NYC bomb suspect seized aboard Dubai-bound plane

By TOM HAYS and COLLEEN LONG , 05.04.10, 01:10 PM EDT

NEW YORK -- A Pakistani-born U.S. citizen was hauled off a plane about to fly to the Middle East and arrested in the failed attempt to explode a bomb-laden SUV in Times Square, authorities said Tuesday. One official said he claimed to have acted alone.

Faisal Shahzad was on board a Dubai-bound flight that was taxiing away from the gate at Kennedy Airport when the plane was stopped and FBI agents and New York Police Department detectives took him into custody late Monday, law enforcement officials said.

U.S. authorities "will not rest until we have brought everyone responsible to justice," Attorney Eric Holder said early Tuesday, suggesting additional suspects are being sought.

In Pakistan, intelligence officials said at least one man has been detained in the southern city of Karachi in connection with the Times Square case: a man named Tauseef who was a friend of Shahzad. He did not say when the man was picked up.

Another Pakistani official said several people had been taken into custody since the failed attack. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of their work.

President Barack Obama said "hundreds of lives" may have been saved Saturday night by the quick action of ordinary citizens and law enforcement authorities who saw the smoking SUV parked in Times Square.

"As Americans and as a nation, we will not be terrorized. We will not cower in fear. We will not be intimidated," Obama said.

Shahzad, 30, had recently returned from a five-month trip to Pakistan, where he had a wife, according to law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation into the failed car bombing.

Shahzad became a naturalized U.S. citizen last year shortly before traveling to Pakistan, a federal law enforcement official in Washington said, speaking on condition of anonymity amid the ongoing investigation.

Investigators hadn't established an immediate connection to the Pakistani Taliban - which had claimed responsibility for the botched bombing in three videos - or any foreign terrorist groups, a law enforcement official told the AP.

"He's claimed to have acted alone, but these are things that have to be investigated," the official said.

Shahzad has been answering questions for investigators, the official said, declining to say what information was provided. It's unclear if those conversations will continue.

A Pakistani TV station reported that Shahzad spent time in Karachi and visited the northwestern city of Peshawar during his stay in Pakistan. Peshawar is a gateway for foreigners seeking to travel into nearby tribal regions, where militant groups have long had sanctuary.

In Washington, Pakistani Embassy spokesman Nadeem Haider Kiani said it's too soon to tell what motivated the bomber. Asked whether there were ties to foreign terrorist groups, Kiani said early indications suggest the bomber was "a disturbed individual."

Another law enforcement official said Shahzad was not known to the U.S. intelligence community before the failed bombing attempt, in which authorities found a crude bomb of gasoline, propane and fireworks in a 1993 Nissan ( NSANY - news - people ) Pathfinder parked on a bustling street in Times Square.

The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan was handling the case and said Shahzad would appear in court later Tuesday, but the charges were not made public. FBI agents searched the home at a known address for Shahzad in Bridgeport, Conn., early Tuesday, said agent Kimberly Mertz, who wouldn't answer questions about the search.

Authorities removed filled plastic bags from the house in a mixed-race, working-class neighborhood of multifamily homes in Connecticut's largest city. A bomb squad came and went without entering as local police and FBI agents gathered in the cordoned-off street. FBI agents appeared to have found fireworks in the driveway that they were marking off as evidence.

Shahzad was being held in New York and couldn't be contacted. A phone number at a listed address for Shahzad in Shelton, Conn., wasn't in service.

He used to live in a two-story grayish-brown colonial with a sloping yard in a working-class neighborhood in Shelton. The home looked as if it had been unoccupied for a while, with grass growing in the driveway and bags of garbage lying about.

A neighbor in Bridgeport described him as quiet.

"Nobody ever had a problem with him," said Dawn Sampson, 34, who lives across the street from Shahzad's third-floor apartment. She said he had remodeled it and had put on the market to rent for $1,200, a fee she thought was much too high.

Law enforcement officials say Shahzad paid $1,300 cash three weeks ago for the Pathfinder, going first for a test-drive in a mall and offering less than the $1,800 advertised price. Peggy Colas, 19, of Bridgeport, sold the car to Shahzad after he answered an Internet ad, law enforcement officials said. The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.

The vehicle identification number had been removed from the Pathfinder's dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine, and investigators used it to find the owner of record, who told them a stranger bought it. As the SUV buyer came into focus, investigators backed off other leads.

