Word: bin
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...unspectacular as it might seem to most Americans, the Prudential Plaza building is a site of intense interest to Osama bin Laden and his operatives. Beginning in 2000, al-Qaeda operatives inside the U.S. conducted detailed surveillance of the Prudential building, with the apparent intent of destroying it and killing the civilians who work there. They took multiple photographs of the building and observed the parking garage underneath. One report outlined possible methods for carrying out an attack. Written in English, the report noted that it might be difficult to drive trucks or vans into the parking lot. Black limousines...
...provided. Aruchi identified a photograph of Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, 25. Pakistani police described Khan as a rising star in al-Qaeda's next generation of fighters, someone equally comfortable in cyberspace and in the mountains of Afghanistan, where he learned to handle small arms at one of bin Laden's training camps...
According to a Pakistani law-enforcement official, Khan was a gifted techie. He helped bin Laden's network set up incendiary Islamist websites in Pakistan and abroad, sent encrypted messages through the Internet to al-Qaeda cells and helped research other useful information, such as how to use computer models to determine the amount of plastic explosive required to blast through a skyscraper's concrete foundations. Pakistani investigators say Khan used different Internet cafes and relayed coded messages through secure websites that required a numbered password to gain entry. He never used a cell phone and instead made calls...
...unspoken reality, though, is that all the current scrambling may still not be enough to keep the U.S. safe. While intelligence experts believe the busts in Pakistan have helped provide new insights into bin Laden's network and the deadly activities it evidently had planned, the scope of the terrorist threat has only widened as officials learn more. Which plots might still be going forward and which have been foiled is frustratingly unclear. For all the progress against a deadly and elusive target--and progress it was--that is the nature of the war against al-Qaeda. Says Michael Mason...
...reported on the evidence uncovered by the 9/11 commission that there were contacts between al-Qaeda and Iran between October 2000 and February 2001 [July 26]. That is further confirmation that the U.S. attacked the wrong country. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Your story noted that Osama bin Laden declined an offer of collaboration with Iran to avoid alienating his supporters in Saudi Arabia. So, what better country to attack than Saudi Arabia? The warfare should have been not military but economic, in the form of subsidizing a Manhattan Project to end our dependence...