A detailed analysis of the bombs used at the Boston Marathon and during a firefight between the suspects and law enforcement shows how closely the bombmakers followed instructions from the digital al Qaeda magazine “Inspire,” according to a government document obtained by NBC News.

The unclassified report from the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center found that the pipe bombs allegedly thrown from a car by Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev during last Friday’s chase through Watertown, Mass., resembled the design described in “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom,” an article in the first issue of the English-language magazine. At least one of the Watertown bombs used an elbow pipe wrapped in black tape, as discussed in “Inspire.”

“The use of elbow pipes specifically is unique,” states the report, “and rare in other extremist and anarchist literature.”

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“How to Build a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” also provided instructions on how to build bombs with kitchen pressure cookers. The bombs detonated at the marathon on April 15 were constructed from pressure cookers, as was a bomb authorities say the suspects threw at police during the Watertown shootout. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, a 26-year-old immigrant of Chechen origin, was killed during the confrontation.

According to the TEDAC analysis, the pressure-cooker bombs also match the “Inspire” designs in their use of spherical shrapnel and gunpowder from fireworks, as well as the possible use of Christmas tree lights as an initiator.

The pipe bombs also used fireworks and spherical shrapnel. Both types of devices apparently used glue to secure the shrapnel, as described in “Inspire.” NBC is not disclosing details that could aid in the construction of a bomb.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who survived the Watertown shootout and was captured last Friday night, has told investigators that he and his brother Tamerlan got bombmaking instructions from “Inspire,” according to law enforcement officials. The TEDAC document, however, notes while the elements of the Boston bombs “use similar components to those described in several issues of ‘Inspire,’” they also diverge from the “Inspire” designs, with different triggers and power sources. A fusing system that used parts from a toy car, say the investigators, does not seem traceable to the magazine.

“Inspire” magazine was launched by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, al Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate, in July 2010, and aimed at fomenting jihad among U.S. and other Western Muslims. The publication included messages from radical U.S.–born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and Osama bin Laden, and was edited by U.S.-raised jihadi Samir Khan, a one-time basement blogger in North Carolina who relocated to Yemen. It contained articles on “open source” jihad, urging Westerners to mount “lone wolf” attacks using methods ranging from home-made bombs and forest fires to vehicular homicide.

Khan was killed in the same U.S. strike that killed Awlaki on Sept. 30, 2011.

The Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center is an interagency organization located at the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va., with a director from the FBI and other officials from the ATF, the Pentagon and the intelligence community.

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WASHINGTON - An alleged al Qaeda-backed plot to derail a U.S. passenger train in Canada sought to exploit the vulnerabilities of railroads that have not gotten much attention from the American public. 

While the United States has sharply tightened security around airlines since the September 11, 2001, attacks, trains are far harder to police, with masses of passengers getting on and off and stops at many stations on a single line. Thousands of miles of track, bridges and tunnels present a major challenge to monitor.

Even though the United States has largely been immune from attacks, extremists around the world have frequently exploited rail transport's vulnerability, said Brian Michael Jenkins, a security expert with the Mineta Transportation Institute at California's San Jose State University.

"Surface transportation really has become the terrorists' killing fields," he said.

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Two suspects were arrested in Canada on Monday charged with conspiring to blow up a trestle on the Canadian side of the border as the Maple Leaf, the daily Amtrak connection between Toronto and New York, passed over it. Amtrak is the U.S. passenger rail service.

The two men charged in the plot made their first court appearances on Tuesday. A lawyer for one said his client would fight the charges vigorously.

Jenkins and Steve Kulm, an Amtrak spokesman, said trains presented a unique security challenge, different from airports with their screening process for passengers.

Amtrak coordinates security with local law enforcement, does counterterrorism exercises and patrols its tracks and stations, Kulm said. It also is reconfiguring stations to make them safer from potential attack.

"It's no surprise and no secret that overseas terrorists have targeted rail transportation, and so we have, as I say, many seen and unseen measures that we have put in place and continue to improve upon," Kulm said.

More fatalities in surface attacks
Although popular attention has tended to focus on airliner attacks, far more people have died worldwide from surface transport assaults, Jenkins said.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, militant attacks on the United States, there have been 75 assaults on airliners, with 157 fatalities, he said.

During the same period, there were 1,800 attacks on surface transport, with nearly 4,000 people killed. Among them were attacks on Madrid in 2004 and on Mumbai in 2006 that each killed about 200 people, and a 2005 London bombing that claimed 52 lives.

In the United States, only one person has died from an extremist rail attack in recent decades, when Amtrak's Sunset Limited was derailed in Arizona in 1995. Responsibility was claimed by a group calling itself Sons of the Gestapo and the saboteurs have not been found.

The United States has more than 200,000 miles of railroad, with about 21,000 miles used by Amtrak. Amtrak carried 31.2 million passengers in the last fiscal year, its ninth record year in the last 10, Kulm said. As a comparison, about 642 million passengers were carried within the U.S. by airlines in 2012, according to the Department of Transportation. 

Elliot G. Sander, a former chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of New York, which runs two of the biggest U.S. commuter railroads, said public awareness was critical to countering potential attacks.

"One cannot understate the importance of the participation of the public, in terms of eyes and ears," he said.

Far fewer security personnel
The Department of Homeland Security spent $136 million in the 2013 fiscal year on surface transportation security, with 775 personnel. Aviation security received $5.3 billion and has 53,000 personnel.

Special Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response teams carry out random baggage and security checks at train, subway and bus stations as well as at truck weighing stations.

Created after the Madrid railway bombing, the VIPR teams carried out more than 9,300 operations in fiscal 2011, according to the Department of Homeland Security's 2013 budget request.