The SUV was parked near a theater where the musical "The Lion King" was being performed. The bomb inside it had cheap-looking alarm clocks connected to a 16-ounce can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended to detonate gas cans and set off propane tanks in a chain reaction "to cause mayhem, to create casualties," police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

A metal rifle cabinet in the SUV's cargo area was packed with fertilizer, but NYPD bomb experts believe it was not a type volatile enough to explode like the ammonium nitrate grade fertilizer used in previous terrorist bombings.

Police said the SUV bomb could have produced "a significant fireball" and sprayed shrapnel with enough force to kill pedestrians and knock out windows.

A vendor alerted a police officer to the parked SUV, which was smoking. Times Square, clogged with tourists on a warm evening, was shut down for 10 hours. A bomb squad dismantled the bomb and no one was hurt.

Holder urged Americans should remain vigilant.

"It's clear that the intent behind this terrorist act was to kill Americans," he said.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the arrest should not be as used as an excuse for anti-Muslim actions. "We will not tolerate any bias or backlash against Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers," he said.

Authorities did not address Shahzad's plans in Dubai. The airport there is the Middle East's busiest and is a major transit point for passengers traveling between the West and much of Asia, particularly India and Pakistan.

Dubai-based Emirates airline said three passengers were pulled from Flight EK202, which was delayed for about seven hours. The airline did not identify Shahzad by name or name the other two passengers.

The aircraft and passengers were then screened again before taking off Tuesday morning, and the airline is "cooperating with the local authorities," Emirates said in a statement e-mailed to the AP. The other two passengers who had been removed were allowed to get back aboard the flight, the airline said.

Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the AP that authorities had not been formally asked for help in the investigation but would cooperate if asked.

More than a dozen people with U.S. citizenship or residency, like Shahzad, have been accused in the past two years of supporting, attempting or carrying out attacks on U.S. soil, illustrating the threat of violent extremism from within the U.S.

Among them are Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, a U.S.-born Army psychiatrist of Palestinian descent, charged with fatally shooting 13 people last year at Fort Hood, Texas; Najibullah Zazi, a Denver-area airport shuttle driver who pleaded guilty in February in a plot to bomb New York subways; and a Pennsylvania woman who authorities say became radicalized online as "Jihad Jane" and plotted to kill a Swedish artist whose work offended Muslims.

Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Eileen Sullivan, Pete Yost, Matt Apuzzo and Julie Pace in Washington; Sara Kugler in New York, Chris Brummitt in Islamabad, Adam Schreck in Dubai, AP Video journalist Ted Shaffrey and writer John Christoffersen in Bridgeport, Conn.; and AP photojournalist Doug Healey in Shelton, Conn.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Breaking News: Pakistan makes arrest over Times Square bomb

By ASHRAF KHAN

KARACHI, PAKISTAN

Pakistani authorities have detained at least one man in connection with the Times Square bombing attempt in New York, two intelligence officials said Tuesday.

The man, identified as Tauseef, was a friend of Faisal Shahzad, the American of Pakistani origin who is in custody in the United States over the failed attack, one official said. He was arrested in the southern city of Karachi, said the official, who like all Pakistani spies refuses to be named in the media.

Another official said several people had been taken into custody in Karachi since the failed attack Saturday.

Neither said when the detentions had taken place. They said no charges had been filed.

Shahzad was arrested in New York on Monday as he was about to board a flight to Dubai.

U.S. officials have said the 30-year-old had recently returned from Pakistan, raising speculation he may have been in contact with al-Qaida or Taliban groups in the South Asian country.

------

Associated Press Writer Zarar Khan in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Times Square Wannabe-Bomber in Custody

New York (CNN) -- Authorities hunting for the suspect in the botched Times Square bombing dramatically beat the clock overnight, seizing a Pakistani-American citizen moments before he began a long trip to his strife-torn homeland.
Faisal Shahzad, 30, was arrested around 11:45 p.m. ET Monday at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, said Attorney General Eric Holder.

Shahzad will appear in a Manhattan federal courtroom Tuesday to face formal charges in the case.
Shahzad was on board Emirates Airlines Flight 202 to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and the jetway had been pulled back when the plane was called to return to the gate, a law enforcement source said. Shahzad was booked through to Islamabad, Pakistan, via Dubai, a senior airline official confirmed.

