President Bush today gave details of a failed terror attack on a Los Angeles skyscraper. These are the other major terror attacks planned against American targets that have been thwarted in recent years.
1995 - Operation Bojinka, a plot to blow up 12 American airliners over the Pacific Ocean within 48 hours of each other, is foiled by police in the Philippines. Ramzi Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Centre in 1993 was jailed for 240 years for the plan.
1999 - A customs official on the US-Canadian border stops a suspicious man on a ferry. Ahmed Ressam, a 23-year-old Algerian, is found to be carrying bombs and timers to attack Los Angeles International Airport on New Year’s Eve. Co-ordinated attacks in Jordan were also planned.
2001 - Two days after the attacks on New York and Washington, police storm a flat in Brussels and find Nizar Trabelsi, a former professional football player, with machine guns, explosives and detailed maps of the US Embassy in Paris. In 2003, Trabelsi was convicted for planning a suicide attack.
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2001 - Richard Reid, a petty criminal from South London, is overpowered as he tries to ignite a bomb in his shoes on a transatlantic flight from Paris to Miami. He is later sentenced to life in prison.
2001 - US forces in Aghanistan raid an al-Qaeda safe house find a latop computer containing details of an alleged terrorist attack by Jemaah Islamiyah, a South-East Asian group, which was planning to bomb Singapore harbour and US interests in the region. Forty people were arrested for the plot.
2003 - Jose Padilla, a former gang member from Brooklyn, New York, is arrested by the FBI in O’Hare airport, Chicago, and is accused of trying to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb”. Padilla, a US citizen, is designated an enemy combatant and denied access to the courts. Last year, the US Supreme Court ordered that he should face a civilian trial.