The White House has listed arrest of David Coleman Headley, the 26/11 convict, and Afghan-American Najibullah Zazi, and thwarting their terror attack plots, as “success stories” of the secretive cyber spying plan of the United States to keep a watch on the foreign terrorists.
As such the White House maintained its support for such a program arguing that this has busted several terrorist plots, not only in the United States but also other parts of the world.
“The US intelligence community, including the FBI and NSA (National Security Agency), worked in concert to determine his relationship with al Qaeda, as well as identify any foreign or domestic terrorist links,” the White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney told reporters yesterday.
“The FBI tracked Zazi as he travelled to New York to meet up with co-conspirators where they were planning to conduct a terrorist attack. Zazi and his co-conspirators were subsequently arrested, and Zazi, upon indictment, pled guilty to conspiring to bomb the New York City subway system,” he said.
This plot at the time was characterised as “the most serious terrorist threat on US soil since 9/11”, Carney said.
“The government and the NSA and the FBI and all of the agencies working together were able to thwart that attack because of the tools available to them, authorised by Congress, overseen by federal judges and by Congress, as well as internally by the executive branch,” he said.
“A second plot in Chicago in October of 2009: David Coleman Headley, a Chicago business man and dual US—Pakistani citizen, was arrested by the FBI as he tried to depart from Chicago O’Hare Airport on a trip to Europe,” Carney said.