The Pakistani Taliban directed and likely funded Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Sunday.
“The Pakistani Taliban directed this plot,” Mr. Holder said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Mr. Holder told host David Gregory that he suspected early on that Mr. Shahzad had acted alone but that information uncovered since had made it clear that Mr. Shahzad was part of a larger plot.
President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, said Pakistani authorities are cooperating with U.S. investigators, but he stopped short of saying more arrests were forthcoming.
“We are uncovering information … to determine what else is out there,” he told CNN anchor Candy Crowley on “State of the Union.”
Mr. Holder said terrorist groups are recruiting people such as Mr. Shahzad, people with “clean skins” who can travel to and from the United States easily.
Mr. Brennan said the May 3 arrest of Mr. Shahzad, a Pakistan-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.
Mr. Shahzad, also charged with receiving bomb-making training in the Waziristan region of Pakistan, was “captured by the murderous rhetoric” disseminated online by the Taliban and al Qaeda, 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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