Posted at 9:47 p.m. EDT Friday, August 21, 1998
Men in papal plot termed close to bin Laden
By JOHN MINTZ
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON -- Among the more surprising assertions in the list of
terrorist plots attributed by the Clinton administration Friday to
Osama bin Laden was that the Saudi-born millionaire had planned to
assassinate Pope John Paul II.
U.S. intelligence officials said Friday that the reference,
made by President Clinton and other officials, was to an aborted
1995 plan to blow up the pope during a visit to the Philippines
using a fragmentary bomb and a timer inside a digital watch.
Although they provided no direct evidence tying the plans to bin
Laden himself, they said the two men blamed for the plot -- Ramzi
Ahmed Yousef and Wali Khan Shah -- had financial, ideological and
personal connections to the bin Laden terrorism ``network.''
Bin Laden previously had been linked by U.S. officials to many
of the most notorious terrorist attacks or plots of the 1990s,
several of which Clinton cited in his Oval Office address Thursday
explaining the U.S. cruise missile attacks in Afghanistan and
Sudan. They included a 1993 assault on U.S. servicemen in Somalia
that left 18 dead and the 1995 attempt on the life of Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak in Ethiopia. In addition, Clinton said bin
Laden was involved in the suicide bombing of the Egyptian embassy
in Pakistan that killed 15 people, and last year's attack on an
Egyptian tourist site in which 62 tourists were shot or stabbed to
death.
But in tying nearly every major terrorist attack or uncovered
plot tied to Islamic extremists in recent years to groups
``associated with'' bin Laden, the Clinton administration elevated
the exiled Saudi to a new public status. The description of links
between bin Laden and assassination attempts against the pope was
among the most surprising on the list.
Recent threats against the life of the pope have emanated from
various quarters, according to U.S. officials. In April last year,
Bosnian police discovered a bomb -- consisting of more than 20
anti-tank mines and 50-plus pounds of plastic explosives -- hidden
under a bridge that the pope was scheduled to cross during a
visit. Western intelligence agencies concluded that the bomb had
been laid by an Iranian-controlled network.
European investigators also detected two separate plots on the
pope's life in Italy last year, one in the spring and one last
September also thought to be instigated by Iran, U.S. officials
said. In the second plan, an alleged hit team of Bosnians, Turks,
Tunisians and Algerians plotted to bomb the pontiff on a visit to
Bologna, the U.S. officials said.
According to Yossef Bodansky, director of the House Task Force
on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, the pope has become a
regular subject for at least rhetorical attack by Islamic
fundamentalists led by Iran and Sudan.
``They see the Pope as a challenge to the spread of Islam
around the Third World, especially in Africa and Asia,'' Bodansky
said. ``They believe the Pope is a symbol of a benevolent church''
who doesn't fit their bitter characterizations of wicked
Westerners. ``That's why they think he has to be stopped,'' he
said.
U.S. officials said the plot against the pope that Clinton
referred to Wednesday was uncovered in January 1995, when Filipino
firemen were summoned to a Manila apartment to check out smoke
billowing from the windows. The firefighters found smoldering
chemicals in the empty apartment, and called police. U.S. and
Filipino authorities later confiscated a computer disk that
described plans to blow up a dozen 747 jumbo jets over the Pacific
Ocean and to assassinate John Paul II.
Inside the apartment, near the papal nuncio's residence where
the pope was set to stay a few days later, investigators also
found materials for a large pipe bomb, maps of the pope's
itinerary, Bibles and priests' cassocks. Authorities later
arrested the two men who had rented the apartment, Yousef and
Khan.
Both were later convicted in New York of conspiring to blow up
4,000 passengers in the 747s, which they planned to do by mixing
chemicals into explosives in airplane lavatories before leaving at
scheduled stopovers. Yousef, a 20-something bomb-building
vagabond, was also convicted of actually setting an explosive on a
Philippines Airlines flight that killed a Japanese traveler, and
in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in Manhattan that
killed six people and injured 1,000.
Details cited by U.S. officials in tying bin Laden to the plots
include the Saudi's ownership of the house in Pakistan where
Yousef was living when he was arrested in 1995. In addition, some
bin Laden companies supplied Yousef with funds during his
terrorist operations. In New York, Yousef was associated with an
Islamic group called the Al-Kifah Center, itself tied to Maktab
al-Kidmat, a Pakistani organization co-founded by bin Laden.
Khan has been friendly with bin Laden since they fought
side-by-side against the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s.
``He was nicknamed 'The Lion,' '' bin Laden told ABC News of his
comrade in arms. ``He is one of the best. We were good friends.''
But Khan was less loyal to his old chum. He recently became a
cooperating witness for the FBI and CIA in their work on bin Laden
and others in his terrorist network.
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