To kill a pope

Six years before 9/11, Osama bin Laden conspired to assassinate Pope Paul John II in Manila, the Philippines, during World Youth Day ceremonies in 1995.

He codenamed the operation “Bojinka.” The Al Qaida chieftain, in addition to killing the Pontiff, planned to bomb eleven airlines on transoceanic routes from Asia to the USA and anointed a suicide bomber to fly a Cessna filled with explosives into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Dreaming of unleashing 48 hours of unimaginable terror resulting in the death of thousands, he fervently wished to succeed where the Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Akca had failed in his attempt to kill His Holiness in Rome in 1981.

The cast of characters assembled for this devastating conspiracy was larger than life and beyond the imagination of even the most talented scribes whose works of fiction frequently appear on best-seller lists. We had the al-Qaida Illuminati, led by bin Laden; Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, his Hamas-affiliated brother-in-law and the coordinator of the plot; Khalid Shaikh Mohamed, future 9/11 mastermind; Ramzi Yousef, Shaikh Mohamed’s nephew and World Trade Center bomber in 1993; Abdul Hakim Murad, master bomb maker; and Wali Khan Amin Shah one of the principal organizer and coordinator of the plot.

According to Matthew Brzezinski, an American writer and journalist, in his “Operation Bojinka’s Bombshell,” stated that Amin Shah funded the operation by laundering money through Konsojaya Trading, a front company run by Jemaah Islamiyah. He started by enrolling several bar hostesses who were bribed with gifts so that they would open bank accounts to stash funds without arousing suspicion. The transfers were small, equivalent to about 12,000 to 24,000 Philippine pesos ($500 to $1,000 US), 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 Jordanian Omar Abu Omar, who worked at an Islamic organization run by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. Besides, an Indonesian named Riduan Isamuddin, known as “Hambali, “financially assisted the Manila cell by laundering money through other channels in a complex web of hidden monetary transactions worldwide.

Another critical funder of the operation was Tariq Javed Rana, a Pakistani suspected of supporting international terrorists with drug sales.

According to a “History Commons” document concerning “Context of January 6, 1995: Pope Assassination and Bojinka Plot,” Terry Nichols, a white supremacist and planner of the Oklahoma City attack in 1995, made several trips to the Philippines, apparently to meet with al-Qaeda bomber Ramzi Yousef and other radical Islamis. Hundred and sixty-eight souls lost their lives in that operation. That a KKK terrorist would cooperate with Islamists is perplexing.

The terror infrastructure for mounting such an audacious operation was in place in the Philippines as a grizzly insurgency had already gripped the nation. According to a report by the Council on Foreign Relations, the southern Philippines has long been a breeding ground for terrorist activity. Militant organizations like Moro National Liberation Front [ MNLF], Moro Islamic Liberation Front [MILF], Abu Sayyaf Group [ASG], and New People’s Army [NPA] -the military arm of the Philippine Communist Party – have operated mainly in the Sulu archipelago and easternmost island of Mindanao, where a rugged terrain, weak rule of law, sense of grievance among the country’s Muslim minority, and poverty make it difficult for the government to root them out.

The long-simmering insurgency made its debut in a grenade attack in Zamboanga City that killed two American evangelists and was followed by a series of deadly attacks:

The Christian missionary ship, M/V Doulosin Zamboanga, was bombed, killing two and wounding 40 in 1991; an Italian priest was killed in 1992; two Spanish nuns were kidnapped in Sulu in 1993; a Spanish priest was abducted in 1993; an American missionary was also taken in 1993; a cathedral was bombed in Davao, killing six and wounding 132 in 1993;  a series of bombings in 1994 attributed to Islamist radicals killed over 71 people throughout the country in one of the most brutal publicly remembered and reviled attacks in modern Philippine terrorism; and abu Sayaf operatives attacked the western Mindanao town of Ipil on April 4, 1995, killing 53, wounding 48, and then burning and looting 17 commercial buildings.

It was precisely in the midst of such a brutal reign of terror in the Philippines in 1994 that the Vatican announced Pope Paul John II’s visit to Manila the following year. This was a golden opportunity for the Al-Qaida chieftain to fulfill his cherished ambition: to kill a Pope. The “Bojinka Project,” spearheaded by K. S. Mohammed, had been in the works for some time, and the Pope’s forthcoming journey provided an opportunity to divert attention away from the leading airline bombing operation by assassinating the Pontiff a few days before airplanes were blown apart over the Atlantic. Also, killing the Bishop of Rome in a spectacular operation during the forthcoming largest papal gathering in history in Manila would have established him as the rising star of the global jihad.