"They just caught him at the last second," a law enforcement source said.
Security officials removed three passengers from the flight late Monday, including Shahzad -- who was taken into custody, the senior airline official said.
Video: Who is Faisal Shahzad? Video: NYC bomb plot suspect arrested Video: Police comb neighborhood Video: Bomb suspect naturalized citizen

Authorities searched the plane, luggage and checked all passengers again before the flight took off early Tuesday for Dubai minus the other two passengers who were removed with Shahzad, the airline official said.
Cell phone calls helped lead police to the suspect in the failed bombing attempt, authorities said Tuesday.

Police have been engaged in a furious manhunt in the New York area for those responsible for an intended terrorist attack Saturday night in the heart of Manhattan's Times Square.
According to a source familiar with the investigation, the individuals didn't have the expertise to detonate a parked Nissan Pathfinder containing propane tanks, fertilizer and gasoline.

Authorities focused on Shahzad when they traced evidence to him from the sale of the Nissan Pathfinder used in the failed attack -- information considered the linchpin of the case.
The Nissan Pathfinder had its vehicle identification number removed from the dashboard. Police climbed under the SUV and retrieved the VIN from the bottom of its engine block.
This breakthrough led investigators to the registered owner of the vehicle and then to Shahzad, who purchased the SUV, the official said.

The Nissan Pathfinder had been sold three weeks ago in a cash deal with no paperwork exchanged, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation said Monday. The $1,800 deal was closed at a Connecticut shopping mall, where the buyer handed over the money and drove off, the source said.

With memories of the September 11, 2001, attack fresh in the minds of police, detectives pored through video cameras of Times Square and worked to determine who carried out the action -- international terrorists, a lone individual or other networks.
John Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, kept the president abreast of the probe throughout Monday and informed him of Shahzad's arrest early Tuesday, the White House said.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a statement praising the 48 hours or so "impressive" law enforcement spadework.

Hours after the arrest, police were seen at a house in a Bridgeport, Connecticut, working-class neighborhood as part of the investigation. Agents with the FBI and local police, including members of a bomb squad, conducted a search, and investigators removed filled plastic bags.
Another law enforcement source said Shahzad claimed to have acted alone in the attempted bombing, but the Joint Terrorism Task Force investigating the bombing attempt has said it's considering the possibility that the attempt involved more than just a "lone wolf."

While police continued to piece together information about Shahzad, they learned he traveled to
Dubai before, most recently in June 2009 and returned to the United States in early February, a law enforcement official said.

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said Shahzad has a Karachi identification card, a sign of Pakistani residency, and that his family is from volatile northwestern Pakistan, where government forces have been fighting Taliban militants, who have strongholds in the area.
Shahzad became a U.S. citizen on April 17, 2009, which aided investigators in the case, the federal law enforcement source said. Because of his recent change in residency status, authorities had his picture and were able to show it to the seller of the vehicle, who identified Shahzad as the purchaser.

The device inside the Pathfinder was made up of propane tanks, gasoline and fertilizer that turned out to be of a nonexplosive grade, along with a metal pot containing wiring and firecrackers. More firecrackers were found in a can on the back seat of the vehicle, sandwiched between two full, 5-gallon gasoline cans and connected by wires to clocks.

New York police have been examining the device for clues such as fingerprints, hair and fibers since Saturday. The vehicle and bomb components were taken to the FBI's forensic laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, on Monday, FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said Monday evening.

NY Bomb Plot Investigation Widens/ Suspect is Pakistani descent

The Guardian,

US authorities are seeking a US man of Pakistani descent whom they suspect bought the vehicle used in Saturday's attempted car bombing in New York City's Times Square.

Citing unnamed law enforcement sources, the Associated Press news agency said the man, who recently travelled to Pakistan, was a Connecticut resident who apparently paid cash for the four-wheel-drive vehicle rigged with a crude propane-and-petrol bomb.

The registered owner of the vehicle had told police on Monday that he had sold it three weeks ago without any paperwork to a man in his late 20s or early 30s.

The information on Monday comes as the hunt for the person or people behind the botched bombing widens.

A green Nissan car used for Saturday's botched Times Square bombing was sold through an advertisement on the popular website Craigslist for between $1,300 and $1,800 in cash three weeks ago, investigators have established.

The sports utility vehicle's registered owner told police that he offloaded the 1993 car to a Middle Eastern or Hispanic looking man aged around 29 or 30, although formal paperwork for the transaction was never completed.

