A top al-Qaida official close to Osama bin Laden wanted to kill President George W. Bush at the White House, according to a report in the N.Y. Daily News.
Abu Faraj Al-Libi - al-Qaida�s number three leader who was captured in Pakistan last May � also had plans to assassinate Pakistan�s President Gen. Pervez Musharaff.
The information has reportedly been corroborated by two senior U.S. counterterrorism officials.
"Al-Libi had one mission: Kill Bush and Musharraf," the Pakistani official told The News. "He wanted to kill Bush in the White House, preferably."
"It was clearly something they wanted to do. There's no question about that. It's the holy grail of jihad," a senior U.S. counterterrorism official confirmed.
Details of the plot to kill President Bush are highly classified, but word of the plans was disclosed earlier this week.
"It was not known if bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, personally ordered Al-Libi to hit the U.S. President,� writes The News.
BBC News, reporting in May after the capture of Al-Libi in Pakistan, said the low-key Al-Libi rose to the #3 Al-Qaida leadership spot when his mentor, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was captured in March 2003.
It was only through the interrogation of a number of suspects - arrested between January and August last year - that Pakistani authorities started taking note of his presence in the hierarchy, investigators told BBC News.
One security official said: "Every time we interrogate a militant linked to al-Qaida, al-Libbi's name pops up."
The Bush plot never made it past the initial stage of development, according to U.S. counterterrorism officials, and the president was never in imminent danger.
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