UPDATE: 'Ongoing Communications' Are Bank Towers' Response to Terror Threats

Bush named the US Bank Tower plan as one of 10 US and international attacks that terrorists had considered, including an attack on the Sears Tower in Chicago and went into detail on the methodology. The US Bank Tower plot and other plans to attack the US have become political footballs in recent days as President Bush has been soliciting support for his anti-terrorist programs. The Bush administration says that it foiled the US Bank Tower plot and other plans, but critics say that the plans weren't really foiled because the terrorists only conceived of them and never put them into action.

A Los Angeles Times report on Friday quoted an unnamed US official who "said he believed the Library Tower plot was one of many Al Qaeda operations that had not gone much past the conceptual stage."

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has said that he was "blindsided" by the new details that Bush disclosed regarding the US Bank Tower plot, which Villaraigosa said that he learned about via press reports.

According to published reports, Bush says the attack was discovered and foiled in the days after terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center and caused major damage at the Pentagon. Bush made his comments in a speech at the National Guard Memorial Building in Washington, DC Thursday.

According to an AP report, Bush explained that, "the hijackers were to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of a commercial jetliner, take control of the plane and crash it into the Library Tower in Los Angeles." The US Bank Tower was formerly called Library Tower.

Bush had mentioned the US Bank Tower plot in a speech in October, but he provided further details of the plan in his speech Thursday. According to the AP report, Bush credited multinational cooperation for halting the attacks, saying that instead of recruiting Arab hijackers, Southeast Asian men were chosen for the West Coast assault because they would be less likely to arouse suspicion.

The report went on to say that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of the brains behind the Sept. 11 attacks captured in 2003, was busy hatching his scheme for a West Coast assault as early as October 2001. "The president said the plot was derailed when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al-Qaeda operative. Bush did not name the country or the operative," the AP report said.

At 1,017 ft., the US Bank Tower is considered the tallest US building west of the Mississippi. The 1.3-million-sf building was developed by Maguire Partners in 1989. Maguire purchased its partner's interest in the asset for $400 million. The building was renamed as part of a 2003 lease by US Bancorp for 165,000 sf.