Terry McDermott, in his New Yorker article entitled “Master Mind,” published on September 10, 2010, related how the conspirators converged on Manila in the final stages of the plot to assassinate the Pope and launch the operation.  McDermott said they stayed in hotels and residences and met in shopping malls, bars, and karaoke clubs in the Ermita District of Manila.  However, the main business for the operation was conducted at Dona Josefa apartments, number 603, located at 711 President Quirino Avenue in Malate, Manila. It was the ideal address: only 200 meters from the Vatican Ambassador’s residence where the Pope would be staying.

The conspirators, who had access to the Pontiff’s secret itinerary, decided to use suicide bombers against the Papal motorcade en route to the Federation of Asian Bishop’s Conference at the San Carlos Seminary in Guadalupe, Makati City on January 15, 1995. Eventually, they settled on the public event at Luneta Park to maximize casualties. To this end, they started training three suicide bombers as priests. They bought Bibles, crucifixes, and rosaries and ordered priest clothing, including robes and collars. Appearing as cheering priests from a Third World country who came to attend the World Youth Day, they would get as close to the Pope as possible and simultaneously detonate themselves in three massive fireballs that would consume everyone within a radius of 100 meters.

Parallel to the plan to kill the Pope, the conspirators started to test airport security by taking various flights with different airlines and meticulously recording security procedures with emphasis on what type of explosives could be smuggled on board without detection. Then came the practice run. They succeeded in planting an explosive device on Philippines Airlines flight 434 en route to Narita from Manila via Cebu, where Yousef disembarked, having planted a bomb. It exploded, killing one passenger, but the crew managed to land the crippled plane safely. Next time, they would place the explosives closer to the location of the fuel tanks to ensure that no one would survive a mid-air explosion.

According to Dennis Piszkeicz in “Terrorism’s War with America: A History,” American airlines were chosen instead of Asian carriers to traumatize the USA. The flights targeted were assigned to operatives with codenames: “Zyed,” “Majbos,” “Markoa,” “Mirqas,” and “Obaid.” The terrorists were to time the explosions before they disembarked from the planes. The jets would have exploded simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea. If this plan had worked, the consequences would have been incalculable. Several thousand passengers would have perished, and air travel would likely have been shut down worldwide.

• “Zyed” was to attack a Northwest Airlines Manila-Seoul-Los Angeles flight, a United Airlines Seoul-Taipei-Honolulu flight, and a United Taipei-Bangkok-San Francisco flight. After disembarking in Bangkok, Zyed was to escape to Karachi, Pakistan.
• “Majbos” was to attack a United Airlines Taipei-Tokyo-Los Angeles flight, with him disembarking in Tokyo. He would then proceed to a United Tokyo-Hong Kong-New York flight. After disembarking in Hong Kong, he would flee to Karachi, Pakistan.
• “Maroka” was to attack a Northwest Airlines Manila-Tokyo-Chicago flight, with him disembarking in Tokyo, and then proceed to a Northwest Tokyo-Hong Kong-New York flight. After disembarking in Hong Kong, he would have escaped to Karachi.
• “Mirqas” was to attack a United Airlines Manila-Seoul-San Francisco flight, with him disembarking in Seoul, and then proceed to a Delta Air Lines Seoul-Taipei-Bangkok flight. After disembarking in Taipei, he would have escaped to Karachi.
• “Obaida” was to attack a United Airlines Singapore-Hong Kong-Los Angeles flight and a United Airlines Los Angeles-Hong Kong-Singapore flight, which would become a Singapore-Hong Kong-San Francisco flight. After arriving in Singapore, Obaida was to flee to Pakistan.

The bomb to assassinate the Pontiff in a gigantic fireball involved gallons of sulfuric acid, picric acid, nitric acid, glycerin, acetone, ammonia, sodium chlorate, nirobentzinol, silver nitrate, and ANFO. The deadly devices also integrated equipment such as thermometers, funnels, fuses, filters, soldering irons, breakers, mortars, pestles, electronic fusing, timers, switches, and circuit breakers.

At Papal World Youth Day, five million youths were to gather at Luneta Park in Manila, the largest crowd ever recorded by Guinness World Records. The explosion would have been the deadliest terror attack in history!

But unbeknown to the terrorists, the plot had already been betrayed.

