The suspect in the failed Times Square bombing was likely working with the Taliban movement in Pakistan, President Obama’s top terrorism adviser said Sunday.
John Brennan, the assistant to the president for counterterrorism and homeland security, told CNN’s “State of the Union” that the ongoing investigation pointed to Faisal Shahzad having links to Tehrik-e-Taliban.
“It looks like he was working on behalf of the Pakistani Taliban,” Brennan said.
Shahzad has been charged in connection with the attempted bombing in Times Square on May 1.
The group, also known as the TTP, is “closely allied with al Qaeda” and has pledged to carry out attacks on other parts of the world, including the United States, Brennan said.
Shahzad was arrested while trying to fly out of New York on Monday night, two days after he allegedly attempted to set off a car bomb in Times Square. The bomb failed to detonate.
It was the second case in the last six months of a bungled terrorist attack on the United States, following the failed bombing of a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day.
Brennan said U.S. counterterrorism efforts had degraded the ability of groups like al Qaeda and the Taliban to launch successful attacks.
“They’re trying to find vulnerabilities in our defenses,” Brennan said, noting the attempts have been “unsophisticated.”
Shahzad, a Pakistani-American, had traveled to Pakistan several times in recent years, Brennan said. “He was captured by the murderous rhetoric of al Qaeda and TTP,” Brennan said of the suspect.
Preventing attacks, especially those orchestrated by American citizens such as Shahzad, is a “very difficult challenge,” Brennan said.
Earlier, authorities said that Shahzad made a practice run in Manhattan the day before he attempted to explode the car bomb. Shahzad drove his white Isuzu from Connecticut through Times Square, where he staked out potential locations for the following night’s planned attack, a law enforcement source said. He then parked the Isuzu several blocks away from Times Square, though the precise location was unclear, and took a train back to Connecticut, the source said.
But because of a major goof, Shahzad couldn’t use the Isuzu as an escape car the next night, the source said. He had accidentally left the keys to that vehicle in the Nissan Pathfinder that he thought was about to blow up, the source said.
He apparently went instead to a train station, where he boarded a Metro North train back to Connecticut.
Officials are still trying to determine what may have motivated Shahzad, but a theory was emerging late last week that Shahzad felt Islam was under attack.
Any grudge Shahzad may have held against the United States appears to have developed recently, according to a senior U.S. official who is familiar with the investigation but not authorized to speak publicly.
Pakistani authorities have rounded up a number of people for questioning, as U.S. law enforcement sought to piece together the actions and motivations of Shahzad.
Iftikhar Mian, Shahzad’s father-in-law, and Tauseef Ahmed, a friend of Shahzad, were picked up in Karachi, Pakistan, on Tuesday, two intelligence officials said.
An intelligence source said Wednesday that Muhammed Rehan, another associate of Shahzad, also was detained on Tuesday.
Rehan allegedly was instrumental in making possible a meeting between Shahzad and at least one senior Taliban official, a senior Pakistani official said Wednesday.
The official said that Rehan drove Shahzad on July 7 in a pickup truck to Peshawar, Pakistan. At some point, they headed to the Waziristan region, where they met with one or more senior Taliban leaders, the official said.
Rehan is believed to have links to the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, which is close to al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, the official said.
(Source: CNN)
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One Response
So he went from being a middle aged white man upset with obamacare to a muslim yemach sh’mo to one who had backing from other muslims yemach sh’mom v’zichrom to one who was a lone wolf to one tied with the taliban yemach sh’mom.
Is anyone else getting dizzy from all this left spin?