By Paul Cruickshank, Nic Robertson, and Tim Lister
Editor's note: This report is based on a one-year investigation by CNN into air cargo security in light of a thwarted plot by al Qaeda in October 2010 to blow up cargo jets over the United States. CNN's Nic Robertson's report "Deadly Cargo" airs on CNN Presents, Saturday and Sunday February 18, 19 at 8 p.m. ET.
Ibrahim al-Asiri is the sort of terrorist who keeps intelligence officials awake at night. He’s al Qaeda’s chief bomb-maker, and he built explosive devices hidden in printer cartridges that got onto several planes in October 2010. He’s still at large in Yemen. The bomb plots he’s alleged to have masterminded – the 2009 underwear bomb plot and printer bombs dispatched to the United States in 2010 – have very nearly worked. And security experts say al-Asiri and al Qaeda in Yemen may yet penetrate the security screening that is meant to protect aviation.
ALSO WATCH: Reconstructing al Qaeda's printer bomb
Editor's note: This report is based on a one-year investigation by CNN into air cargo security in light of a thwarted plot by al Qaeda in October 2010 to blow up cargo jets over the United States. CNN's Nic Robertson's report "Deadly Cargo" airs on CNN Presents, Saturday and Sunday February 18, 19 at 8 p.m. ET.
By Paul Cruickshank
In late October 2010 al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula (AQAP) dropped off two “printer bombs” at UPS and FedEx offices in Yemen addressed to the United States.
They were amongst the most sophisticated devices ever put together by al Qaeda terrorists, according to officials. FULL POST
By Kiran Khalid and Paul Cruickshank
New details about the final plans for the 2009 plot to take down an American jetliner on Christmas Day paint a vivid picture of the significant involvement of Anwar Al-Awlaki, the American-Yemeni militant cleric killed in a drone strike last September.
The information came to light Friday with the release of a Justice Department sentencing memo issued ahead of next week's sentencing of Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab.
AbdulMutallab's trial last year was cut dramatically short when he pleaded guilty to trying to detonate an explosive device in his underwear aboard a Christmas 2009 flight to Detroit. FULL POST
From CNN's Joe Sterling and Pam Benson
The al Qaeda terror network is weakening and the embattled Afghan government is making modest strides, but cyber security threats are on the rise and Iranian nuclear aspirations remain a major peril.
These are among the main themes in the annual U.S. intelligence community's threat assessment, a sweeping 31-page document released Tuesday that touches on a range of issues across the globe.
"The United States no longer faces - as in the Cold War - one dominant threat," Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said in prepared testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which will meet on Tuesday to discuss the report.
He said "counterterrorism, counter-proliferation, cyber security and counter-intelligence are at the immediate forefront of our security concerns" and that the "multiplicity and interconnectedness of potential threats - and the actors behind them ... constitute our biggest challenge."
Al Qaeda - the terror network that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001 - "will continue to be a dangerous transnational force," but there have been strides, the report concludes.
FULL POST
By CNN's Pam Benson
When President Barack Obama told Americans last week that al Qaeda operatives in Yemen "are scrambling, knowing that they can't escape the reach of the United States of America," he may have been telling only half the story.
While al Qaeda's Yemen branch has been hit hard - most notably with the killing of American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki - U.S. officials and experts say there are signs that al Qaeda is making significant gains in Yemen as the government's control over outlying regions continues to fray amid political unrest.
Furthermore, they say, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) hasn't given up its goal of striking the United States, though there have been no attempted attacks on American soil by al Qaeda since 2010.
While the death of al-Awlaki by a CIA-operated drone in September eliminated AQAP's external operations commander and chief recruiter of English-speaking militants, key players remain at-large in Yemen. FULL POST
From Raffaello Pantucci, Special to CNN
Editor's note: Raffaello Pantucci is an associate fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) and the author of the forthcoming "We Love Death As You Love Life: Britain's Suburban Mujahedeen" (Hurst/Columbia University Press).
After an explosive festive season that spilled into the New Year and growing stories of increased connections to other regional networks, Nigerian group Boko Haram is likely to be one of the main focuses of attention for counter terrorism experts in this coming year.
