Existing comment:
Al Qaeda's Targets:
Terrorists begin discussing "the planes operation" as early as 1999. An early version of the plan calls for training pilots to hijack and crash commercial airliners into nine buildings on both coasts of the United States. The first operatives recruited for the plot obtain US visas in 1999, and by 2000 the men that will fly the hijacked planes are enrolled in US flight schools. Although numerous targets are discussed, the al Qaeda plan eventually centers on buildings which represent the power of the US economy, military, and government: the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the White House, or more likely, the US Capitol. |