bin laden oil tankers. Bin Laden Considered Attacking Oil Tankers. Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden once considered hijacking oil tankers at sea and blowing them up, in the hopes that such attacks would paralyze commerce and send oil prices skyrocketing, the U.S. said Friday.

The plot was discovered among a treasure trove of intelligence gleaned from bin Laden's personal files and correspondence, captured by U.S. Navy SEALs earlier this month when they killed him during a raid on his hideout compound in Pakistan.

Bin Laden was constantly looking for new ways to kill large numbers of Americans, but the oil tanker plot revealed that he was also considering low-tech attacks that would cripple Western commerce.


U.S. officials have said the plot was mostly fantasy, but The Associated Press reported that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning to authorities and the oil industry Friday.

The report said al Qaeda sought to obtain details about oil tankers, such as their size, how they were constructed and that they could be approached best during spring and summer months. The group also concluded that tankers could best be destroyed from the inside, and that doing so would trigger an "extreme economic crisis," AP reported.

Still, U.S. officials downplayed such attacks Friday.

"We are not aware of indications of any specific or imminent terrorist attack plotting against the oil and natural gas sector overseas or in the United States," Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said in a statement. "However, in 2010 there was continuing interest by members of al-Qaida in targeting oil tankers and commercial oil infrastructure at sea."

He said the alert was aimed at urging "random screening, personnel briefings describing possible threats, procedures for reporting suspicious activities and the need for vigilance."

About half of the world's oil supplies move via the sea, the report said.

News of the tanker plot came as President Barack Obama, who authorized the raid on bin Laden's compound, traveled to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., to thank the agency for its work in tracking down the United States' No. 1 terror suspect.

Obama met privately with about 60 CIA personnel involved in hunting down bin Laden before speaking to about 1,000 employees in the headquarters lobby, the Los Angeles Times reported.

"The work you did and the quality of information you provided made the critical difference," Obama said, adding that the clandestine operation would be studied "for generations to come."

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