Washington, June 16: Al-Qaeda Islamist militant group once planned to demolish New York's Brooklyn bridge, blow up grounded airliners with explosive-laden vans and derail passenger trains, Newsweek magazine reported yesterday. Quoting federal investigators who interrogated captured al-Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the magazine said he told them he recruited a naturalized US citizen, a truck driver from Columbus, Ohio, named Lyman Farris, to assess several terrorist attacks in the US that never came off.
One of them was to determine whether acetylene torches could be used to cut the cables supporting the Brooklyn bridge, sending it crashing into the east river, the Newsweek reported.
Another was the used of "torque tools" to bend railroad tracks, sending passenger trains crashing off their rails.
Still another was to drive a small, explosives-packed van into an airport and beneath a commercial airliner as it sat on the tarmac, and blowing up the plane.
Farris, said Newsweek, reportedly told Mohammed that, as a licensed truck driver he could penetrate airport security without problem.
"None of these plots ever came off," said Newsweek. And "Farris has disappeared."
The magazine quoted sources as saying Mohammed was uncooperative and offered no information after his capture in Pakistan in March, but began talking when confronted with the contents of his computer and his cell phone records.
Bureau Report