Brennan: Bomb threat still concern; U.S. will ‘destroy’ culprits

After a late-week terror threat that wiped campaign news off the radar Friday, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser made the rounds on all five major morning shows Sunday.

The plot to send explosives on airliners bound for Chicago “had all the
hallmarks of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan said on “Fox News Sunday.”

{mosads}”It certainly bears all of the hallmarks of AQAP,” Brennan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “AQAP as an organization as a whole is something that we need to
maintain pressure on, working very closely with Yemeni officials. And
we will destroy that organization as we’re going to destroy the rest of
al-Qaeda.”

While stressing that the investigation is ongoing, Brennan said on “Face the Nation” that he agrees with British officials’ assessment that the bombs “look like they were intended to be detonated in flight.”

The mail bomb that was discovered in Dubai traveled on two passenger planes in the Middle East before reaching Dubai, a Qatar Airways spokesman said Sunday.

Two Yemeni women were detained on Saturday in connection with taking the packages to a FedEx drop-off in the capital San’a, and Brennan said officials were confident of their involvement in
the terrorist attempt. The women, whose identities have not been
confirmed, are now being questioned in Yemen, he said.

“I do believe there are a number of individuals who are responsible for putting this plot together,” he said on CBS. There are “very strong similarities,” he said, between this incident and would-be underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to destroy an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day with the explosive PETN.

“We cannot presume that there are none other out there,” Brennan said of the bombs on Fox. He echoed the caution on CBS, stating, “We’re not presuming that we have found all the devices that are out there.”

On CNN, however, he said, “We feel we have stopped all the packages from Yemen to the United States.” 

“We have to presume that there might be, so we have to take these measures,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Brennan
said the improvised bombs appeared to be “self-contained devices” that
were “very viable” and could have been detonated either en route to the United States or at
their apparent destination: synagogues in Chicago. “It’s a very sophisticated device in terms of how it was constructed and how it was concealed,” he said on NBC.

Cargo shipments to the U.S. that originate in Yemen have been suspended, Brennan said. The Postal Service also temporarily stopped accepting all international mail originating from Yemen on Saturday.

He was vague on whether officials believed the current plot was ongoing, saying only that he believes “the threat is ongoing.”

“We feel good about where we are right now,” he said on NBC.

The bombs were intercepted in Britain and in Dubai on Friday,
leading U.S. officials to raise the security alert at airports and
Obama to deliver a nationally televised statement on the incident.