-world threat by 9-11, it was quickly recalled and widely commented on afterwards. But the mainstream accounts of Bojinka are universally dominated by the nightmare image of eleven airliners blowing up, flaming wreckage and thousands of corpses plunging down into the middle of the ocean. People seemed to forget or ignore phase two, since it wasn’t about to happen at the time and was so much more… lame.

It was just an idea - but what an idea. A suicidal mindset and pilot training on the part of a hijacker can turn a 767 full of innocents from a bargaining chip to a guided missile. When Aida Fariscal, the first officer on the scene the night Murad was caught, saw the footage of 9-11 years later, she gasped “oh my God, it’s Bojinka.” The following day, General Avelino “Sonny” Razon flew to Manila to issue the public statement “we told the Americans about the plans to turn planes into flying bombs as far back as 1995. Why didn't they pay attention?” [4]

Their reaction to 9-11, connecting it with Bojinka, meant they had learned the lessons of Murad’s plot and understood its wider implications. All they needed was more trained pilots, as Murad said, and different thinking about the relation between planes and bombs. This was already evident to some in 1995. Gen. Renato De Villa, who served as Philippines Defense Minister at the time, said valuable clues were discovered during Murad’s “tactical interrogation.” An article summed these up:

“First, the extremists saw the 1993 World Trade Center bombing as a failure and still considered the twin towers a viable target. And more importantly, the cell seemed to be growing frustrated with explosives. They were too expensive, unstable and could give them away.”[5]

Even in Yousef’s new type of liquid bomb was an example of their shift to easier, less traceable methods. They’d already thought about cashing planes into buildings with bombs on board. Is there an easier way to get explosive things in the air and under your control? Explosions… car crashes… gasoline… jet fuel… Ah! The only thing needed to gain access to ready-made flying bombs, with no labs or chemical shipments to discover, was a few guys with box cutters and a guy who can fly - all willing to die. The government would now have us believe that they did not predict this fairly obvious evolution in thought.


sources:
[1] Terror Timeline. Page 18.
[2] Brzezinski, Matthew. “Bust and Boom: Six years before the September 11 attacks, Philippine police took down an al Qaeda cell that had been plotting, among other things, to fly explosives-laden planes into the Pentagon.” Washington Post. December 30 2001. Page W09 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14725-2001Dec21?language=printer
[3], [4], [5], See [2].

BOJINKA I: A LOUD BANG IN MANILA

As the official story goes, while Pope John Paul II was preparing to visit Manila in early 1995, with security ratcheting up everywhere, two early al Qaeda masterminds were mapping out his route. They were preparing to dress in ecclesiastical garb and blend in to the procession with bombs beneath their robes, and even collected pictures of the pontiff to ensure they would kill the right guy. The 9-11 Commission concluded they also plotted to assassinate President Clinton there in November, but missed their chance. [1] They were staying in a hotel (Dona Josefa Apartments, room 603) only 200 yards from the Vatican embassy, and almost as close to the local police station. They moved in on December 8, 1994. They had few visitors over the next month, but one, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), was reportedly financing their operation and was in and out of room 603.

Yousef and Murad also built a lot of bombs, one of which blew up prematurely on January 6. The two men fled their burning room, explaining they’d had a mishap with fireworks and would be back soon. Later on one of the culprits made good on his promise and was arrested by local authorities as he returned to the smoking scene. The suspect was quickly identified as Abdul Murad, an al Qaeda-linked Kuwaiti trained and licensed to fly commercial airliners in U.S. flight schools, and wanted in connection with the 1993 WTC attack. Ramzi Yousef, suspected mastermind of that attack, was the other guy in room 603, and returned with Murad. But when he saw the police, he fled, and evaded capture for a bit longer.

But Yousef did leave behind his lap-top computer and some disks, apparently too heavy to take with him as he fled. Of course they were full of top secret terrorist information. Investigators found an apparent mess of data on this computer – flight numbers, Arabic-sounding code-names, references to timers, all under the heading “Bojinka.” Yousef in fact had allegedly executed a test-run just weeks before, planting a small practice bomb beneath his seat. It worked, killing a Japanese businessman on the next leg of the plane’s flight and injuring others, forcing an emergency landing. [2]

A Graphic Used by CNN in their original reporting in 1995-96.

Bojinka was soon discovered to be the itinerary for eleven terrorists to plant eleven nitroglycerine bombs, much more powerful than the test bomb, on eleven U.S. jetliners, timed to explode simultaneously over the Pacific. And it was set up to go, possibly soon. White House Counter-terrorism “Czar” Richard Clarke mentioned Bojinka in his book Against All Enemies, by details if not by name. He wrote how he received a message from Manila regarding Ramzi Yousef and his devious plan, which featured undetectable liquid bombs to be assembled in eye drop bottles on board the planes. The bombers were then to mimic Yousef’s trial run and disembark, leaving the others to die. Clarke called the FAA and told them to stop all flights originating in the Pacific. When flights resumed, liquids were not allowed on board. [3] Officials later estimated 4,000 people would likely have died if the plot hadn’t been intercepted. Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA counter-terrorism director later said of this plan “we had never seen anything that complicated or ambitious before. It was unparalleled.” [4]

Within a few weeks of Bojinka’s discovery, Yousef was rounded up in Pakistan and joined Murad in prison. According to Peter Lance, that wacky KSM happened to be living in the same building, and when he saw reporters from Time show up, he told them all about the arrest with his own face but the clever pseudonym “Khalid Sheikh.” [5] The next day Yousef was flown to the U.S. and helicoptered to jail in Manhattan. An FBI agent reportedly shouted to him over the noise “you see the Trade Centers down there, they're still standing, aren't they?” Yousef allegedly responded “they wouldn't be if I had enough money and enough explosives.” [6]

Yousef and Murad were joined in the conspiracy charge by an Afghan named Wali Khan Amin Shah. CNN reported on the Bojinka trial in mid-1996, starting with jury selection on May 13. [7] Ramzi knew his rights, and chose to represent himself. His co-defendants Murad and Shah retained a defense team that called five witnesses, as CNN reported, “including a police officer from the Philippines who admitted that he had mixed up evidence he had examined.” Yousef maintained he’d been framed by Philippines police, but the three were finally convicted on all counts of attempted murder and related charges on September 5. The charges carried out a mandatory life sentence at least, with the sentencing scheduled for December 5. [8] Case closed… Long silence...

Sources:
[1] 9-11 Commission Final Report. Page 147.
[2] “Oplan Bojinka.” Wikipedia. Accessed November 11, 2005 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojinka
[3] Clarke, Richard. “Against all Enemies.” 2004. Pages 93-94.
[4] Brzezinski, Matthew. “Bust and Boom: Six years before the September 11 attacks, Philippine police took down an al Qaeda cell that had been plotting, among other things, to fly explosives-laden planes into the Pentagon.”
Washington Post. December 30 2001. Page W09 http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14725-2001Dec21?language=printer
[5] Lance Page 328, cited from Paul Thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research, the Terror Timeline, 2004, Page 14
[6] Paul Thompson and the Center for Cooperative Research, the Terror Timeline, 2004, Page 14
[7] CNN. “Terrorism trial begins in New York.” May 13, 1996. Accessed November 10, 2005 at: http://www.cnn.com/US/9605/12/terror.plot/
[8] CNN. “Plane Terror Suspects Convicted on all Counts.” September 5, 1996. Acc. Nov. 9, 2005 at: http://www.cnn.com/US/9609/05/terror.plot/index.html