U.S. authorities are confident a suspected al-Qaida suicide bomber isn't any longer a threat to the yank people.
The Obama administration's top counter-terrorism advisor, John Brennan, spoke Tuesday at the U.S. television network ABC, an afternoon after U.S. officials said al-Qaida's branch in Yemen intended to position a suicide bomber on a U.S.-bound jet with explosives concealed inside the person's underwear.
U.S. officials say the plot was detected in its early stages and that no U.S. airliner was ever in danger. It isn't clear what happened to the suspected suicide bomber.
U.S. experts say the bomb was a redesign of an explosive underwear device intended to explode a jet flying from Amsterdam to the U.S. city of Detroit on Christmas, 2009.
Authorities suspect the most recent bomb can have been the work of Saudi bomb-maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, who's associated with the primary attempted underwear attack.
Al-Asiri has ties to al-Qaida's branch in Yemen, called al-Qaida within the Arabian Peninsula.
In 2009, a Nigerian man tried to detonate a bomb hidden in his underwear, however the device failed. The FBI is studying the hot device to establish whether it should were detected by airport security systems.
On Monday, the White House National Security Council said U.S. President Barack Obama was informed concerning the plot in April and has received regular updates. It said the president was assured the device didn't pose a threat to the general public.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the incident is a reminder that America and its allies are still targets of terrorist plots.
"However the plot itself indicated that the terrorists keep seeking to devise increasingly more perverse and terrible how you can kill innocent people, and it's a reminder why we need to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others," said Clinton.
William McCantis, a terrorism analyst with the heart for Naval Analysis, based in Arlington, Virginia, said this latest operation underscores the significance of intelligence within the war on terrorism.
"We had the bomb before it was detonated, so we're convalescing at disrupting these plots," said McCantis. "However, it's worrisome that al-Qaida within the Arabian Peninsula is ready to build these kinds of bombs still, after a year or more of accelerating drone strikes. Al-Qaida within the Arabian Peninsula is well the best threat the usa faces from al-Qaida, because, one, it controls territory, and it's capable of move freely through a big swath of territories. So it's ready to gather resources, it has places it may train and it provides shelter. Perhaps it's gotten control of a few munitions when it overthrows various military groups, and each time they innovate, we need to innovate in addition," he said.
Al-Qaida inside the Arabian Peninsula is also suspected of forming a plot in 2010 blow up U.S.-bound cargo planes with explosives hidden in printer ink cartridges. Â
The Associated Press has reported the would-be attacker is predicated in Yemen, and the plot was to be implemented across the one-year anniversary of the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden. It also said the would-be attacker had not picked a target or bought a plane ticket.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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