This could have illegal alien implications:


Thursday, February 09, 2006



WASHINGTON β€” President Bush, in a speech about terror, is focusing on a foiled attack in 2002 in which plotters planned to use hijacked commercial airplanes to strike the West Coast.

Bush has referred to the plot before, but White House officials said he planned to provide more specifics in a speech Thursday.

In an address last October, Bush said the United States and its allies had foiled at least 10 serious plots by the Al Qaeda terror network in the last four years, including plans for Sept. 11-like attacks on both U.S. coasts.

The White House initially would not give details of the plots but later released a fact sheet with a brief, and vague, description of each.

Three targets cited were in the United States, including plans to use hijacked airplanes to attack the West Coast in mid-2002 and the East Coast in mid-2003. The White House said at least one planner of the West Coast attack was a key figure behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Washington Post has reported that the West Coast plot targeted the tallest building in Los Angeles, since renamed the US Bank Tower, and involved Malaysian militants and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who was captured in 2003.

The third was the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam and allegedly plotted with top Al Qaeda commanders to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city. Padilla, whose plot never materialized, was designated an enemy combatant by Bush and is being held without criminal charge at a Navy brig in South Carolina.


Does anyone know if Padilla is a citizen or legal resident?