An FBI team arrived in Pakistan yesterday to investigate whether Times Square car bomb suspect Faisal Shahzad has ties to international terror groups. The 30-year-old Pakistani-turned-naturalized American citizen has claimed that he was trained at a Taliban camp in Pakistan, but the Pakistan Taliban has denied any connection (though praised his botched bombing attempt).
Investigators are also looking for a money courier who may have helped fund Shahzad's efforts. A law enforcement official told the Washington Post that Shahzad brought $80,000 in cash to the U.S. between 1999 and 2008, "There is a lot of money... To get that kind of money, the theory is you have someone help you move it." The WaPo also reports that in spite of Shahzad's cooperation, "One issue complicating the probe: Shahzad had multiple e-mail addresses. Investigators are having to unravel thousands of messages, which in turn lead to more e-mails and Web sites, officials said."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CBS News that while Pakistan has worked with the U.S. to fight the war on terror, "We've made it very clear that if - heaven-forbid - an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences."
Juan Zarate, a former national security adviser to President George W. Bush, spoke to the AP about the possibility that Shahzad's attack is terrorists in Pakistan, "The model may be shifting here, in part because they may have made a calculus that it's much more difficult to have a big ticket attack, and secondly, they may have moved to a model of disruption rather than destruction."
