Word: atta
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...security. Many guards working in nuclear plants and some senior security experts working for the U.S. government say the defenses facilities rely on are too meager to thwart an assault by a force the size of the one al-Qaeda put together when it attacked the U.S. on 9/11--Mohammed Atta's band of 19 hijackers. "The NRC and the nuclear power industry," says a senior U.S. antiterrorism official, "are today where the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] and airlines were on Sept. 10, 2001." Whereas the U.S. has spent $20 billion improving aviation security since 9/11, it has spent $1 billion...
...eyed U.S. reactors is known. U.S. officials say Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the captured architect of the 9/11 attacks, has told interrogators that his original plan was to have some of his pilots fly commandeered airplanes into nuclear power plants. According to the final report of the 9/11 commission, Atta, pilot of the first plane to hit the World Trade Center on 9/11, "had considered targeting a nuclear facility he had seen during familiarization flights near New York." At the dawn of the Iraq war in 2003, Arizona National Guard troops were ordered to the nation's largest nuclear-reactor complex...
According to the NRC and the NEI, a force as big as Atta's band or anything bigger than the DBT is an "enemy of the state." That means it's the Pentagon's problem. "We recognize that there can be threats to our plants that are greater than what is defined by the DBT," Marvin Fertel, chief nuclear officer of the NEI has told Congress. "Although our security would provide an initial deterrence, at some point such threats are the responsibility of the Federal Government." That wouldn't necessarily do the plant's defenders any good, though. "They could...
...with the lesser charge of material support to terrorism. The evidence: Abu Ali allegedly associated with figures suspected of ties to al-Qaeda, who gave him money to buy a laptop and cell phone, and he allegedly professed a desire to become a "planner of terrorist operations like Mohammed Atta." Though Abu Ali does not appear to be particularly resourceful or hardened, a Justice Department official notes, "the problem is, What if he hooks up with somebody [who is]?" If convicted on only those modest counts, he still could face up to 80 years in prison...
...used in an attack by Saddam's forces on the Iraqi town of Halabja in 1988, in which 5,000 Kurds died. Double Victory GHANA President John Kufuor was elected to a second term, earning 53% of the national vote, against 44% for main rival John Atta Mills. Kufuor's New Patriotic Party also secured a majority in Parliament in parallel legislative elections, though Mills complained that supporters of his National Democratic Congress party were intimidated. The Best Defense JAPAN The government revised the country's defense policy, relaxing a long-standing ban on arms exports to allow sales...