And You'll Never Guess Where She Was Going To Hide The Bomb

"Smuggling a bomb on to a plane by this method is one of our worst nightmares. If you do not have specific information about the suspect, it would be impossible to carry out an intimate body search of every female passenger."

That's the word from a senior official at Scotland Yard. The British Daily Mirror quotes that official as saying the al Qaeda wanted to put a female suicide bomber on British Airways Flight BA223.

The source told the Mirror that the woman planned to evade close inspection by hiding eight to 12 ounces of plastic explosive in her vagina.

The London Sunday Telegraph partially corroborates the Mirror story, citing security sources as saying two al Qaeda members were on the loose in Britain, planning to blow up an overseas-bound jetliner with a shoe bomb... or similar explosive device.

The Mirror's source at Scotland Yard said the woman was to have gone to the aircraft's lavatory, removed the explosives, then detonated them as the aircraft flew over Washington.

There was no specific timetable, according to the source. Instead, it was to happen "sometime over the holidays."

Since Christmas week, British Airways flights to the US and Saudi Arabia -- along with Air France and AeroMexico flights to America -- have been cancelled, delayed, intercepted or targeted for special searches. All of this, since the Department of Homeland Security raised its terror threat assessment level to Orange, one notch from the most dire level, Red.

Security agents have apparently uncovered specific information about Flight 223. It seems it's all about the flight number. The Mirror's source said, "Because the intelligence did not identify a passenger by name, it was decided to disrupt the plot by cancelling the flights."

"It's the scheduled flight, not the passengers, that is causing the security delays," said a spokeswoman for British Airways.

British Defense analyst Paul Beaver concurred. "We have got intelligence, I am told, that there was a plan to take the aircraft and destroy it over Washington or fly it into something."

BA223 was allowed to fly from London to Washington after a three-hour delay on Saturday. The flight was delayed yet again on Sunday. BA spokesman Paul Parry said of the delay, "The delay has been caused by the passing of some extra information to the US. They have requested to be supplied with extra information about the flight for security purposes before take-off to Washington, the same as happened yesterday."

It's no consolation that this appears to be the wave of the future. British Transport Secretary Alistair Darling told the BBC Sunday, "What I can say is that I fear that for many years to come, we are going to be living in an age where there is going to be a heightened state of alert. Sometimes it will be quite severe, at other times perhaps less so."

FMI: www.tsa.gov