Bush: Qaeda planned plane attack on Los Angeles

WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - The United States and its allies thwarted an al Qaeda plot after the Sept. 11 attacks to use bombs hidden in shoes to breach the cockpit door of an airplane and fly it into the the tallest building in Los Angeles, President George W. Bush said on Thursday.

"The plot was derailed in early 2002 when a southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative," Bush said in a speech.

Last October, the Bush administration had disclosed a plot to attack targets on the West Coast using hijacked planes, saying this was among 10 disrupted al Qaeda plots, but Bush provided more details on Thursday.

Bush referred to the plot as targeting the Liberty Tower in Los Angeles, but White House aides afterward said Bush had meant to say the intended target was the city's Library Tower.

Bush said that in October 2001, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks that year, had set in motion a plot for another attack inside the United States using shoe bombs to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the U.S. West Coast.

Rather than use Arab hijackers as in the Sept. 11 attack, Mohammed "sought out young men from southeast Asia whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion," Bush said.