White House 'suicide plane' alert

The White House was evacuated for a short time last night as fears of a suicide attack were started by a small plane which failed to make radio contact with the nearby airport.

As the plane flew over Washington an F-19 Air Force jet was scrambled to track the plane until it landed in Richmond, Virginia, more than 200 miles to the south.

The evacuation was ordered about 20 minutes after President Bush returned to the Oval Office from a Republican party fund-raiser at the Washington Convention Centre. He stayed in the White House throughout the evacuation, a senior official said.

The FBI said a Cessna plane was flying towards the south-west in restricted airspace over the city and did not communicate with the control towers at Washington national airport. The plane then changed direction, at which time the secret service ended the evacuation. It was the first time the White House had been evacuated since 11 September, when it was thought to be a target of one of the hijacked airliners used in the attack on New York and Washington.

Hours earlier yesterday, the Federal Reserve building in Washington was evacuated because of a suspicious package which was later found to be harmless.

Meanwhile it emerged that a conversation in Arabic, intercepted on 10 September, a day before the suicide attacks, could be read as a warning that they would take place. The speakers, whose conversation was intercepted by the US National Security Agency, was not translated until a day after the suicide attacks.