Ethics

About That Library Tower Plot...

By Ed Brayton

In the wake of the release of OLC memos authorizing torture, Bush apologists are frantically trying to show that torture worked. Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post that claimed that torturing Khalid Sheik Mohammed had foiled a second plot to use airplanes to attack the highest skyscraper on the West Coast, the Library Tower. He wrote:

Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.' " In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on April 23, 2009 (boomark / email).