N.Y. Subway Plot: How Substantial Is Alleged U.K. Connection?

Britain’s largest selling tabloid, The Sun, published an intriguing story on Monday claiming that information from Scotland Yard helped the U.S. foil the recent New York- and Denver-based terror plot that may have been targeting the New York subway system. According to the newspaper, whose story was given wider circulation by both the British press and the Drudge Report, Scotland Yard had been monitoring an e-mail address in connection with an investigation code-named Operation Pathway. Last April the inquiry resulted in the arrests, but subsequent release, of 11 Pakistani suspects in northern England. The Sun said that after the April crackdown, the e-mail address went dormant. But Scotland Yard supposedly continued to keep an eye on it until it “suddenly” came back to life in September, allegedly resulting in a key tipoff to the U.S. authorities from London about the subway plot.

NEWSWEEK heard a rumor last week from a private counterterrorism expert in London that some U.K. officials were claiming that British authorities played a major role in breaking up an unspecified recent U.S. terror plot. But when U.S. counterterrorism officials declined to confirm the rumor, we didn’t pursue the story further.

Some U.S. officials speaking to NEWSWEEK on background now will not rule out the possibility that Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan-American who is the principal suspect to be arrested and charged in connection with the investigation, or some publicly unknown associate or cohort, may have been in e-mail contact with people in Britain. But these officials say that any such messages that U.K. authorities might have intercepted did not play a critical role in the U.S. investigation that led to Zazi’s arrest; other U.S. officials close to the New York investigation flatly deny any knowledge of a U.K. connection to the case. A British government spokesman says: “We would never comment on a specific intelligence issue like this. It is well known that we have a longstanding and strong intelligence relationship with our American allies—but for obvious reasons, we don't divulge details.” The author of the Sun report did not immediately respond to an e-mail requesting comment.

A possible U.K. connection to the New York plot is only one of numerous loose ends from the New York investigation that remain to be resolved. Although Zazi is facing charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction—in this case, bombs with a homemade explosive (WMD can be defined more broadly in law-enforcement operations than it is in foreign policy) that the Feds allege was going to be cooked up using a recipe similar to that used by the London transport suicide bombers on July 7, 2005—no one has been arrested or charged as his co-conspirator. Both Zazi’s father and a Flushing, N.Y., imam (and New York police informant) have been charged with giving false information to the Feds, but neither has been directly implicated in the bombing plot. Nor have the Feds given any indication that they have recovered any of the bomb-making materials—including hydrogen peroxide and acetone—that the government has alleged Zazi and unnamed associates purchased as part of the plot. Bob Nardoza, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Eastern District Office in Brooklyn, N.Y., which is managing the case, said that it was still under “active investigation,” and that Zazi, who is being held without bail, is next due to appear in court on Dec. 3.