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Holder: Pakistan Taliban Behind Times Square Terror Plot
By
Jen Chung
Published May 9, 2010
Modified May 9, 2010
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By
Jen Chung
Published May 9, 2010
Modified May 9, 2010
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U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder appeared on "This Week" and "Meet the Press" this morning to say that he believed the Pakistan Taliban was involved in last week's Times Square car bomb attempt, "We've now developed evidence that shows the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack. We know that they helped facilitate it. We know that they probably helped finance it. And that [terror suspect Faisal Shahzad] was working at their direction."
Holder also added that there was no evidence that the Pakistan government knew about it and emphasized that the Pakistan government had been cooperating. And John Brennan, a counterterrorism adviser to President Obama, also did the morning talk show circuit. The NY Times reports that he said "that it appeared that Mr. Shahzad, a resident of Bridgeport, Conn., who spent five months in Pakistan until February, was working for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The TTP is believed by some military intelligence officials to have joined forces with Al Qaeda and may be hiding some of its senior leaders, including Osama bin Laden, who was the motivating force behind the 9/11 attack." Brennan said, "They're trying to find vulnerabilities in our defenses," but said the attempts have been "unsophisticated."
The Times also has a feature on Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who allegedly inspired Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hassan, Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Shahzad. Al-Awlaki, an American citizen now in hiding in Yemen (the CIA put him on their list of terrorist targets approved for killing), went from preaching, "We came here to build, not to destroy," in the days after September 11, 2001 to a recenly saying, "America as a whole has turned into a nation of evil."
Tagged
Attorney General holder
car bomb
eric holder
faisal shahzad
Pakistan
PAkistan Taliban
terror
Times Square
Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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