Pakistani Taliban led N.Y. bomb plot

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Sunday that the Pakistani Taliban directed the Times Square car-bomb plot and is actively recruiting more agents to carry out attacks on U.S. soil.

“We know that they helped facilitate it; we know that they probably helped finance it, and that [the suspect] was working at their direction,” Mr. Holder said in an appearance on ABC News’ “This Week.”

Mr. Holder joined another White House official, counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, on the Sunday talk-show circuit to defend the administration’s handling of the latest near-miss terrorism strike.

Both men said the Pakistani government was cooperating with U.S. officials in the effort to track down the Taliban contacts who trained 30-year-old Times Square bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad.

“They’ve been cooperative with us, and I think we have been satisfied with the work that they have done,” Mr. Holder said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS “60 Minutes,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton darkly hinted at “very severe consequences” if Pakistan-based terrorists were to strike the U.S.

“We’ve made it very clear that if — heaven forbid — an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences,” Mrs. Clinton said.

She also said that while Pakistani authorities, some of whom are seen as sympathetic to the Taliban, have overseen a “sea change” in attitude toward anti-terrorism cooperation with the U.S., “we want more.”

Mr. Holder said information uncovered in the ongoing investigation had clearly outstripped earlier assumptions — including . Holder’s own — that the suspect was a “lone wolf.” The Pakistani Taliban took responsibility for the attack the day after it happened, but the claim was quickly discounted by local law enforcement and federal officials.

Mr. Brennan stopped short of predicting more arrests in Pakistan, but told CNN’s “State of the Union” that “there are individuals who have been identified.”

“We are uncovering information … to determine what else is out there,” he said.

Mr. Holder said terrorist groups are recruiting people with “clean skins” — legal passports and no criminal records — who can travel easily to and from the United States.

Mr. Brennan said the May 3 arrest of Mr. Shahzad, a Pakistani-born naturalized U.S. citizen accused of parking an explosives-laden sport utility vehicle in New York’s Times Square two days earlier, showed that the nation’s security measures work.

“The system was able to put the information out, and we were able to take action,” Mr. Brennan said.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Brennan said, “The lesson is, we need to maintain vigilance. … We rely heavily on vigilant citizens.”

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