CNN 2012-05-12

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First up,investigators are studying an explosive device that they say could have ended up on a plane heading to the United States.This is part of an alleged² terror plot that officials say was broken up recently. They seized the explosive device and authorities say the person who intended to use it is no longer a threat.

 

Intelligence agencies say this plot started in the nation of Yemen. That`s the home base for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula which has been described as the most dangerous Al Qaeda affiliate³. 

 

This group was behind several attempted plots, like the so-called Underwear Bomber⁴ in 2009. The officials who broke up this plot say the device was similar to ones that the terrorist group has used before, like the ones you`re seeing in this video. They say it never posed an immediate⁵ danger, but they also described it as much more sophisticated than previous explosives. 

 

That's causing concerns that the Al Qaeda group could be advancing its bombmaking techniques. 

 

There are a lot of unanswered questions about this plot right now. How is it broken up? Where is the person who was planning to use the explosive? What officials have said is that this bomb was designed to slip past airport metal detectors⁶. On Monday, Brian Todd was reporting on the possibility of that happening.

 

That is the huge question today. That is really being debated. Now Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rodgers, have just said, essentially⁷, last night and this morning,that they believe that these scanners would have detected this potential explosive.

 

But if you talk to terrorism experts and security experts, that is not at all clear,that even these so-called back-scatter, these body scanners would have detected it.You know, they're-- and also these body scanners are not used in every airport overseas, not even used in every airport in the United States. 

 

So it's a question of implementing⁸ those where they need to be and, again, whether they are sophisticated right now, sophisticated enough to actually detect these types of bombs, and that is really not at all clear at this point.

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