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Project Bojinka

zh-cn:波金卡计划

Project Bojinka, also Operation Bojinka or Bojinka Plot, (pronounced Bo-GIN-ka) was a project in making a large-scale terrorist attack previous to the September 11 Terrorist Attacks. Project Bojinka was prevented but plans and lessons learned were used for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The people developing the project were all members of Al-Qaida, an international terrorist organization which was based in Sudan at the time. Project Bojinka was being developed by Al-Qaida operatives Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed while they were in Manila, Philippines in 1994 and early 1995. The word Bojinka means "loud bang" or "explosion".

Table of contents
1 Financing
2 Planning of the project
3 Phase I
4 Phase II
5 Phase III
6 Discovery and Death of the project
7 Manhunt
8 The end result
9 Opinions on the project in relation to September 11
10 External Links

Financing

Wali Khan Amin Shah, an Afghan, was the financier of the project. He funded the project by laundering money through his girlfriend and other Manila women, one of whom was an employee at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. The transfers were small, equivalent to 500 to 1000 dollars and would be handed over each night at a Wendy's or a karaoke bar. The funds went to "Adam Sali", an alias used by Ramzi Yousef. The money came through a Filipino bank account owned by Syrian Omar Abu Omar, who worked at International Relations and Information Centre, an Islamic organization run by Osama bin Laden's brother in law, Mohammed Jalal Khalifa. A company called Konsojaya also provided financial assistance to the Manila cell. Konsojaya was a front company that Indonesian Riduan Isamuddin, later known as Hambali, started. Wali Khan Amin Shah was one of the board of directors of the company.

Planning of the project

As soon as Yousef arrived in Manila along with other Arab Afghans that were making cells in Manila, he started to work on making bombs. Yousef had shown up in Singapore with Khan earlier in fall 1994. The two got their Philippine visass in Singapore.

The "Mark II" "microbombs" had Casio digital watches as the timers, cotton wool balls as stabilizers, and an undetectable nitroglycerin liquid concealed in a contact lens solution bottle as the explosive. Other ingredients included small parts of sulphuric acid, nitrobenzene, silver azide, liquid acetone, and nitrate. Two 9-Volt batteries in each bomb were used as a power source. The batteries would be connected to light bulb filaments that would detonate the bomb. The batteries were taken from children's toys. The wiring would be attached to the arm of the watch using a tiny space under the calculator. The alteration was so small that the watch could still be worn in a normal manner. Yousef got batteries past airport security during his December 11 test by hiding them in his hollowed-out heels of his shoes, and other terrorists would probably do the same thing.

His first test of his bomb was inside a mall in Cebu City. The bomb detonated several hours after Yousef put it in a generator room. It caused minor damage, but it proved to Yousef that his bomb was workable.

He left Manila for several days, but was met by Al Qaeda emissaries upon his return to Manila. They asked him to attack United States President Bill Clinton, who was due to arrive in the Philippines on November 12, 1994 as part of a five-day tour of Asia. He thought of several ways to kill the president, including placing a bomb on Clinton's motorcade route, firing a stinger missile at Air Force One or the presidential limousine, and killing him with a chemical weapon called phosgene. However, he abandoned the idea as it would be too hard to kill the President. However, he would then incorporate his plan to kill the Pope into Project Bojinka.

In 1994, Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed started testing airport security. Yousef booked a flight between Kai Tak International Airport in Hong Kong and Chiang Kai Shek International Airport near Taipei. Mohammed booked a flight between Ninoy Aquino International Airport near Manila and Kimpo International Airport near Seoul.

The two had already converted fourteen bottles of contact lens solution into bottles containing nitroglycerin, which was readily availible in the Philippines. Yousef taped a metal rod to the arch of his of his foot in place of the detonators. Yousef and Mohammed wore jewelry and clothing with metal to confuse airport security. They packed condoms in their bags to support their alibi that they were meeting women.

On December 9, he moved into the Don Josefa Apartments under the alias Najy Awaita Haddad and pruported himself to be a Moroccan. He had already started planning Project Bojinka. The first test of the bomb after moving into the apartments, which Shah proctored, was on December 1, 1994, at the Greenbelt Theatre in Manila.

On December 11, 1994, Yousef built another bomb, which had one tenth of the power that his final bombs were planned to have, in the lavatory of the aircraft and left it under his seat, 27F, after he got off the plane from a flight that arrived in Cebu. Yousef had boarded the flight under an assumed name. The that the aircraft was on was Philippine Airlines Flight 434 using that aircraft on a Ninoy Aquino International Airport, near Manila, - Cebu - New Tokyo International Airport, Narita, near Tokyo, Japan route. Yousef had set the timer for four hours after he got off the aircraft. The bomb exploded while the aircraft was over Minami Daito Island, near Okinawa, Japan. Haruki Ikegami, a Japanese businessman in seat 27F was killed when the bomb detonated. The Boeing 747-200 safely made an emergency landing. None of the aircraft's other two-hundred and seventy-two passengers were killed, although 10 passengers in front of Ikegami were injured. None of the crew members were killed. Since the bomb did not destroy the aircraft, Youssef then tried to increase the bomb's power for his newer bombs. Yousef then set the charges and planned which flights to attack for Phase I.

