Word: plot
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...Chertoff had good reason to be worried. Senior U.S officials have confirmed to TIME details of the plot that led the Secretary to ratchet up the color-coded security alert for British-U.S. flights to an unprecedented red for "Severe." A total of 24 individuals were arrested in Britain overnight and, says one senior U.S. official who was briefed on the plot, five still remain at large. Their plan was to smuggle the peroxide-based liquid explosive TATP and detonators onto nine different planes from four carriers - British Airways, Continental, United and American - that fly direct routes between...
...Britain's MI-5 intelligence service and Scotland Yard had been tracking the plot for several months, but only in the past two weeks had the plotters' planning begun to crystallize, senior U.S. officials tell TIME. In the two or three days before the arrests, the cell was going operational, and authorities were pressed into action. MI5 and Scotland Yard agents tracked the plotters from the ground, while a knowledgeable American official says U.S. intelligence provided London authorities with intercepts of the group's communications. Most of the suspects are second- or third-generation British citizens of Pakistani descent whose...
...months the plotters' attack plans had changed, said Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security Michael Jackson. "There were different data sets about their interests over time that evolved," he said. It was only in recent days, said Jackson, that the plans began to focus on British-U.S. flights. The plot was "very near execution" but not imminent, Jackson said. "We didn't pull people off of airplanes...
...Though the plot has all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation, U.S. officials cautioned that there isn't yet evidence of a direct link between the plotters and the organization's top leaders. "We're not convinced this particular operation is connected to the al-Qaeda chain of command," Charles Allen, Chief of Intelligence for the Department of Homeland Security, told reporters on Thursday afternoon. As for whether the attack was being timed for the fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, Allen said he thought the attack would simply be launched when it was ready. "I am a long-standing...
...plot also appears to be a return to older terrorist tactics of trying to blow up an airplane in midair, rather than turn the jet into a missile as the Sept. 11 attackers did. Allen stressed that the plans seemed designed to kill passengers, not crash into a city on the ground. "We have no evidence there was targeting of cities," said Allen, "This was an effort to destroy multiple aircraft in flight - not against any territory of the United States...