9-11 Review: Operation Bojinka

The assassination of Pope John Paul II during a visit to the Phillipines on January 15.
The bombing of eleven airliners on January 21 and 22.
The flying of a Cessna filled with explosives into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

'Operation Bojinka' often refers only the most deadly element of the plot -- the plan to destroy jumbo jets in mid flight. All of the targeted flights were trans-oceanic routes between east Asia and the United States. All had two legs, and the plan involved placing bombs aboard the planes on the first legs, and then detonating them on their second legs.

Operation Bojinka was abandoned in the wake of an apartment fire in Manila on January 6, 1995, which led to the discovery by police of evidence of the plot.

A detailed and well-sourced article on Operation Bojinka is found at wikipedia.org.

e x c e r p t

title: Operation Bojinka

authors: Wikipedia

Operation Bojinka (also known as Project Bojinka, Bojinka Plot, Bojinga, from Arabic: slang in many dialects for explosion and pronounced Bo-JIN-ka, except in Egyptian where it is Bo-GIN-ka) was a planned large-scale attack on airliners in 1995, and was a precursor to the September 11 attacks.

The term can refer to the "airline bombing plot" alone, or that combined with the "Pope assassination plot" and the "CIA plane crash plot". The first refers to a plot to destroy 11 airliners on January 21 and 22, 1995, the second refers to a plan to kill John Paul II on January 15, 1995, and the third refers a plan to crash a plane into the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia and other buildings. Operation Bojinka was prevented on January 6 and 7, 1995, but some lessons learned were apparently used by the planners of the September 11 attacks. This article will cover all three plans.

site: wikipedia.org page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bojinka

The Wikipedia article, like most covering Operation Bojinka, does not raise the question of whether the plan was in fact a false-flag operation designed to make al Qaida appear more capable and threatening than it actually was. It is interesting that, prior to 9/11/01, no actual attacks blamed on al Qaida either killed large numbers of U.S. civilians or had a sophistication even approaching that of Operation Bojinka.

page last modified: 2005-05-01