Phase I

The first plan was a plan to kill Pope John Paul II when he visited the Philippines. A suicide bomber would dress up as a priest. He would then use the disguise to get closer to the Pope so that he could kill him by detonating himself. The planned assassination of the Pope was there to divert attention from the next part of the phase. About 20 men had been trained by Yousef to carry out this act prior to January 1995.

The next plan would have involved at least five Al Qaida operatives, including Yousef, Khan, Shah and two more unknown operatives. They would set the bombs on 11 United States-bound airliners that had stopovers all around East Asia and Southeast Asia. All of the flights had two legs. The bombs would be planted on the first leg, when each terrorist would disembark. After the terrorist planted bombs on all of the flights, each terrorist would then catch flights to Lahore, Pakistan. Here is a list flights that Ramzi Yousef targeted.

Other airports that Bojinka flights were to never arrive at were Honolulu International Airport of Honolulu, Hawaii and John F. Kennedy International Airport of New York, New York.

United States airlines had been chosen instead of Asian airlines to maximize the shock towards Americans. The flights targeted were listed under operatives with codenames, such as "Zyed", "Majbos" or "Obaid". Obaid was to hit United flight 80, and Zyed was to hit Northwest Flight 30.

After flying to Lahore, the operatives would detonate the total of 14 bombs. The aircraft would have blown up over a two day period over the Pacific Ocean from January 21 to 22, 1995. If this plan worked, several thousand would have perished, and air travel would have been shut down worldwide for days, if not weeks. The U.S. government estimated the death toll to be about 5,000.

Phase II

Phase two would have involved Abdul Hakim Murad, his friend, either renting, buying, or hijacking a small airplane. The airplane would be filled with explosives. He would then crash it into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Murad had been trained as a pilot in North Carolina, and was slated to be a suicide pilot.

There have alternate plans to hijack a 12th commerical airliner and use that instead of the small aircraft, probably due to the Manila cell's growing frustration with explosives. Testing explosives in a house or apartment is dangerous, and it can easily give away a terrorist plot.

A report from the Philippines to the United States on January 20, 1995 stated, "What the subject has in his mind is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack [the] said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters."

Phase III

Phase three would involve hijacking of more airplanes. The Sears Tower (Chicago, Illinois), The Pentagon, the Washington Capitol, the White House, the Transamerica Tower, and the World Trade Center would be the likely targets.

In his confession with Filipino investigators, Abdul Hakim Murad said that the Manila cell could not recruit enough people to implement Phase III prior to the foiling of Project Bojinka.

Discovery and Death of the project

The project was abandoned after an apartment fire occured during the night in Manila, Philippines on Friday, January 5, 1995. The fire occurred one to two weeks before the Pope, John Paul II, was scheduled to visit the Philippines. Also, a typhoon had hit Manila not that long ago before the fire. The incident took place at six-story Dona Josefa apartment was located 200 meters away from the embassy of the Vatican City in the Philippines, and was 500 meters down the street from Manila Police Station No. 9 on Quirino Avenue. Middle Easterners often rented units there to hang out at nightclubs such as the Malate nightclub, which are often nonexistant in their home countries.

The fire was started when one of Youssef's friends started a chemical fire in the kitchen sink in Suite 603 in the 6th floor of the Dona Josefa apartment. The smoke came when water was poured on to douse the fire. After the fire was spotted at about 11 P.M., police, including 55-year old watch commander Aida D. Fariscal, who decided to investigate the situation, first found four hot plates in their packing crates, cotton soaked in a beige solution, and loops of green, red, blue, and yellow electrical wiring. The telephone rang, and the police ran downstairs thinking that it was a trap.

The police then arrested a man whom called himself Ahmed Saeed. He offered the equivalent of two thousand dollars to the policemen if they let him go, but the officers would refuse to let him go, despite the fact that Manila policemen did not make that much money in a year at the time. The officers encountered Ramzi Yousef as well, although they did not know who he was at the time, and they let him go. The police grew suspicious when Saeed mumbled that "two Satans that must be destroyed: the Pope and America."

When the officers returned to Suite 603 at 2:30 a.m. on January 6, they found also street maps of Manila with routes plotting the papal motorcade, a rosary, a photograph of the pontiff, a bible, and clothes similar to those worn by a priest. A phone message from a tailor reminding the occupant that the cassock was ready to be tried on suggested to the senior inspector that an assasination attempt was going to be placed on the Pope. A search warrant was granted by 4 A.M.

