US foils Al-Qaeda plot

­­­A plot by Al-Qaeda in Yemen to blow up a US-bound airliner was thwarted by a spy allied with the CIA who infiltrated the group and took the explosive for the attack to Saudi Arabia, ABC News reported yesterday.

The spy is now “safely out of Yemen, an unnamed “international intelligence official” told ABC.

The mole had links to the Central Intelligence Agency and several other spy services, according to the report.

US officials did not see the bomb as an immediate threat because all along the spy had “control” of the device, ABC said.

The United States announced on Monday that it had foiled a plan by Al-Qaeda's branch in Yemen to detonate an explosive on an airliner, saying that the FBI was examining an explosive that had been seized abroad. But US officials did not say where the bomb was found or provide other details about the case. The CIA declined to comment on the television report.

According to former intelligence and counter-terrorism officials, Saudi Arabia likely played a crucial role in uncovering the plot and has long had the best intelligence on Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Saudi Arabia was credited with foiling an AQAP conspiracy in 2010 to blow up commercial cargo planes flying to US airports.

With militants trying to mount a strike near the one-year anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden, US authorities vowed to stay vigilant against the growing threat posed by Yemeni-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). “The plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying... to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people,” US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in New Delhi on Monday during a tour of Asia.

The US administration said the plan was disrupted at an early stage but left key questions about the case unanswered, including where the bomb was recovered.

Counterterrorism officials said the plot was clearly the work of AQAP, suggesting the same bombmaker, Ibrahim Hassan Taleh Al-Asiri, who was behind previous attacks, had designed the explosive.

“The device has the hallmarks of previous AQAP bombs” that were used in a failed assassination attempt on Saudi's top counterterrorism official in 2009 and in the failed 2009 Christmas Day bombing, said a senior US official.