US officials say that Osama Bin Laden wanted to assemble a team to attack America on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and had a hit list that included President Obama, General David Petraeus and a major US sporting event, ABC News reported.
The hit list was discovered in the “treasure trove” of information seized from Osama bin Laden’s compound after the Navy SEAL raid that killed him in May.
Officials say he was intent on an attack on the upcoming 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, though the plot was only in the “discussion phase”. He also remained obsessed with using aircraft to kill.
Officials told ABC News that bin Laden wanted to fly a small plane into a sporting event to cause mass casualties.
“We have so many small airports, you could fly below radar,” said Brad Garrett, former FBI special agent and now an ABC News consultant. “That’s possibly doable”.
The primary target on bin Laden’s hit list was President Obama. Officials tell ABC News that Osama was trying to hatch a plan to kill President Obama by shooting down Air Force One or Marine One, the president’s plane and helicopter.
Bin Laden hoped to kill General Petraeus, commander of forces in Afghanistan and soon to be CIA director the same way, either in a helicopter or fixed wing airplane with a missile or rocket propelled grenade.
Investigators do not believe the planning got very far, and both President Obama and General Petraeus have countermeasures on their aircraft that would make them tough targets.
“It’s difficult, but not impossible, to shoot down either General Petraeus or the president’s plane. But the reality is because of the countermeasures and other planes and helicopters in the air, it’s not a likely scenario,” Garrett said.
Investigators are also learning more about the travels of Osama’s couriers from the thumb drives taken from his compound. Over the years, US intelligence has placed a kind of tracking system in some internet cafes in Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere. If someone inserts a thumb drive it will leave a signature on that drive from that internet site. Investigators say they know now some of the places where Osama’s people went to transfer and receive data across the internet.
Arab world’s rating of Obama, US plummet: Two years after US President Barack Obama called in a groundbreaking speech from Cairo for a “new beginning” in relations with the Muslim world, his popularity among Arabs has nosedived, according to a new poll conducted by IBOPE Zogby International for the Arab American Institute Foundation.. The US “interference in the Arab world” was deemed the top threat to Middle East peace and security (61 percent), all but tied with the continued occupation of Palestinian lands (60 percent). In most countries surveyed, favorable attitudes toward the United States dropped to levels lower than they were during the last year of the Bush administration. The killing of Osama bin Laden also worsened attitudes toward the United States. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, 30 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the United States (compared with 41 percent in 2009), while roughly 5 percent said the same in Egypt (compared with 30 percent in 2009). The findings are largely in line with those of a poll conducted in the spring of 2010 by the Pew Research Center, which also found favorable views of the United States and Obama slipping. As with the new poll, Obama got his worst ratings for dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
