President George W. Bush said Thursday that the terrorist who masterminded the September 11, 2001, attacks also planned a similar attack on the Library Tower building in Los Angeles, Calif., but that the attack was thwarted and the terrorist captured before he could carry out the plan.

“We now know that in October 2001, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad — the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks — had already set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door, and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast,” Bush said at the National Guard Association in Washington, D.C. “We believe the intended target was [Library] Tower in Los Angeles, California.”

Now known as the US Bank Tower, at 73 stories tall, it is the tallest building west of the Mississippi River, and was the building “blown up” in the film Independence Day.

Rather than use Arab hijackers as he had on September the 11th, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad sought out young men from Southeast Asia — whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion. To help carry out this plan, he tapped a terrorist named Hambali, one of the leaders of an al Qaeda affiliated group in Southeast Asia called “J-I.” JI terrorists were responsible for a series of deadly attacks in Southeast Asia, and members of the group had trained with al Qaeda. Hambali recruited several key operatives who had been training in Afghanistan. Once the operatives were recruited, they met with Osama bin Laden, and then began preparations for the West Coast attack.

Their plot was derailed in early 2002 when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative. Subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations made clear the intended target, and how al Qaeda hoped to execute it. This critical intelligence helped other allies capture the ringleaders and other known operatives who had been recruited for this plot. The West Coast plot had been thwarted. Our efforts did not end there. In the summer of 2003, our partners in Southeast Asia conducted another successful manhunt that led to the capture of the terrorist Hambali. — George W. Bush

Bush continued: “It took the combined efforts of several countries to break up this plot. By working together, we took dangerous terrorists off the streets; by working together we stopped a catastrophic attack on our homeland.”

The West Coast plot and the September 11 plot were originally supposed to take place at the same time, but bin Laden couldn’t find enough people in time to carry out the attacks simultaneously, said Frances Townsend, assistant to the President for homeland security and counterterrorism.

“All of the cell leaders were ultimately arrested and taken into custody,” she said, before they could complete planning and set a date for the attack.

Officials refused to comment as to whether the National Security Agency’s so-called terrorist surveillance program was used to disrupt the plot.

Bush said that the terrorists have already been deprived of resources they need to operate effectively and execute further attacks, but that work remains to be done.

“The terrorists remain brutal and determined — and they still have some resources at their disposal,” he said. “Yet from the vantage point of a terrorist sitting in a cave, the future seems increasingly bleak. Consider how the world looks four-and-a-half years into the war on terror: The terrorists have lost their home base in Afghanistan, and no longer have control of a country where they can train recruits and plot new attacks; many of their leaders are dead or in custody, and the rest of them are on the run; they’ve been reduced to using messengers to communicate; they’re running low on funds, and have been forced to beg the terrorists in Iraq to send money; countries that once allowed them free reign are now on the hunt.”

It doesn’t look like a good day to be a terrorist.

More coverage: New York Times, Washington Post, BBC News, New York Times (again)