WASHINGTON — The alleged mastermind of a plot to bomb train tunnels connecting New York City and New Jersey also discussed blowing up subway cars in Manhattan, and even toyed with the idea of setting a wildfire in California, U.S. counter-terrorism officials said Sunday.
U.S. and Lebanese officials said they learned of discussions between Assem Hammoud and a number of co-conspirators by monitoring their e-mail traffic on a website used by Islamic militants, and by scouring Hammoud's computer and his Beirut home and office after his arrest April 27.
Such discussions, U.S. authorities said, suggested that Hammoud and as many as seven other accomplices were still searching for ways to strike the United States when the plot was disrupted.
Two U.S. intelligence officials said that so far, no evidence indicated that the alleged co-conspirators were about to enter an operational phase -- as some U.S. and Lebanese authorities have said in recent days -- or that they had even decided to go forward with the plot.
"There have been suggestions that this was a lot further along than it was," said one of the U.S. officials.
"The bottom line is that there may have been less here than meets the eye."
Hammoud, 31, has been charged in Lebanon with being mastermind of the plot. Authorities there say he has confessed to that and to pledging an oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda.
Two other men are being held in undisclosed locations overseas, and authorities have linked five others to the alleged plot.
The U.S. intelligence official said that authorities in the United States, Lebanon, Denmark and other countries were trying to unravel threads of the alleged plot that could give them a clearer picture of the suspected terrorists' intentions.
He said U.S. authorities were trying to reconcile their intelligence with claims by Lebanese authorities that Hammoud had connections to Al Qaeda and was intent on launching an attack.
But, the official cautioned, "there is good reason to be skeptical about how far along this had gone....
"It was in large part jihadist bravado."
The second intelligence official said, "They had no logistical arrangements; they certainly hadn't done the kind of thorough intelligence check; they didn't have explosives." The official added that comments about an Al Qaeda connection to the plot appeared to be somewhat overblown.
