Al Qaeda

As the United States finally begins to wind down its military presence in Afghanistan, is the Obama administration poised to replicate that intervention in Yemen? The administration insists it has no such plans, but it has been evident for months that it regards the Yemen-based group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as the most dangerous incubator of terrorist plots directed at America. And it is acting on that conviction. This week The Times reported that U.S. special operations troops, which were withdrawn from Yemen last year amid political turmoil in that country, have returned and are providing technical assistance to Yemeni forces.

In the year since President Obama approved a successful raid against Osama bin Laden, public opinion has been shifting. While many Westerners still celebrate the targeted killing - along with the killing several months later of Anwar Awlaki - some are expressing doubts. European politicians, human rights lawyers and members of some East Coast think tanks have posited that these terrorists were actually more dangerous dead than alive. Death, the reasoning goes, martyred the leaders, thus immortalizing their ideas and appeal.

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

SANA, Yemen - A suicide bomber targeted soldiers rehearsing Monday for a military parade here, killing as many as 112 people and signaling that Islamic extremists may be shifting their focus to Yemen's capital after weeks of intense battles in outlying provinces with U.S.-backed government forces. Al Qaeda affiliate Ansar al Sharia claimed responsibility for the bombing in retaliation for American-assisted government offensives against its strongholds in southern Yemen. Unnerved by increasedU.S.

Those sultans of style at Al Qaeda have released their line of lingerie for spring and it's a blast. Tucked away in their secret atelier in Yemen, the fanatics of fashion have come up with an updated version of the exploding underwear that caused such a stir on Christmas Day 2009 when a hapless African lad tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit and only managed to severely singe his private parts. Al Qaeda bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan Asiri is reputed to be the designer of the new nasty knickers.

WASHINGTON — The CIA takedown of an Al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner involved an international sting operation with a double agent tricking terrorists into handing over a prized possession: a new bomb purportedly designed to slip through airport security. U.S. officials Tuesday described an operation in which Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency, working closely with the CIA, used an informant to pose as a would-be suicide bomber. His job was to persuade Al Qaeda bomb makers in Yemen to give him the bomb.

Sun-bronzed Najmuddin, 23, hefted his trusty Kalashnikov into the crook of his arm and smiled grimly beneath his pancake woolen hat. "We are going to Gardez," he said. "I think it will be the last fighting."

The interception of two explosive devices shipped from Yemen comes as U.S.-trained Yemeni special forces have intensified their hunt for leaders of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, including Anwar Awlaki, the radical American-born Muslim cleric targeted for assassination by the Obama administration. Al Qaeda's Yemeni branch was allegedly behind the failed Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner and the attempted assassination of a Saudi prince. U.S. investigators also believe that Awlaki was the inspiration for the attack at Ft. Hood, Texas, last year in which Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is charged with killing 13 and wounding 32. The group has shown that it can launch terrorist strikes in Yemen despite increased pressure from that country's special forces.

Al Qaeda has just released the latest in its series of how-to guides for jihadists in the West who want to murder without the bother of flying to Pakistan to be trained. This time, the offering is an English-language manual explaining in detail how to build a bomb, and it demonstrates how nimbly Al Qaeda has adapted to become the world's first truly global terrorist organization, able to recruit and train fanatics on the Internet as well as on the ground. Almost 10 years after the most devastating attack on the American homeland by a foreign power since the British army burned Washington in 1814, Al Qaeda remains alive and deadly.

Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that it had arrested 11 militants linked to Al Qaeda, seizing arms and breaking up a cell that planned to carry out attacks and kidnappings. Police arrested members of the group in several areas, including a region near the border with Yemen, Saudi news reports quoted the Interior Ministry as saying. State television showed video of security forces digging out bags containing assault rifles and other weapons hidden in a mountainous area.

