Revealing newly declassified details, the president told a National Guard audience that the plot was hatched by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks captured in Pakistan in 2003.

According to Bush, Mohammed recruited volunteers from Southeast Asia to hijack a plane using a shoe bomb. The target was the US Bank Tower, then known as Library Tower.

Bush said the plot was broken up after a raid by a Southeast Asian country he didn't name.

The raid is one of many reasons al-Qaida is badly "weakened" and "fractured," Bush said.

Bush has referred to the plot before, but he provided more specifics details Thursday.

In an address last October, Bush said the United States and its allies had foiled at least 10 serious plots by the al-Qaida terror network in the last four years, including plans for Sept. 11-like attacks on both U.S. coasts.

The White House initially would not give details of the plots but later released a fact sheet with a brief, and vague, description of each.

Three targets cited were in the United States, including plans to use hijacked airplanes to attack the West Coast in mid-2002 and the East Coast in mid-2003. The White House said at least one planner of the West Coast attack was a key figure behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

The Washington Post has reported that the West Coast plot targeted the tallest building in Los Angeles, since renamed the US Bank Tower, and involved Malaysian militants and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who was captured in 2003.

The third was the case of Jose Padilla, a former Chicago gang member who converted to Islam and allegedly plotted with top al-Qaida commanders to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" in a U.S. city.

Padilla, a U.S. citizen, was arrested May 8, 2002, at O'Hare International Airport on a material witness warrant and was designated an enemy combatant, held without criminal charge at a Navy brig in South Carolina.

Padilla was charged in November on terrorism charges and transfered to the federal court system before the Supreme Court had an opportunity to take up his case contesting his detention as an enemy combatant. He remains in federal custody in Miami awaiting trial.

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