President Barack Obama vowed Saturday that the United States will never waver in its fight against terrorism as Americans marked the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks under the shadow of another terror threat. “Ten years ago, ordinary Americans showed us the true meaning of courage when they rushed up those stairwells, into those flames, into that cockpit,” the president said in his radio and Internet address.
“We will protect the country we love and pass it safer, stronger and more prosperous to the next generation,” he added. Even as US intelligence agencies chased down what officials said was a credible but unconfirmed threat of an Al-Qaeda attack around the September 11 commemorations, Obama assured terrorism would never win. “Today, America is strong and Al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat,” he said.
According to The New York Times, word of the plot was passed to US intelligence officers by an informer based in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan on Wednesday. The informer said two American citizens of Arab ancestry had left Afghanistan, traveled through one or more other countries and reached the United States as recently as last week, the report said. But the informer’s report included only a vague physical description of the two men, the paper said. One plotter was described as five feet (1.5 meters) tall, the other five-foot eight (1.7 meters), and the first name for one was Suliman, which is common in the Middle East, The Times noted.
The informer also described a third conspirator, but he appeared to have traveled to Europe, the report said. Former national security advisor Frances Townsend told CNN Friday that US spy networks had been alerted to a new threat after intercepting communications from a known, reliable operative in Pakistan. “It’s Washington or New York. A car bomb, three men. We know that one or two are US citizens,” she said, when asked about the specifics of the threat.
“The general outlines of the initial report are three individuals coming into the country” last month, a US official told AFP, confirming the plot had links to militants in Pakistan. Obama on Friday repeated his order for security agencies to “redouble” efforts to take all necessary precautions, his spokesman Jay Carney said.