More chemicals, such as gallons of sulphuric, puric, and nitric acid, pure glycerin, acetone, sodium trichlorate, nitrobenzoyl, ammonia, silver nitrates, methanamine, and ANFO binary explosive were found. Some of those chemicals were concocted into a smoking mixture of explosives in the kitchen sink. Equipment such as thermometers, graduated cylinders, large cooking kettles, funnels, fuses, filters, beakers, mortars, pestles, different electronic fusing systems, timers, circuit breakers, and a box of Rough Rider lubricated condoms were found. The most damning piece of evidence found so far was a manual written in Arabic on how to build a liquid bomb. Casio watches were found in the apartment, which linked Yousef to the small bombing of the Philippine Airlines flight to Tokyo. Stacks of 12 false passports, including false Norwegian, Afghan, Saudi, Pakistani and other faked passports "issued" by other countries were also found in the apartment. Also found was a business card from Mohammed Jalal Khalifa.

Yousef's pet project was discovered on four floppy diskettes and a laptop personal computer inside his apartment, two weeks before the project would have been implemented. The first string of text in one of the files states, "All people who support the U.S. government are our targets in our future plans and that is because all those people are responsible for their government's actions and they support the U.S. foreign policy and are satisfied with it. We will hit all U.S. nuclear targets If the U.S. government keeps supporting Israel, then we will continue to carry out operations inside and outside the United States to include ..." and the text ends.

A file named "Bojinka" lists the eleven flights between Asia and the United States, which were grouped under five codenames. Strings were found, such as "SETTING: 9:30 PM to 10:30 PM. TIMER: 23HR. BOJINKA: 20:30-21:30 NRT Date 5" (for United flight 80), and "SETTING: 8:30-9:00. TIMER: 10HR. BOJINKA: 19:30-20:00 NRT Date 4" (for Northwest Flight 30).

A communication signed by Khalid Sheik Mohammed was also found, as was a letter that threatened to attack targets "in response to the financial, political and military assistance given to the Jewish state in the occupied land of Palestine by the American Government." The letter also threatened to assassinate Fidel Ramos, the President of the Philippines at the time, as well as attack aircraft or even launch a biological attack if the United States did not meet the group's demands.

The police determined that the men who were planning this either had ties to Al Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, and/or Pakistan.

Saeed turned out to be Abdul Hakim Murad, who was sent to the apartment to retrieve the computer after the fire. Murad was sent to Camp Crane, a military installation that was on the outskirts of Manila. For sixty-seven days, he endured a torture process called "tactical interrogation", or "TI". When Murad did not talk, agents hit him with a chair and long piece of wood. They forced water into his mouth, and crushed cigarette lights onto his genitals. Agents were surprised that he survived. Murad confessed that he was on a quest to be a martyr. He confessed to being the hijacker as part of Phase II of his plan. Murad would later be extradited to the United States. His testimony would help convict Yousef.

Manhunt

Wali Kham Amin Shah was arrested at an apartment conplex at Singalong Street, but he escaped on a short order 77 hours later. Hambali provided Shah with an alias, "Osama Turkestani". Shah was found to be a conspirator after authorities saw photos of him scanned on the laptop that contained information about the project, as well as cell phone numbers that led investigators to the apartment. Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed were able to escape the country. The Philippines forwarded the Bojinka plot to the United States in April 1995. Wiretaps conducted concluded that Konsojaya was frequently in contact with Mohammed Khalifa Jalal's charitable organization until the project was discovered.

Yousef would later be arrested in a hotel room in Islamabad, Pakistan on February 7, 1995 after a 23-month manhunt. Yousef later boasted to FBI agent Brian Parr about his plan. Wali Khan Amin Shah, the financier, got picked up in Malaysia in December of 1995. His identity was revealed after he was fingerprinted. Khan also got extradited to the United States. Both Shah and Yousef got life sentences for participating in the project. Yousef also got 240 years along with his life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. Yousef got sentenced on January 8, 1998, and Murad got sentenced on May 16, 1998. Shah has been cooperating with the government since August 1998. He has yet to be sentenced.

A man named Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a Saudi businessman from Jeddah that is married to one of Osama Bin Laden's sisters, was in the Philippines earlier in 1994, probably conspiring with Abu Sayyaf. He was arrested in 1994 in San Francisco for conspiring in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was also allegedly conspired in the Project Bojinka plot, according to the content that the Filipino investigators forwarded to the United States. However, the INS deported Khalifa to Jordan in May 1995.

The end result

U.S. Investigators would apparently not find the connection to Al Qaeda until several years later.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed decided that explosives were too risky to use in his next terrorist plot. He decided to take Phase III and make it into a new terrorist attack, which would become known as the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks. He would be arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan in 2003.

Opinions on the project in relation to September 11

People who feel that the U.S. Government should have discovered September 11 feel that the discovery of Project Bojinka should have raised early warning flags that would have prevented September 11, pointing to Phases II and III. Some from this side of the argument also feel that the U.S. government should have connected the dots.

Those that feel that the U.S. Government could not have discovered the September 11 plot argue that the Bojinka plot was mainly about Phase I.

External Links


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