U.S. Warns of Small Aircraft Terror Plot

"Operatives were planning to pack a small fixed-wing aircraft or helicopter with explosives and crash it into the (U.S.) Consulate (in Karachi)," states the advisory, issued Thursday.

It goes on to say that this plot and a similar one last year aimed at a U.S. warship, "demonstrate al-Qaida's continued fixation with using explosive-laden small aircraft in attacks."

The advisory says that a small aircraft packed with explosive would have the destructive capacity of "a medium-sized truck bomb."

But there was skepticism about the warning, both from the owners and pilots of small planes -- known as General Aviation aircraft -- and from some U.S. officials outside the Department of Homeland Security. Pakistani officials said they knew of no such plot against the U.S. consulate in Karachi.

"We are asking the General Aviation community to be especially vigilant," DHS spokeswoman Rachel Sunbarger told United Press International, adding that the advisory was not issued in response to a specific threat against targets in the United States, but was a result of intelligence from the brand new Terrorist Threat Integration Center at the CIA.

The center pools the data collection and analysis resources of the United States' various intelligence agencies.

The advisory is the most recent of what Sunbarger called "a handful" of similar warnings that the department has issued to different commercial sectors to warn them of any perceived hike in the threat they face.

Experts have long feared that the small plane sector represents the most dangerous gap in the nation's aviation security.

Last year, security experts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a respected Washington think tank, staged a war game called Silent Vector. It involved former senior U.S. officials taking the roles of various Cabinet members and senior military figures, in an effort to work out how the nation could respond to another major terrorist event on the scale of the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed almost 3,000 people.

The Silent Vector scenario involved terrorists chartering three small jet planes from a minor airport in an effort to crash them simultaneously into chemical plants along the East Coast.

"We developed the scenario and vetted it with experts from the government and the (charter aircraft) industry. Everybody agreed it was well within the realm of the possible," Phil Anderson of CSIS, who ran the war game, told UPI.

Anderson says the exercise identified the small plane charter sector as a "gaping hole" in the nation's aviation security infrastructure.

"There are no metal detectors," says Anderson, "no screening of luggage or passengers, no reinforced cockpit doors, no armed pilots or air marshals -- no security measures whatever. Flying out of many small uncontrolled airfields (like the one envisioned in Silent Vector), passengers can carry anything they want on board, including multiple concealed weapons."

But on Capitol Hill there was some skepticism. One staff member at the House Transportation Committee told UPI: "There is an unwarranted fixation on the part of some of these security people with small planes. Of course, you can fill a plane with explosives and fly it into a building. But you can drive a truck filled with explosives up to the same building in most cases.

"There's a lot more willingness to restrict the movement of small planes than there is of large trucks," he said.

Heather Rosenker of the Transportation Security Administration told UPI the warning was "routine."

"Though there's no credible, specific threat in the United States, it's still important for them to know that these concerns are ongoing and not to let down their guard."

When asked why he thought the warning had been issued, given the absence of any specific, credible threat, the Hill staffer replied: "You got to show you're doing something, taking some action."

"We're all bewildered about this," said Warren Morningstar of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which represents those who own and fly the nation's 220,000 General Aviation planes.

"There was nothing in that advisory which points to any intelligence (about a threat) on the domestic side."

He says his members are already following the advice given in Thursday's advisory and have been for months.

"If you go down the list of things that pilots and the rest of the GA community should do, and compare it with the brochure for our Airport Watch scheme, they match up exactly."

AOPA launched Airport Watch last December, in response to security concerns. Under the scheme, GA pilots, owners and others who use small planes or work at the small airports from which they fly are asked to keep alert, challenge strangers and report anything suspicious to a 24-hour hot line run by the Transportation Security Administration.

The brochure was sent to every pilot in the United States.

"We have not heard of any immediate threat to the U.S. Consulate in Karachi," said Mohammed Sadiq, the deputy chief of mission at the Pakistani Embassy in Washington. "We have no information whatsoever.

"The Consulate in Karachi is in a residential area and is a rather small building. It would be difficult to land an aircraft on it," he added.