Word: zazie
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...cause for celebration. But the Sept. 19 arrest of two Afghan-born men in connection with plans to bomb targets in the U.S. has left FBI agents frustrated. They had not intended to swoop on their prey quite so soon. Had an informant not tipped off alleged plotters Najibullah Zazi and his father Mohammed, they might still be free men--and useful assets in the hunt for terrorist networks...
According to court documents, Najibullah Zazi, 24, who had been under FBI surveillance since a recent trip to Pakistan, rented a car and drove to New York the day before Sept. 11. The FBI alerted the NYPD to its investigation, and police officers showed his picture to Ahmad Wais Afzali, an Afghan-born imam of a Queens mosque and an occasional police informant. According to the FBI, Afzali then tipped off both the Zazis about the investigation. FBI agents, who had been monitoring the phones, knew their cover was blown and raided homes in Queens that Zazi had visited, seizing...
...alleged bomber set out for New York City on Sept. 9, the FBI drew the New York Police Department into the investigation, and NYPD detectives showed pictures of Zazi and three suspected accomplices to an imam they had developed as a possible informant. Sure enough, the imam, Ahmad Afzali, recognized Zazi. But according to the FBI, he called Zazi and his father to tell them of the NYPD's inquiries. And that was that. Zazi reached New York City just as the investigation was blowing...
...flurry of search warrants and interrogations quickly followed. In Zazi's rental car, agents allegedly found a laptop containing nine pages of bombmaking instructions. Zazi returned to Denver and volunteered for FBI interviews; when he stopped cooperating, he was arrested, initially for giving false statements. He was indicted on Sept. 24 for "conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction." Beyond that, it's unclear where the evidence stands. Have bombs been found? Are the targets known? How close was Zazi to taking action? Will other suspects be charged? Officials aren't saying. The picture "will get clearer as time goes...
...Needles in Haystacks If Zazi represents a new kind of menace for the U.S., his arrest could be a double blessing, a counterterrorism official offers. Not only did it thwart a plot but it could also lead to a mother lode of information on al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the state of the global jihad. But there are other, less reassuring lessons from Zazi and from the alleged lone-wolf wannabe terrorists snared by the FBI in Texas and Illinois. For starters: hatred is patient. The American struggle against Islamic terrorism, already one of the longest wars in the nation...