FBI counterterrorism agent briefs Amanpour on foiled bomb plot
On the Tuesday, May 8 edition of Amanpour, anchor Christiane Amanpour interviewed Ali Soufan, former FBI counterterrorism agent on the foiled bomb plot that is attributed to Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula. Soufan considers the intelligence gleaned from this plot to be linked to the drone attacks in southern Yemen which killed Fahd Mohammed Ahmed Quso, who had been one of the terrorist bombing planners of the U.S.S. Cole in 2000.
This is part of Soufan’s briefing with Amanpour:
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, ANCHOR OF “AMANPOUR”: Who is al-Quso and tell us about how you interrogated him all that time ago?
ALI SOUFAN, FORMER FBI COUNTERTERRORISM AGENT: Well, we first identified Fahd al-Quso as being a member of the cell that conducted the U.S.S. Cole attack team. We were able to arrest him and interrogate him. And he provided significant amount of intelligence about this connections to Al Qaeda, about Al Qaeda’s role in the U.S.S. Cole bombing and the murder of 17 sailors at Aden, and also about his relationship to Osama bin Laden.
He also provided us some information about a meeting that took place in southeast Asia, where he delivered $36,000. We know — we now know that that meeting was actually a planning summit for the 9/11 attack. So he is as dangerous as you can get.
AMANPOUR: Now he’s dead. Do you believe that his — the attack that killed him, the drone attack, was actually linked to this bomb plot?
SOUFAN: I will be surprised if it is not, because Fahd, since he left the Yemeni jail, he has been planning very hard to conduct attacks, not only inside Yemen, but also outside Yemen. And his name has been linked to many attacks.
Amanpour airs weekdays on CNN International at 3:00pm with a replay at 5:00pm Eastern in the U.S. and at 21:00 CET, with a replay at 23:00 CET. The full transcript of this program may be found here.
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