But you don't have to take my word for it...

The LA Times pulls Oplan Bojinka out of the memory hole.

The 10-Year-Old Terrorist Plot - Los Angeles Times

As usual when it comes to homeland security, the authorities are way behind the curve. It's infuriating.

During the mid-1990s, the U.S. took into custody two Kuwaiti men who had devised the technical plan for Operation Bojinka — the name for a plan to blow up a large number of jumbo jets over the Pacific. In a test, the perpetrators in 1994 blew up an unsuspecting Japanese businessman in his seat on a Philippine domestic flight by wiring a device using a watch and liquid explosive disguised in a contact-lens case. This proved to the terrorists that they could get explosives aboard undetected.

Thanks to Philippine intelligence, the U.S. eventually arrested the two terrorists, Abdul Hakim Murad and Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. The two told the CIA about Bin Laden's plans to knock down big buildings using planes and blow up airliners using small chemical bombs. That was in 1995. (Yousef was later convicted in the U.S. for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.)

Technorati Tags: Oplan Bojinka, Operation Bojinka, 1995, DHS, TSA, boneheads