The effort has focused on flipping low-level and aspiring jihadis, according to a former U.S. intelligence official familiar with the operation, which was revealed in news reports Monday…
“This would have been a collection mission — what you’re trying to do is get him in as deep as you can possibly make him go,” said a former CIA official familiar with operations against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, known as AQAP. “You don’t send him in there with the purpose of ‘Get a bomb and come back.’”…
A U.S. official briefed on the case said the Saudi informant in Yemen may have been pulled out of the country prematurely because of concern about public disclosures about the plot. The informant, even after receiving the bomb, was awaiting further instructions, which meant that he was in position to continue providing intelligence for some time, the official said.
“His instructions were to go use” the bomb, “but it wasn’t that he had to go get on a plane the next day,” the official said.
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