CBS News reported last night that the buyer of the vehicle paid for it in $100 bills. The keys were exchanged in a brief meeting at a Connecticut shopping centre between two strangers. Licence plates on the car were stolen from a truck at a junk yard, also in Connecticut.

Investigators increasingly believe that the crude car bomb, which failed to detonate, was the work of a plot involving multiple people and that it may have had international links. New York's police commissioner, Ray Kelly, admitted the city had been lucky to escape disaster.

"If it [the bomb] had detonated, it's my judgment that it would have caused casualties, there would have been a significant fireball," said Kelly. "I'm told the vehicle itself would have at least been cut in half."

The car, parked in the heart of Manhattan's theatre district, was packed with propane gas, petrol and fireworks strung together with a rudimentary timer operated by a pair of cheap alarm clocks.

Two T-shirt vendors raised the alarm when they noticed the car had been abandoned with its hazard lights flashing and its keys in the ignition, and police swiftly evacuated the area.

Police travelled by helicopter to Pennsylvania to visit a tourist who took a brief video image of a man running north up Broadway at around the time of the bombing. They also want to track down a white man, aged around 40, who was captured on closed circuit television removing a sweatshirt in Shubert Alley, a pedestrianised cut-through, near the scene.

Releasing a 20-second video clip, Kelly said the man appeared to be acting "furtively".

Saturday's incident was at least the 11th foiled terrorist plot in the US since the 9/11 attacks. One theory is that the target of the Times Square bomb was the media group Viacom, whose headquarters are nearby.

The US company caused controversy by broadcasting on its Comedy Central network an episode of the cartoon South Park which poked fun at Islamic sensitivity over images of the prophet Muhammad by showing him dressed in a bear suit.

"It's out there as one theory," said Janet Napolitano, secretary of US homeland security. But she added that it was "speculation" at this stage.

Bruce Hoffman, a professor of security studies at Georgetown University in Washington, said car bombs had been unusual in the US in recent years, with the bombing of an Oklahoma City government building in 1995 being the last successful large-scale attack of its type.

"We haven't had a vehicular bomb in the US for quite some time, although they're not a new thing," said Hoffman. "Puerto Rican independence groups used them back in the 1960s and 1970s."

On Sunday, a group called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the Times Square bomb, posting a video on the internet alleging that the attack was to avenge recent killings by US drone aircraft along the Afghan border.

But yesterday a spokesman for the group disowned the video, while experts said TTP has previously declared responsibility for events it had nothing to do with.

"These types of messages aren't directed towards an audience in the US as much as to a local audience," said Hoffman. "Whether truthful or not, they serve the group's own propaganda purposes."

Times Square was shut down for 10 hours following the discovery of the bomb at 6.30pm local time on Saturday. Detectives took to the stage at the end of Broadway musicals to ask for witnesses to any suspicious activity. Thousands of tourists were prevented from returning to their hotels in the densely crowded district.

On Monday, Times Square was returning to normal with hotdog stalls back in place, traffic squeezing through narrow gaps and almost every street reopened.

Reuters) - The failed car bomb in New York's Times Square increasingly appears to have been coordinated by several people in a plot with international ties, The Washington Post reported on Monday, citing unnamed Obama administration officials.

U.S.

White House officials also characterized the incident on Saturday night as attempted terrorism for the first time, dramatically stepping up their description of the intended attack.

"Anybody that has the type of material that they had in a car in Times Square, I would say that that was intended to terrorize, absolutely," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told a White House briefing. "And I would say that whoever did that would be categorized as a terrorist, yes."

The Post cited a U.S. official who, recounting a conversation with intelligence officials, said, "Don't be surprised if you find a foreign nexus ... They're looking at some tell-tale signs and they're saying it's pointing in that direction."

Officials cautioned that even if the investigation pointed toward an international link, rather than domestic or anti-government organizations, that did not mean al-Qaeda or a similar group was involved, the Post said.

New York police interviewed the owner of the vehicle on Monday and scrutinized more video tapes from the incident that rattled New Yorkers and forced the evacuation of Times Square, which was packed with thousands of tourists.

The investigation was still trying to identify a thin, white man in his 40s who was caught on video near the car that had been packed with propane gas tanks, plastic containers of gasoline, firecrackers and non-explosive fertilizer.

