A Distinctive Shape, and an Inviting Target
By <http://query.nytimes.com/search/query?ppds=bylL&v1=JOHN%20M.%20BRODER&fdq=1 9960101&td=sysdate&sort=newest&ac=JOHN%20M.%20BRODER&inline=nyt-per> JOHN M. BRODER New York Times February 10, 2006 LOS ANGELES, Feb. 9 - The U.S. Bank Tower here, the city's tallest building, has long been presumed to be an inviting target for terrorists. Rising 1,018 feet from Bunker Hill in downtown Los Angeles, the gleaming I. M. Pei-designed building is the most distinctive shape in the skyline and the tallest office building west of Chicago. President Bush said on Thursday that the 72-story building, known as the Library Tower until U.S. Bancorp acquired naming rights in 2003, was to have been the target of a follow-up attack by Al Qaeda after the terrorist strikes of Sept. 11, 2001. Officials have discussed the alleged plot numerous times in recent years as an example of terrorist actions that might have been foiled by government vigilance, but Mr. Bush offered new details. Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa complained at a news conference on Thursday that he had not been called directly by the White House, learning of the new information on the alleged plot only from state officials and staff members. The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, said federal officials had passed along the new information to the authorities in Los Angeles and Sacramento, telling them that Mr. Bush would discuss it on Thursday. Mayor Villaraigosa, a Democrat, said that he had twice written to the White House to request a meeting with the president to discuss security threats to Los Angeles, but that he had received no response. "I'm mayor of the second largest city in the country," Mr. Villaraigosa said. "I have tried to meet with the president at the White House on a number of occasions every time that I've gone to Washington, D.C., to discuss specifically this issue of homeland security, and to no avail. Let's be clear about that." He also said that the president's antiterrorism budget had shortchanged a number of potential targets, including Los Angeles. "Given the known terrorist plots against our city, I firmly believe that Los Angeles deserves a greater share of that funding," the mayor said. Mr. Bush mistakenly referred to the building in his remarks Thursday as Liberty Tower; the White House later corrected the error. Chief <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/william_j_brat ton/index.html?inline=nyt-per> William J. Bratton of the Los Angeles Police Department said in an interview that he had been aware of threats to the skyscraper since he took over as chief in 2002. He said he had devoted significant counterterrorism resources to the building and to Los Angeles International Airport, another potential target, because Al Qaeda is known to carefully research its targets and to try to strike more than once, as it did at the World Trade Center. He said he was working with federal and local law enforcement officials on a program, Operation Archangel, to identify critical sites around the country that might be targets for terrorist attack and to design methods to defend them. Mr. Bratton was in Washington on Thursday with other big-city police chiefs for a brief White House meeting with Mr. Bush that he characterized as "mostly a photo op." The bank tower opened in 1989 and has nearly 1.4 million square feet of rentable space. It was designed to withstand an 8.3 magnitude earthquake, but not an alien invasion. It was the first building destroyed by space invaders in the 1996 film "Independence Day." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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