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A bloodthirsty Saudi Arabian college student was busted in Texas for a sickening plot to pack baby dolls with explosives, put them in strollers and set them off at the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building and on Wall Street, police sources told The Post yesterday.
Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari, 20, also wanted to blow up former President George W. Bush’s Dallas home, federal officials said.
Aldawsari kept a diary and wrote a blog laying out his twisted plan for the bomb attacks — and dreamed of opening his own branch of al Qaeda in Lubbock, Texas, where he was a business student at South Plains College, authorities said.
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He wrote that he was inspired by Osama bin Laden and that 9/11 had caused a “big change” in his thinking, the feds charged.
“Now, after mastering the English language, learning how to build explosives, and continuous planning to target the infidel Americans, it is time for Jihad,” he chillingly wrote in the diary, which was seized by the FBI after his arrest Wednesday night.
Aldawsari, a former chemical-engineering student, had already obtained concentrated nitric acid and three gallons of sulfuric acid — key components of the type of bomb he allegedly was assembling.
He also had clocks, screw drivers, an electronic meter and other materials he needed, authorities said.
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly said yesterday that New York City was mentioned twice in the writings.
“We also know that he had a list, a sort of a to-do list that said, ‘Come to New York and spend a week here,’ ” Kelly said.
“This does not surprise us. Our operating assumption is that New York is at the top of the terrorist target list, and this has done nothing to dispel that.”
Aldawsari, who had been tossed from Texas Tech for poor grades, wrote a diary entry titled “synopsis of important steps.”
It included information about traveling to the city, renting several cars, putting bombs in them and leaving them in “different places at rush hour.”
Aldawsari wrote an e-mail to himself with the subject line “NYC Street Cameras,” that included links to real-time city traffic cameras in the Big Apple, the complaint said.
He was nabbed a few weeks after he tried to buy enough chemicals to use for 15 pounds of explosives per bomb — the same amount used in the 2005 London transit attacks that killed 35 and injured more than 700.
His alleged scheme came to light after he tried to buy the volatile substance phenol.
Aldawsari tried to pass off the purchase as research for school, but his story was so shaky, the supply company got suspicious and reported him to the feds on Feb. 1.
Agents soon found a series of e-mails and Web searches on his computer that described the alleged terror plans.
Aldawsari’s obsessively pored through online pictures of realistic-looking baby dolls, including some that could be altered to conceal bomb equipment, according to the complaint.
He also looked at sites related to strollers, baby clothes and diapers.
In another e-mail, with the subject line “Tyrant’s House,” he included Bush’s Dallas address. Also on his long list of targets were dams and nuclear plants in Colorado and California.
During his research of potential targets, Aldawsari studied the possible use of a backpack bomb at a Dallas nightclub, the feds said. He even once typed the phrase “can u take a backpack to nightclub” into a Google search, the feds said.
Aldawsari came to the United States in October 2008 and his tuition was being paid by an unidentified Saudi company.
While he worked alone and his plot was still in the planning stages, he was clearly considering as many avenues of terror as he could, the feds said.
He was charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, and is being arraigned in a Texas federal court today.