Al Qaeda Leaders -- We Are Killing Or Capturing Them One B..

"Al Qaeda Fiend Targeted Bush"

By JAMES GORDON MEEK

The Daily News of New York City

WASHINGTON - Before he was captured last spring, Osama Bin Laden's top
operational commander was solely focused on killing President Bush and
Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharaff, the Daily News has learned.

The capture last May of Al Qaeda's No. 3 leader, Abu Faraj Al-Libi,
apparently thwarted plots to assassinate the two partners in the global war
on terror, said a senior Pakistani official, whose information was
corroborated by two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials.

"Al-Libi had one mission: Kill Bush and Musharraf," the Pakistani
official told The News. "He wanted to kill Bush in the White House,
preferably."

"It was clearly something they wanted to do. There's no question about
that. It's the holy grail of jihad," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official
confirmed.

Al-Libi organized several failed assassination attempts on Musharraf
before he was nabbed, officials have said. But the plot by Al Qaeda's
international operations chief to send assassins to the U.S. to kill Bush
was only disclosed this week.

The officials asked for anonymity because details of the Bush plot are
still highly classified. The officials added that there is little evidence
the U.S. mission advanced beyond initial planning by Al-Libi in Pakistan.

Two years before Al-Libi's capture by Pakistani and CIA operatives in
Pakistan's mountainous North-West Frontier province, near where many believe
Bin Laden is hiding, American officials were informed by Musharraf envoys
that the top Al Qaeda thug was bent on assassinating Bush, officials said.

Officials said it was not known if Bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman
Al-Zawahiri, personally ordered Al-Libi to hit the U.S. President.

Al-Libi replaced 9/11 attacks mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who
was captured in Pakistan in March 2003. Al-Libi's aide and successor, Abu
Hamza Rabia, was killed this month in Pakistan by a missile fired from an
unmanned CIA predator drone, sources said."
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DSH