Edwin Angeles (Ibrahim Yaakub), a Philippine undercover agent (possibly a double spy) who had penetrated the top echelons of the Abu Sayyaf network, got wind of the conspiracy. His cover was brilliant, and he reported to Colonel Rodolfo Mendoza, one of the “founders” of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and a key investigator at the National Security Services of the Philippines. In 1996, the New York Times reported that according to U.S. investigators, “Angeles said he worked alongside Ramzi Yousef as he planned the details of the ‘Bojinka’ plot.” In terms of counter-espionage, this was a classic!  Adam Fitzgerlad, in an article titled “Edwin Angeles: The Spy Inside Abu Sayyaf, wondered if Angeles was a member of the group turned government agent or a spy turned Aby Sayyaf. We shall never know, as he was assassinated on January 14, 1999. Suffice it to note that his information prevented a catastrophe.

Informed of the complot, President Ramos became seriously concerned and decided to take extraordinary measures to prevent airline bombings and to protect the Pontiff. He called on the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency to launch a major operation and stop the conspiracy dead in its tracks. The Agency had the authority to conduct wide-ranging overt and covert operations with limitless resources. The Director of the NICA first asked Colonel Rodolfo Mendoza to lead the investigation: he was the ideal spymaster as he had been monitoring foreign terrorist connections in the Philippines for decades and had recently produced a top-secret report on the threat.

He wasted no time launching a massive search with the clock ticking.

Colonel Mendoza carefully studied his list of suspects, who were most likely already under surveillance.  He read all the files before selecting 128 names for 24/7 monitoring. In addition, he authorized a series of measures, including wiretapping phones, listening to conversations on cell phones belonging to suspects’ girlfriends – one such lady being a famous stripper – bugging offices, setting a myriad of honey traps, monitoring meetings, secretly filming casual encounters in public places and checking purchases made with credit cards issued to local known fellow travelers.

Informed of the danger, John II refused to cancel the largest Christian gathering in history.

The first break came when Khalifa’s [bin Laden’s son-in-law] tapped phone conversations revealed that he was in touch with the WTC bomber Yousef in Manila and that a company called Konsonjaya Trading was at the heart of the conspiracy. The second breach could not have come at a better time, as the existing surveillance of a Pakistani businessman by the name of Tariq Javed Rana yielded a treasure trove of information about the plot. According to Avelino Razon, a Philippine security official, they were watching him as he was already “suspected of supporting international terrorists with drug money.”  The surveillance revealed that Rena was smuggling large sums of counterfeit U.S. currency and sending it to Yousef by trusted couriers. Once Yousef was ensnarled in Mendoza’s net and placed under observation, it was a matter of time before his accomplices would be identified and rapidly arrested.

But just before the security services were about to move in either Yousef or Murad accidentally set a fire while mixing explosives in apartment 603 at the Dona Josefa on January 6, 1995, six days before the point of the set foot on Philippine soil.

When the security service stormed the apartment after the fire, they found street maps of Manila with routes to be taken by the papal motorcade marked in red, religious vestments, bibles, crucifixes, holy water, a myriad of explosive chemicals, timers, switches, circuit breakers, brass pipe bombs, and armed suicide bomb vests. But the most important discovery was Yousef’s computer: it contained the whole story of the plot, including names, contact information, records of financial transactions, and detailed plans relating to the plot.

Murad was arrested on the spot, but Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohamed escaped as the fire broke out before they could be detained. They were eventually caught in Pakistan and are now serving life sentences in the USA.  Many conspirators were arrested that day and others subsequently; some were mysteriously released in months ahead while others escaped.  K. S. Mohammed vanished into thin air but resurfaced together with bin Laden to bring down the proud towers of New York six years after the collapse of “Project Bojinka.” However, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Colonel Rudolfo Mendoza’s interrogation of Abdul-Hakim Murad revealed that a “second wave” of terrorist attacks against the U.S. had been in the works for some time. According to Murad’s disclosures, the second operation would target the CIA Headquarters, the Pentagon, an undisclosed power plant, the Transamerica Tower in San Francisco, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the World Trade Center, the White House, and the U.S. Congress. In effect, Murad wrote Peter Lance, an American investigative journalist, divulged “the blueprint for 9/11”.

The Report of the Joint Inquiry by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Committee on Intelligence on the September 11, 2001 attacks proved how right Pericles had been in his famous speech to the Athenians in 432 B.C: “I am more afraid of our mistakes than our enemies’ designs.”

As fate would have it, the paths of bin Laden and Pope John Paul crossed again. On May 1, 2011, the Beatification of Karol Józef Wojtyla coincided with the assassination of Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy Seals.