May 2nd, 2012
01:53 AM ET
By Paul Cruickshank, CNN Terrorism Analyst
Editor’s note: On Tuesday an American of Bosnian descent became the third man to be convicted of a suicide bombing plot against the New York subway. This account draws on court testimony and documents as well as interviews with U.S. counter-terrorism and intelligence officials.
The e-mail was sent from somewhere in Pakistan at 7:14 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time on September 6, 2009. It was instantly logged by the massive data-gathering computers of the U.S. National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland, and at GCHQ, the UK's signals intelligence agency.
The sender was someone known to U.S. and UK security services as "Ahmad," who'd been on the radar of British intelligence since a suspected al Qaeda cell had been uncovered in Manchester that year, according to senior U.S. counterterrorism officials.
But the recipient was previously unknown, with the address njbzaz@yahoo.com. Whoever it was lived in the Denver area. Alarm bells rang across the U.S. intelligence establishment. Who in Colorado was in touch with a man suspected as a handler for al Qaeda?
Within two hours, njbzaz replied, "Listen I need a amount of the one mixing of (flour and ghee oil) and I do not khow the amount."
Minutes later, he sent a follow-up: "Plez reply to what I asked u right away. the marriage is ready flour and oil."
U.S. authorities quickly established that the Denver-based e-mailer was Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan resident alien. He had moved to the Denver area from New York in January 2009 and taken a job as an airport shuttle van driver.
He appeared to be asking for clarification on the quantities of chemicals needed to make a bomb. Flour had frequently been part of the mixture in al Qaeda bombs in the West.
But U.S. intelligence agencies had no idea what Zazi was planning or whether he had co-conspirators. The FBI decided to track his movements and was soon trying to keep up with him.
Zazi left Denver in a rented Chevy Impala early September 8. The FBI was on his tail and asked a highway patrol officer to find a pretext to stop him - and find out where he was going.
He told the patrol officer that he was driving to New York for a business meeting. He seemed nervous, the officer recalled, but was allowed to go after getting a written warning for speeding.
As Zazi drove cross-country at speeds exceeding 100 miles an hour, U.S. national security officials were in a state of high anxiety. "They were s**ting bricks," one source said. The anniversary of 9/11 was only days away, and President Barack Obama and other world leaders were soon set to travel to New York to address the U.N. General Assembly.
At 3:40 p.m. September 9, Zazi was approaching the George Washington Bridge into New York. The FBI instructed Port Authority police to set up a roadblock and include his car in a seemingly random stop and search operation. They brought in a canine to sniff around the vehicle but did not open the trunk. The dog detected nothing, and Zazi was allowed to continue into the city.
But in the trunk, hidden among clothes in a suitcase, was a jar in a plastic bag containing a powerful detonating explosive.
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