As the United States finally begins to wind down its military presence in Afghanistan, is the Obama administration poised to replicate that intervention in Yemen? The administration insists it has no such plans, but it has been evident for months that it regards the Yemen-based group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as the most dangerous incubator of terrorist plots directed at America. And it is acting on that conviction. This week The Times reported that U.S. special operations troops, which were withdrawn from Yemen last year amid political turmoil in that country, have returned and are providing technical assistance to Yemeni forces.

Last week, my colleagues and I did something defense attorneys rarely do: We asked the government to file charges against our client. And because it seems unlikely the case will ever make it to an American courtroom, we have asked that it be heard in the nation's flawed military commission system. Abu Zubaydah, our client, was an early poster child for the Bush administration's torture regime. He was the first prisoner held in a secret "black site" and the first to be tortured using "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

Those sultans of style at Al Qaeda have released their line of lingerie for spring and it's a blast. Tucked away in their secret atelier in Yemen, the fanatics of fashion have come up with an updated version of the exploding underwear that caused such a stir on Christmas Day 2009 when a hapless African lad tried to blow up an airliner over Detroit and only managed to severely singe his private parts. Al Qaeda bomb maker Ibrahim Hassan Asiri is reputed to be the designer of the new nasty knickers.

WASHINGTON — The CIA takedown of an Al Qaeda plot to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner involved an international sting operation with a double agent tricking terrorists into handing over a prized possession: a new bomb purportedly designed to slip through airport security. U.S. officials Tuesday described an operation in which Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency, working closely with the CIA, used an informant to pose as a would-be suicide bomber. His job was to persuade Al Qaeda bomb makers in Yemen to give him the bomb.

WASHINGTON - The FBI is analyzing a sophisticated explosive device, similar to the underwear bomb used in an attempt to blow up a passenger jet over Detroit in 2009, that U.S. officials believe was built by Al Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen in an effort to target Western aircraft. U.S. officials said Monday that no one was captured by U.S. agencies as part of the operation. The officials emphasized that they found no sign of an active plot to use the new bomb design against U.S. aviation or U.S.-bound jetliners.

WASHINGTON — In his final months padding around the dark third-floor room in his cinder-block Pakistan hide-out, the world's most notorious terrorist mastermind spent a lot of time in his own head. He fretted about his public image and the legacy of his organization. He wondered whether he had misnamed it Al Qaeda. He fired off orders, handed out promotions, denied requests for help from the battlefield and sought to direct publicity for the looming 10th anniversary of the Sept.

Al Qaeda has expanded its presence in Afghanistan, taking advantage of the sinking security situation to resurface in the country it was forced to flee seven years ago, the top U.S. military intelligence official testified Tuesday. Army Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, described Al Qaeda's efforts as one of the reasons for the Obama administration's decision last month to order additional troops to Afghanistan.

As Al Qaeda is weakened by the loss of leaders, fighters, funds and ideological appeal, the extremist network's ability to attack targets in the United States and Western Europe has diminished, anti-terrorism officials say. Nonetheless, Al Qaeda and allied groups based primarily in Pakistan remain a threat, particularly because of an increasing ability to attract recruits from Central Asia and Turkey to offset the decline in the number of militants...

WASHINGTON — Osama bin Laden was devising a strategy for overthrowing Afghan President Hamid Karzai and controlling Afghanistan once the U.S. left the country, said a former U.S. official familiar with the cache of notes and letters that were seized last year in the raid on the terrorist leader's compound. Bin Laden had discussed his plans with the Taliban leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura, and the Haqqani network, which controls the North Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan, said the former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while discussing the intelligence.

WASHINGTON -- Osama bin Laden's personal notes and letters, which were seized a year ago in the U.S. raid on his compound in Pakistan, show a leader removed from day-to-day operations of the terrorist organization he founded and increasingly frustrated with the new generation of managers who were rising in the ranks. A declassified selection of the vast trove of material -- large enough, officials say, to fill a college library -- will be published online Thursday by the Combating Terrorism Center, a think tank at the United States Military Academy at West Point.