Post foiled Times Square bomb plot, US deployed Fed agents to prevent future attacks
By ANIFriday, May 21, 2010
NEW YORK - American prosecutors have revealed that hundreds of federal agents were deployed in different cities of the country to prevent future attacks, days after the arrest of Faisal Shahzad, the naturalized U.S. citizen of Pakistan origin for leaving a car bomb near Times Square.
The May 12 letter, which was partially redacted and addressed to Loretta A. Preska, the chief judge of United States District Court in Manhattan, and George A. Yanthis, the magistrate judge assigned to the case, sheds new light on the actions of the federal authorities after the May 3 arrest of Shahzad, the New York Times reports.
“Since his arrest,” the letter says, “the defendant has been questioned - and continues to be questioned - by federal agents on a number of sensitive national security and law enforcement matters for the purpose of preventing potential future attacks, identifying associates of the defendant and possible facilitators of the attempted attack, as well as gathering other actionable intelligence,” the letter states.
The next section of the letter gives detailed information provided by Shahzad to the agents questioning him.
The prosecutors - Brendan R. McGuire, Jeffrey A. Brown, John P. Cronan and Randall W. Jackson, who are assistant United States attorneys - then wrote: “Federal law enforcement agents are vigorously and expeditiously pursuing leads relating to this and other information provided by the defendant, a process which has required the participation of hundreds of agents in different cities working around the clock since the defendant’s arrest.”
The Obama administration has said the failed attack was aided and directed by the Pakistani Taliban.
In the letter unsealed in federal court in Manhattan, the prosecutors said they were writing to advise the judges about “the status of the proceedings” against Shahzad.
They said that they saw “no legal requirement to report to the court on the status of the defendant’s detention,” but that “under the unusual circumstances of this case, and in deference to the court’s ultimate supervisory authority, a report on the status of the case serves the interest of justice.” (ANI)