Authorities called the device amateurish, saying it generated smoke but failed to explode while the car was parked awkwardly in a packed Times Square with its engine running and hazard lights flashing.

The bomb could have set off a deadly fireball that would have blown out windows at the so-called crossroads of the world.

Though the identity of the would-be bomber has eluded investigators, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder vowed that those responsible would be arrested.

"We have made really substantial progress. We have some good leads," Holder told reporters in Washington, referring to the man in the video. "We are following a number of other leads as well."

SECURITY BOOSTED

The 19 seconds of video released by police showed the man removing a dark shirt worn over a red shirt, stuffing it into a bag and then walking away with the item. He is seen glancing at least twice over his shoulder.

Earlier, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the man on the video may have been innocently changing his shirt.

Speaking on CNN, Kelly also said police planned to release later on Monday a second videotape, taken by a tourist and showing a man running near the scene at about the time of the incident.

New York and its 8 million people have been on high alert since the September 11 attacks in 2001 in which airliners hijacked by al Qaeda militants toppled the World Trade Center's twin towers, killing more than 2,600 people.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, speaking on ABC's "Good Morning America" program, reiterated on Monday that there was "no legitimate evidence" of a link to al Qaeda, the Taliban or any other group in the Times Square incident.

Kelly and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said it was unclear whether the failed attack was staged by a single person or a group.

The Taliban in Pakistan said on Sunday it planted the bomb to avenge the killing in April of al Qaeda's two top leaders in Iraq. Kelly said there was "no evidence" to support the claim.

Security at U.S. East Coast airports was boosted after the Times Square incident to counter possible vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices at airports and crowded public spaces, a Department of Homeland Security official said.

Markets, however, appeared to brush off the car-bomb attempt, the latest in a series of security scares that have frayed the nerves of New Yorkers.

Michael Cheah, senior portfolio manager at SunAmerica Asset Management, described it as an "isolated incident" that was not likely to spark any Treasury market reaction.

(Additional reporting by Will Dunham and Deborah Charles)

(Editing by Daniel Trotta and Paul Simao)

U.S. has 5,113 nuclear warheads.

Reuters) - The United States disclosed for the first time on Monday the current size of its nuclear arsenal, lifting the veil on once top-secret numbers in an effort to bolster non-proliferation efforts.

The Pentagon said it had a total of 5,113 warheads in its nuclear stockpile at the end of September, down 84 percent from a peak of 31,225 in 1967. The arsenal stood at 22,217 warheads when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

The figure includes warheads that are operationally deployed, kept in active reserve and held in inactive storage. But it does not include "several thousand" warheads that are now retired and awaiting dismantlement, the Pentagon said.

"The United States is showing that it is being increasingly transparent," a senior U.S. defense official told reporters at the Pentagon.

"It's part of our commitment ... to set the stage for strength in non-proliferation and for further arms control."

The official declined to offer the Pentagon's estimate for Russia's arsenal and renewed calls for greater transparency by China, saying there was "little visibility" when it came to Beijing's nuclear program.

The United States is also pushing for a new round of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.

By releasing the data during the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, analysts said the United States was trying to show it is cutting its arsenal so as to help persuade other states to tighten the global non-proliferation regime.

"It is hugely important for the United States to be able to say, 'Look we are living up to our obligations under the NPT," said Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.

The disclosure comes less than a month after President Barack Obama unveiled a new policy restricting the U.S. use of nuclear weapons and signed a landmark arms reduction accord with Russia.

Obama, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in part for his vision of a nuclear free world, has also renounced the development of new atomic weapons.

Historically, the overall size of the arsenal has been kept secret to help prevent potential adversaries from using the information to more precisely neutralize U.S. nuclear forces.

Still, analysts warned the disclosure could also negatively impact perceptions of the United States -- possibly dismaying other nations by demonstrating how many nuclear weapons it retains two decades after the Cold War ended.

"I think the states that are most concerned about nuclear disarmament will be more focused on the number that remain rather than the number (reduced)," said George Perkovich, director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The Pentagon said from fiscal years 1994 through 2009, the United States dismantled 8,748 nuclear warheads.

The Pentagon also declined to disclose the exact number of warheads awaiting dismantlement. It said more analysis needed to be done to make sure it did not impact U.S. national security.

The United States aims to dismantle those warheads by the early part of the next decade, another U.S. official said, also briefing reporters on condition of anonymity.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)