Times Square - Bomber caught; did not act alone

Well, they caught the guy, but let's face it, we got lucky again that a bomb didn't go off !


http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/times-square-car-bomber-police-release-video-suspect/story?id=10534834

Site, Video Created Within Day of Times Square Plot [Daniel Foster]

A YouTube video claiming credit for a "successful" bombing in Times Square was uploaded just hours after the failed attempt, to a web site created the day before.

The video was uploaded in Connecticut, where Faisal Shahzad, arrested last night at JFK International, calls home.

Like seemingly every modern-day terrorist, Shahzad has a Facebook page (I won't link to it, but it is easy enough to find), and seems to be plugged into social media broadly. This purported image of Shahzad comes from the social networking site orkut.com, which is popular in countries like Brazil, India, and Pakistan.

I'll be posting more updates at On the News.


Arrests in Pakistan [Daniel Foster]

Developing:

Sources tell CBS News that multiple people have been taken into custody for questioning in Pakistan in connection with the Times Square bomb plot. Authorities are not saying who the potential suspects are or where they are being held, but they say there were raids Monday night and Tuesday morning in different locations. It's believed between four and eight people are being held, and there are reports that some of them may be related to the suspect arrested overnight in New York.

UPDATE: More from Islamabad:

An intelligence official who was not authorized to speak on the record said two arrests had been made in Karachi in connection with the bombing attempt. One arrested is named Tausif Ahmed, and he is believed to have traveled to the United States recently to meet with Shahzad, according to this official. The official did not have the other's name. Ahmed was arrested in a busy commercial neighborhood called Gulshan-e-Iqbal.

Pakistani television stations are reporting that as many as five other connected people may have been arrested in the central industrial city of Faisalabad, but those reports are not confirmed.
Shahzad hails from Pabbi, the main town of Nowshera District in the northwest, near Peshawar, according to Interior Minister Rehman Malik.


Is There a Pattern Here or What? [Victor Davis Hanson]

The jihadist symptoms of Major Hasan were ignored; General Casey lamented the possible ramifications of Hasan's killings to the army's diversity program; the warnings of Mr. Mutallab's father about his son's jihadist tendencies were ignored but the latter's Miranda rights were not; and the Times Square would-be bomber was quite rashly and on little evidence falsely equated with a "white" bomber with perhaps domestic-terrorism overtones (when it looks like there is a Pakistani radical-Islamist connection) — a sort of pattern has been established, one both implicit and explicit.One, we are doing our darnedest to playact that radical Muslims who are trying to kill us are not trying to kill us; and two, we are not seeing a lot of peaceful blowback from the virtual closing of Guantanamo, the virtual trial of KSM, the reach out in the Al Arabiya interview, the "reset" rhetoric, the Cairo speech, and the apology tour — 2009 saw the most terrorism attempts since 2001.

And that, of course, is the charitable take: that these near-miss (and not-so-near-miss) radical-Islamist incidents are incidental to, rather than a symptom of, our new de facto policy of suggesting that the problem with our "contingency operations" against "man-caused disasters" is with us rather than with hostile Muslim terrorists.


Shahzad Was Trained in Bomb-Making in Pakistan [Daniel Foster]
The Wall Street Journal reports:

Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad told interrogators that he received training in bomb making during a recent five-month trip to Pakistan, according to a senior U.S. official familiar with the matter.

The official said Mr. Shahzad received his training in the tribal region of Waziristan bordering the Afghan border. South Waziristan is currently the site of a continuing Pakistani military offensive against Islamic militants affiliated with al Qaeda. The region of North Waziristan is the locus of the Central Intelligence Agency campaign to kill militants with unmanned drone strikes.


If He Was on the No-Fly List, How Did He Get on the Plane? [Daniel Foster]
From the AP:

WASHINGTON – Deputy FBI director John Pistole says the alleged Times Square bomber was placed on the No Fly list Monday, hours before he was arrested.

This was a key step to stop the suspect, Faisal Shahzad, from fleeing the country.

Customs and Border Protection officials at the airport ordered that the flight be stopped before takeoff. They were able to arrest Shahzad on the plane and turned him over to the FBI.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declined to say how Shahzad was able to board the flight if he was on the No Fly list.


Shahzad Complaint Unsealed [Daniel Foster]

Some highlights and questions from the complaint, in order:
—Shahzad left the keys to his personal car and his Connecticut home inside the Pathfinder used in the bombing. Presumably because he thought they'd be destroyed.

—Shahzad used a prepaid cell phone to call a fireworks store and numbers in Pakistan in the days after purchasing the Pathfinder.

—Shahzad's wife and parents both live in Pakistan, so these calls could be to them, of course. But considering he claims to having trained in bomb-making in Waziristan. . .
—About that bomb-training. The fertilizer used in the bomb was non-explosive. The crude firecracker detonators didn't work. The clocks and wires seemed to have been completely extraneous. Makes you wonder.

—FBI/JTTF agents created a composite sketch of Shahzad from the description of the individual who sold him the Pathfinder. That individual also positively identified Shahzad from a photo array. Authorities were able to track Shahzad down, apparently, through a prepaid cell phone, but the mechanics aren't explained. Any guesses?

—A search of Shahzad's garage revealed fertilizer and fireworks.