White House Official: Bombs Were From Al Qaeda
Oct. 31, 2010— -- In an interview this morning on "This Week," top White House official John Brennan said he believes the bombs found in packages in cargo planes on Friday were "an al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula effort" and that the Obama administration "can't presume that we have identified all of the packages that are out there."
"What we're trying to do now is work very closely with our partner overseas to identify all packages that left Yemen recently and to see whether there are any other suspicious packages out there that might contain these IEDs," he said of the improvised explosive devices.
Brennan, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, said the two woman arrested Saturday by Yemeni authorities were not the only people involved in the plot.
"We're looking for a lot more," he told anchor Christiane Amanpour.
Brennan also said he suspected the individual who made the bomb that was used by Umar Farouq Abdulmutallab, the failed so-called Christmas Day bomber, also made the IEDs found in Dubai and Britain.
"The individual who is making these bombs," Brennan said, "is a very dangerous individual, clearly somebody who has a fair amount of training and experience. We need to find him, we need to bring him to justice as soon as we can."
The bombmaker is also suspected of creating an explosive device that nearly killed the intelligence chief in Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabian intelligence tipped off the Americans about the unfolding plot Thursday.
"Once they received the information, they contacted us immediately and it was a race against the clock to find those packages, to neutralize them and so we owe a debt of gratitude to the Saudis, I think," Brennen said. "Their actions really saved lives here."
