American officials leaked details of the extraordinary intelligencecoup two days after the White House announced a plot by Al-Qaeda inthe Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) had been successfully thwarted. The double agent managed to spend weeks with AQAP before handingover information that allowed the United States to launch a dronestrike on Sunday that killed Fahd al-Quso, a senior figure who waswanted for the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, the New YorkTimes and other media reported, citing unnamed US officials. A senior US official told the Times that a bomb for the would-beattack was sewn into "custom fit" underwear that would have beendifficult to detect even in a careful pat-down at an airport. Unlike the device used in the failed December 2009 plot by AQAP toblow up an airliner en route to Detroit, this explosive could havebeen detonated in two ways, in case one failed, the unnamedofficial was quoted as saying.
The main charge was a high-grade military explosive that"undoubtedly would have brought down an aircraft," the officialsaid. ABC News had reported earlier that the latest plot by AQAP wasthwarted by a spy who infiltrated the group and took the explosiveto Saudi Arabia. The CIA and other government agencies declined to comment on thereports when contacted by AFP. FBI experts on Tuesday were analyzing the seized explosive thatofficials said was an updated version of the "underwear bomb" usedin a failed attack on Christmas Day 2009.
Although officials touted the disrupted plot as a success, theyacknowledged AQAP remained determined to strike and its masterbombmaker, Ibrahim Hassan Taleh Al-Asiri, was apparently hard atwork seeking to circumvent airport security. Saudi intelligence likely had the lead role in disrupting theconspiracy, possibly providing the double agent, former USofficials said. The Los Angeles Times reported that the double agent was "aninformant" overseen by Saudi Arabia's intelligence service, whichdevotes great efforts to monitoring Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen. Former intelligence officials noted that Saudi Arabia was creditedwith uncovering an AQAP plot in 2010 to blow up cargo planes headedto the United States and that the Saudis are known to keep a closeeye on Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen. "The Saudis have the best insight to Al-Qaeda in the ArabianPeninsula.
Presumably the Saudis working with the US disrupted thisplot perhaps inside Yemen, seized the device, turned that over tothe US," Fran Townsend, a former counterterrorism official underex-president George W. Bush, told CNN. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, agreed. "My guess is we probably had someone on the inside, my guess issomeone working for the Saudis, who tipped us off that the bomb wassomewhere and the bomber was somewhere and they were able to wrapthe two of them up," Riedel told AFP. "From previous AQAP experiences, it's usually the Saudis who giveus the critical intelligence," said Riedel, a fellow at theBrookings Institution.
US officials are concerned about AQAP's expansion in Yemen, as theaffiliate has exploited recent turmoil despite the threat ofstrikes from American drones overhead. The fresh plot to blow up a passenger plane bore a "strikingsimilarity" to the Christmas Day attempt of 2009, said Riedel, whoworked on the government's case against the Nigerian man blamed forthe botched attack. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab admitted to the conspiracy and wassentenced to four consecutive life sentences in February. Both cases likely involved the same bomb master, Asiri, and thesame approach in which the attacker was allowed to decide thetiming and precise location of his suicide strike, he said. I am a professional writer from Coal, which contains a great deal of information about clam shell packaging , cobalt blue bottle, welcome to visit!
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