Intensify profiling and stop terrorists’ movement

“Officials: Terror suspect may have ties to al-Qaeda network in Yemen

After the failed assassination attempt, al-Qaeda boasted that Assiri had passed through security checkpoints at Najran airport and Jeddah airport, before boarding the prince's plane, according to a statement the terrorist network posted on jihadist sites.

The essence and the method of detonation are not and will never be known," the al-Qaeda statement said, according to a translation by SITE Intelligence, a terrorism monitoring group. "Receive glad tidings, O you tyrants, of what will hurt you. Your fortresses will never prevent us from reaching you. We have scaled their walls and we will reach you very soon," it said.

Abdulmutallab's actions also appear to be the latest by al-Qaeda tacticians to defeat aviation security measures before and since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Explosive materials and methods have evolved alongside security measures, and if authorities determine Abdulmutallab's efforts reveal dangerous new terrorist capabilities it could force new permanent measures.

In 1995, authorities uncovered an al-Qaeda plot codenamed Bojinka to bomb 11 U.S. airliners simultaneously over the Pacific Ocean when a suspect was found with bomb-making materials. The plan, orchestrated by 1993 World Trade Center bombing plotter Ramzi Yousef, included a dry run in which a small bomb made of nitroglycerin and purportedly smuggled in contact lens solution bottles killed a passenger aboard a Philippine Airlines flight to Tokyo.

In December 2001, al Qaeda trainee Richard C. Reid was arrested after unsuccessfully attempting to trigger a pre-made bomb aboard a Paris to Miami flight including PETN, a powerful plastic explosive, and triacetone triperoxide (TATP), a compound used by Palestinian suicide bombers that can be made my mixing acetone with common ingredients.

Authorities in the United Kingdom disrupted another plot in August 2006 that targeted about 10 transatlantic flights from London's Heathrow Airport to six cities in the U.S. and Canada using a liquid explosive, hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD), that can be made from hydrogen peroxide. Investigators determined that plotters intended conceal the explosive by substituting it for the contents in unopened sports drink containers and to detonate them with MP3 players or cell phones.”