While definitively predicting whether it is going to metastasize into a global threat, or remain a regional one, is something dependent on many variable factors, some lessons from other regional violent Islamist networks can be drawn to understand better the general direction Boko Haram is going in.
Three groups are particularly useful to look at: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen, al Shabaab in Somalia and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). All three are groups that have a clear globalist violent Islamist rhetoric and varying degrees of connectivity with al Qaeda core in Pakistan. FULL POST
By Larry Shaughnessy
A copy of the jihadist magazine Inspire was found in a Guantanamo prison cell, a military official revealed Wednesday.
The disclosure that a publication of an al Qaeda-affiliated group found its way into one of the world's most secure detention facilities came during a military hearing for a suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing.
The magazine's discovery prompted even tighter security precautions including closer examination of detainee mail, which was the issue under discussion when Cmdr. Andrea Lockhart, a prosecutor, told the military court the magazine had been found.
Defense lawyers for suspect Abd al-Rahim Hussein Mohammed Abdu al Nashiri had argued that the military was unfairly examining privileged communications between attorneys and their client. FULL POST
The September 2011 U.S. drone killing of American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki has not had a big impact operationally on Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemen-based group in which al-Awlaki served as a spokesman, according to former CIA chief John McLaughlin.
McLaughlin, speaking during a Washington panel discussion, said AQAP now controls, or exercises influence in, about half of Yemen.
"I don't think it (al-Awlaki's death) had a big impact on them operationally," he said. "It's had an impact in the sense that he was their principal spokesman to an English audience. Their leadership is still there."
FULL POST
Mitchell D. Silber is the author of 'The Al Qaeda Factor: Plots Against the West'. He is also the Director of Intelligence Analysis for the NYPD. His thoughts do not necessarily represent the opinions of the New York City Police Department.
Just over two years since al Qaeda Core launched the most serious plot on American soil since 9/11 (the Najibullah Zazi NYC Subway Plot of September 2009), al Qaeda’s leader and founder Usama bin Laden, al Qaeda’s most recent “Number 3” Attiyah Abd al Rahman, and the al Qaeda instigators of the Zazi Plot – Saleh al Somali and Rashid Rauf – are all dead - a result of a combination of efforts by U.S. Special Forces and drone strikes. In addition, this fall, Anwar al Awlaqi, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s dual-hatted English language propagandist and chief of external operations, was also killed in a drone strike. The natural question to ask, as the calendar approaches 2012, is: wither the al Qaeda threat?
The recent past may provide some useful insights. One of the most important findings of a forensic study of the sixteen most serious al Qaeda plots against the West since 1993 is that al Qaeda plots against the West are almost always underpinned and manned by Westerners - who travel overseas to al Qaeda or an al Qaeda ally/affiliate and then are turned around opportunistically and sent back to target the West. Whether it was the 1999 LAX Millennium Bomber (Montreal), 9/11 Pilots (Hamburg), Shoe Bombers (London), July 7 and 21 2005 London transit system bombers (Leeds and London), 2009 NYC Subway Bombers (New York) or 2009 Underwear Bomber (London), the key operatives from the plot originated in one of the great cities of the West.
By Adam Levine
A new video released by the Yemeni wing of al Qaeda includes a mysterious English speaker in what could be the debut of a new spokesman to replace Anwar al-Awlaki. The video, posted by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's media arm, is a commemoration of al-Awlaki, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike last September. It includes new footage of al-Awlaki lecturing.
The mystery man, Abu Yazeed, appears twice in the video. He is in shadow, peering off camera, and is wearing glasses and has a full beard. He is wearing what appears to be a black-and-white turban. He is identified as "Brother: Abu Yazeed."
In the video, Abu Yazeed speaks with an accent. He criticizes the U.S. for targeting Muslims as it fights terrorism, referencing the killings of al-Awlaki and American Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike, and al-Awlaki's son, who was killed in a separate strike.
"Their willingness to exceed all limits is just unthinkable and by assassinating three of its own citizens far away from combat zones and with no judicial process," he says.
FULL POST
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