Peace and Security Review, Vol.1 No. 2 - International Centre for ...

Dr. Harrison Aviation Security 103
have been liquid nitrogen concealed in contact solution bottles that, in the
opinion of most experts, even the most highly skilled and motivated security
screener would not have been able to detect. It was to have been part of a
larger operation that included an aviation suicide attack against the Central
Intelligence Agency headquarters. It remains publicly unclear if the operation
was to have involved a general aviation aircraft, such as the one that was
crashed into the White House in February 1993 by a man (not a terrorist)
committing suicide, or an attack similar to those that were to occur on 9/11. 22
Yousef was captured before the Bojinka Plot was carried out.
Al-Qaeda demonstrated its creativity on 9/11 when its operatives turned
four jumbo jets into a quartet of poor-man’s cruise missiles. These events, and
the case of Richard Reid and the missile attack in Mombassa were devised to
inflict enormous casualties, any political message aside. The perpetrators’
willingness ⎯ even eagerness ⎯ to die makes Phase 3 of the threat the most
dangerous and certainly the most difficult to defend against.
V. THE TACTICAL ENVIRONMENT
Four terrorist tactics have been actualised against international civil aviation
over the past three decades: hijackings; sabotage; shooting down aircraft; and
assaults on airports and related ground facilities. Each has led to a response
by the international civil aviation regime.
The most common terrorist tactic, both internationally and in South Asia
is hijacking, in which one person but usually between two and five take control
of an aircraft in flight by brandishing real or what they assert to be real, weapons.
Hijackers have a political agenda and, at least prior to the early 1990s, wanted
to survive the action. People were killed during some hijackings and US Navy
diver Robert Stethem was murdered by the hijackers of TWA flight 847, but a
captive has greater chances of being killed in a rescue mission. On November
23, 1985 one such instance occurred during a rescue mission conducted by
Egyptian commandos to rescue the 98 hostages (including four security
personnel) on Egypt Air flight 648. The Cairo scheduled Athens flight was
diverted to Malta. The Elite Group 777 of Egyptian commandos were sent in to
conduct this complex and dangerous rescue. A US Army Delta Force operator
was sent in to observe and support the commandos whom he had trained.
The American-trained commandos had been replaced by an untrained group
Each attempt would use aircraft to attack the site of the Pope’s open air mass, and to drop
bombs on President Clinton’s motorcade. There was also a preliminary plan for the 9/11
attacks.
22 Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al-Qaeda, p.6.
Vol.1, No.2 2008 pp.95-114