Terror Plot Foiled

Major terrorist attacks were twarted today by British and American-led intelligence agencies:

British authorities said Thursday they thwarted a terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up several aircraft heading to the United States using explosives smuggled in carry-on luggage. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the terrorists planned to use liquid explosives disguised as beverages and other common products and detonators disguised as electronic devices.

Police arrested 21 people, saying they were confident they captured the main suspects in what U.S. officials said had the earmarks of an al-Qaida plot.

Evan Kohlmann at Counterterrorismblog points out that this idea is not exactly a new one:

In 1995, when U.S. and Philippine security services uncovered a plot by 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and his uncle 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to bomb over a dozen U.S. airliners simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean [Operation Bojinka], they quickly moved in and arrested their co-conspirators. One of the detained men, trained commercial pilot Abdel Hakim Murad, described Ramzi Yousef's plans in detail -- including his intention to travel to "France, Egypt, and Algeria after the activities here in the Philippines. The purpose was to train those Muslim brothers thereat, on using a Casio watch as a timing device, chemical mixtures to compound bombs, and to share his expertise in eluding detection on an airport's x-ray machine, and eventually smuggling [onboard] this liquid chemical bombs. Furthermore, France has a lot of Algerians staying and that these Egyptians and Algerians ha[ve] no experience on making these bombs and [do] not know the basics of smuggling liquid bombs through the airport."

Three cheers for our intelligence agencies for picking up on this one. While we are still on high alert, it looks like they may have halted an attack that could have seen a higher death toll than 9/11.

I'm not sure we'll understand how our intelligence agencies sniffed this one out for a long time, but I wonder what the Andrew Sullivans of the world would think if the intelligence leading to this planned attack came through interrogation, wiretapping and/or the monitoring of financial transactions?

I'm dubious that they figured this out excluding any of the above intelligence gathering options.