The Plot to Attack British Airliners

Scotland Yard successfully penetrated the plotters of a mass terrorist attack against airliners
bound from the United Kingdom to the United States on Aug. 10 British time, resulting in the
capture of nine people who planned to use liquid explosives contained in carry-on luggage to
down the planes. Current reports indicate at least 21 people have been arrested in total, and
perhaps the cell contains as many as 50 people.

There are four takeaway lessons from this incident:

First, while there obviously remains a threat from those not only sympathetic to al Qaeda, but
actually participating in planning with those in the al Qaeda apex leadership, their ability to launch
successful attacks outside of the Middle East is severely degraded.

Second, if the cell truly does have 50 people and 21 have already been detained, then al Qaeda
might have lost its ability to operate below the radar of Western -- or at least U.K. -- intelligence
agencies. Al Qaeda's defining characteristic has always been its ability to maintain operational
security. If that has been compromised, then al Qaeda's importance as a force has diminished
greatly.

Third, though further attacks could occur, it appears al Qaeda has lost the ability to alter the
political decision-making of its targets. The Sept. 11 attack changed the world. The Madrid train
attacks changed a government. This failed airliner attack only succeeded in closing an airport
temporarily.

Fourth, the vanguard of militant Islamism appears to have passed from Sunni/Wahhabi al Qaeda
to Shiite Iran and Hezbollah. It is Iran that is shaping Western policies on the Middle East, and
Hezbollah who is directly engaged with Israel. Al Qaeda, in contrast, appears unable to do
significantly more than issue snazzy videos.

This shift will obviously refocus Western -- and particularly U.S. -- foreign policy from the old
threat to the new threat.
The Tactical Side of the U.K. Airliner
Plot
British authorities said Aug. 10 they thwarted a militant Islamist plot to attack as many as 10 U.S.-
bound passenger jets flying out of London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports. They also said they
are taking extraordinary measures at British airports, such as banning carry-on luggage on trans-
Atlantic flights. Liquids such as toiletry items and drinks and some small consumer electronic
devices also are being banned.

Media outlets are reporting that the operation would have caused an unimaginable catastrophe.
Such an operation, however, was both imaginable and practicable. Indeed, a very similar
operation -- called Operation Bojinka -- had been planned in 1994.

After his participation in the first World Trade Center bombing, Abdel Basit (also know by the
name on his fraudulent Iraqi passport, Ramzi Yousef) settled down in Manila, Philippines. He
assembled a cell of operatives who began to plan a long list of terrorist attacks. One of those was
Operation Bojinka, a plan to simultaneously destroy 12 airliners en route to the United States
from Asian cities.

Basit and his cell developed a modular improvised device constructed of a doll stuffed with
nitrocellulose, a detonator and a timer made from a modified Casio wristwatch. Once through
screening and on the plane, the devices were to be assembled in the aircraft's restroom.

On Dec. 11, 1994, the cell tested its device on Philippine Airlines flight 434. It detonated, but did
not bring down the plane. In fact it killed one only person and wounded 10 -- not the spectacular
results the militants had hoped for. Based on their test results, they went back to the drawing
board and decided to augment their main charge with a liquid form of an acetone peroxide
explosive, which they were going to place in contact lens solution bottles. This additional quantity
of a powerful explosive would be sure to give them the added punch they needed. However, while
brewing the liquid explosive they lost control of the reaction and their apartment caught fire. One
of Basit's laptop computers was recovered from the apartment and the plans for Bojinka were
discovered. Basit left the Philippines and fled to Pakistan, where he later tried to continue the plot.
He was in the process of implementing it when one of his bombers got cold feet and turned him
in.

Based on this history, and the example of convicted “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, a plot like the
one thwarted Aug. 10 in Britain is not far-fetched. It is very much within the capabilities of al
Qaeda and smaller independent jihadist groups. Also, when viewed through this historical lens, it
is easy to understand why authorities made the decision to ban liquids and small electronic items
from the passenger cabins. Indeed, nearly five years after Sept. 11 and Reid's attempted attack,
civil aviation is still vulnerable. Such attacks are not that difficult to plan and execute and there
are many ways that explosives can be concealed in addition to liquids. Once liquids are banned
from planes, jihadists will find another alternative.

The Bojinka plan called for the plotters to board flights with multiple legs, hide the devices and
then jump off before the devices activated. The current plot, however, almost certainly was
designed to use suicide operatives, because of the airports and the flights -- direct to the United
States -- involved. With as many as 10 flights reportedly being targeted, that meant they had
identified and trained at least 10 suicide operatives.

Though that is only half the number of operatives involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, it is
nonetheless a significant number of suicide operatives for a single mission. When combined with
the number and types of targets involved -- al Qaeda is fixated on aircraft -- it does appear as if
this current operation was connected to al Qaeda. There are claims that the detainees are British
citizens of Pakistani origin, revealing that al Qaeda's London management team was still largely
intact following the July 2005 attacks against London's transit system.

Many questions remain, such as why the authorities waited as long as they did to wrap up this
plot -- seemingly at the last minute. There are two possible explanations for this: First, because
this was a very big and complex operation, it took authorities longer to identify all the operatives
involved. They did not want to miss any of the suicide operatives, planners or bombmakers, and
leave them free to strike another day. This difficulty might have been further complicated by al
Qaeda involvement, as the group practices better operational security than grassroots cells and it
would have made it harder (and taken longer) for the informant and the authorities to connect all
the dots and identify all the components of the organization. The British government still is
embarrassed that it was unable to identify all the elements of the 2005 Underground bombings,
so there would be an incredible amount of pressure on investigators to make sure they identified
all of them this time.

Second, the informant might not have come forward until the operation was well under way. The
informant very possibly is one of the suicide operatives who got cold feet and changed his mind.
He might not have made the decision to bail out of the operation until quite late in the game, and
then it took the British government some additional time to verify the threat, identify the other
elements of the cell and then swoop in and arrest them.

Either way, somewhere in the attack cycle there was a serious breakdown in operational security
-- and the plot was thwarted. These arrests demonstrate the threat remains very real. One of two
other factors also is in play, however. Either the British government's counterterrorism efforts are
sufficiently robust as to allow them to penetrate al Qaeda operations in some instance at least, or,
as we have discussed in the past, al Qaeda's operational security has been degraded. Either
way, penetration is now more possible -- raising the possibility that, though al Qaeda remains a
threat, it is not the strategic threat it once was.