US officials investigating the failed car bombing in Times Square are still far from certain about the role Pakistani Taliban may have played in orchestrating the attempt, the Senate intelligence committeeÂ’s top Republican said, reported Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
Senator Christopher S Bond said he has seen no hard evidence that a Pakistani group – or groups – planned or directed the May 1 attempt, allegedly carried out by Faisal Shahzad. He added that White House statements suggesting a central role by the Pakistani Taliban were based on ‘suspicions and tenuous connectionsÂ’.
“We need to find out, as quickly as possible, what his connections were and how he was trained,” Bond said, referring to Shahzad, after a closed-door committee briefing by senior intelligence and law-enforcement officials involved in the investigation. Referring to recent comments by Obama administration officials about a strong Taliban link, the Senator said: “I am not convinced by the information I’ve seen so far that there was adequate, confirmable intelligence to corroborate the statements that were made on Sunday television shows.”
On Sunday, Attorney General Eric Holder told NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that the Pakistani Taliban was ‘intimately involved’ in directing the attempt to blow up a sport-utility vehicle on a crowded Times Square street corner.
The British newspaper Guardian quoted Pakistani investigators Tuesday as saying they had found no evidence to support US claims that Shahzad had acted on Taliban orders.
Senate officials declined to describe details of Tuesday’s classified briefing. A US counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said there had been an ‘independent stream of information’ that corroborates Shahzad’s account about contacts between the suspect and the Pakistani Taliban.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who joined Bond in speaking to reporters after the briefing, said there is a ‘high likelihood’ that Shahzad received some kind of terrorist training in Pakistan. But she said committee members had not been provided with specifics about how the Taliban might have aided the attempted bombing.
Reuters adds: Republicans have been openly and repeatedly critical of the handling of terrorism cases by the administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat.
US officials initially doubted the TTP claim over the New York plot. But after ShahzadÂ’s arrest, Holder came out publicly to say there was a connection.
Under pressure from Democrats in the Senate, the State Department said on Tuesday it was looking at adding TTP to the US list of ‘foreign terrorist’ groups.
In New York, the cityÂ’s police commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters Shahzad knew authorities were pursuing him and tried to leave the country after federal officials leaked information about the investigation.
Kelly said Shahzad was tipped off by media reports that authorities were hunting for a Pakistani-American identified as the buyer of the sport utility vehicle used to carry a crude bomb made of fuel and fireworks into Times Square.
“There was an inordinate amount of information given out by somebody in this case,” Kelly said. “He already knew that we were looking for him. That is not helpful and I think the government has to look internally to see that doesn’t happen.”
Kelly said the information was not leaked by New York police. The FBI and Justice Department declined to comment. Since his arrest, Shahzad has been talking with authorities and waived his legal rights.
“Over the past week-and-a-half we have been working to understand everything we can about Shahzad,” Kelly said, adding his story was ‘another classic case of home-grown terrorism’.
At an appearance in Oakland, California, Holder told reporters the incident was ‘troubling but also indicative of what we’ve seen over the past year’.