On December 14, 1999, “When Ahmed Ressam, the would-be bomber of Los Angeles International Airport [LAX], stepped off the ferry from Canada at Port Angeles, Washington…and was nabbed by alert Customs agents, U.S. investigators had little inkling that the arrest would prove a turning point in their understanding of al-Qaeda’s scope–of the networks that stretched across three continents and dozens of countries. They learned that al-Qaeda planned a New Year’s 2000 terrorism spectacular spanning the globe: not just an attack on LAX but on tourist sites in Jordan and a U.S. warship in Yemen. The plots were foiled by a combination of good police work and the plotters’ incompetence; and law enforcement would ultimately arrest affiliates of al-Qaeda in England, Spain, Germany, Italy, and Syria. But against this success stood the sobering realization that now, on the brink of the new millennium, al-Qaeda had truly gone global.”
– Peter Bergen, Holy War, Inc., Page 199