The Transportation Security Administration was criticized last year by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, for failing to carry out analysis of railroad security information.

The GAO also criticized the TSA for inconsistent reporting requirements from rail agencies and failure to inspect a rail service the GAO did not name. The TSA concurred with the GAO's recommendations for improvement.

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Whoever planned and carried out the deadly bombing of the Boston Marathon may have had plenty of help, experts say, from the Internet.

“Every aspect of a terrorist attack is now managed or researched” in some way using the Internet, said Scott Borg, director and chief economist of the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, an independent research institute that assesses cyber threats.

“That's where people figure out what their target is, how to go after the target, it's how they learn how to make bombs, it's how they coordinate their activities with each other,” he told NBC News’ Lisa Myers in an interview.

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Borg said there are hundreds of websites in multiple languages advising and instructing people how to commit terrorist acts.

Last month, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula published a how-to guide that urged small-scale attacks in the United States and other Western countries using easily obtainable materials.

Titled the “Lone Mujahid Pocketbook” and published in the spring edition of the terrorist group’s “Inspire” online propaganda magazine, the guidebook borrowed from social media speak and rap lyrics to encourage Islamic extremists in the West to commit acts of violence. The guidebook also offered detailed instructions to “Make a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom,” including detailed, illustrated instructions on making pressure cooker bombs – the type of explosive authorities say was used in the Boston Marathon attack.

Richard Esposito, NBC News’ senior executive producer for investigations, calls the prevalence of online bomb-making guides “a frightening development.”

But he adds that the same websites and chat rooms that would-be jihadists use in their planning can also be a hunting ground for the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials looking for whoever built the Boston pressure cooker bombs.

The intelligence community is already at work there, experts say – watching for signs of imminent attacks, but also sowing disinformation and altering recipes for bombs.

“Law enforcement actively attempts to post content on these websites,” said Esposito. “They use all the investigative tools that are now available to them to thwart the terrorists online.”

So far, those methods have been very effective. And experts say the easy availability of bomb-making formulas does not seem to have increased the frequency of attacks. But they worry it may be making the successful ones more lethal.

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• Bomb type gives first clue on path to perpetrator
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The arrest of Suleiman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law, has led to a fresh examination of a little-known chapter in George W. Bush’s “War on Terror’ -- secret talks between U.S. and Iranian officials in 2002 and 2003 aimed at working out an exchange of al Qaeda leaders detained in Iran for Iranian dissidents under U.S. control in Iraq.

The proposed deal fell apart when Washington balked at sending the Iranian dissidents -- members of the People's Mujahedin of Iran, best known by the acronym MEK -- to what they believed would be certain death at the hands of Iranian authorities, current and former U.S. and Iranian officials told NBC News.

Ghaith, who is being held in a New York jail cell after spending a decade in Iran among the al Qaeda group, pleaded not guilty last week to charges of conspiring to kill Americans.

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Ghaith has provided an account of his travels to U.S. law enforcement officials, included in a 22-page statement that has yet to be released. He was arrested in Turkey after leaving Iran, transferred to U.S. custody in Jordan and then flown to New York, according to U.S. officials, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity.

 

 

The U.S. has never had a clear idea of the conditions under which members of al Qaeda’s “management council” were held in Iran, but one former U.S. official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said last week that they were hidden "in the blackest of the black boxes" inside Iran's intelligence apparatus. Iranian officials have told NBC News the al Qaeda officials were "in jail" in the Islamic Republic.

While U.S. officials believe the al Qaeda leaders were initially allowed to contact other members of the terrorist organization as they continued to plot attacks against the U.S. and its allies, Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman at the Iranian mission to the United Nations, said that was never the case.

“Our position about al Qaeda is clear," he said Thursday. "Iran has never permitted al Qaeda to have any activity or operation from or inside Iran.” 

The al Qaeda leaders detained after fleeing Afghanistan as the Taliban regime collapsed at the end of 2001 also had family members and bodyguards with them, bringing the total number in the group into the hundreds.

Among the terror group’s leaders taken into custody were Ghaith, Saif al Adel, al Qaeda’s military leader, Saad bin Laden, the deceased son of the late al Qaeda leader, and liaisons with other Sunni terrorist groups, including Chechen rebels in Russia.

U.S. and Iranian officials say that the group -- armed "with a ton of cash," as one U.S. official put it -- bribed their way across the Iran-Afghanistan border and hoped that Iran would treat them as "the enemy of my enemy," as another former U.S. official said.  But they were rounded up not long after their arrival.

The former U.S. officials say the CIA did not learn of the group's presence in Iran until the middle of 2002, at which point the U.S. used back-channel communications to arrange secret talks with representatives of Iran. This was months after President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address, described Iran as part of an "axis of evil" – along with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Kim Jong Il's North Korea – presenting a "grave and growing danger" to the U.S.

The talks have been reported before, though previous accounts received little media attention.

In a passage in his memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," then-CIA Director George Tenet, wrote, "In mid-2002 we learned that portions of al Qaeda’s leadership structure had relocated to Iran. This became much more problematic, leading to overtures to Iran and eventually face-to-face discussions with Iranian officials in December 2002 and early 2003. Ultimately, the al Qaeda leaders in Iran were placed under some form of house arrest, although the Iranians refused to deport them to their countries of origin, as we had requested." 

Tenet didn't detail what went on during the discussions, but in another passage said that at the same time the U.S. was meeting with Iranian officials, the CIA learned that the al Qaeda group was not only communicating with Saudi-based leaders of the terrorist group on operational matters, but also trying to obtain nuclear weapons. 

Related: Abu Ghaith trial may illuminate Iran's treatment of al Qaeda leaders it detained

A senior Iranian official, U.N. Ambassador Javad Zarif, also told NBC News and others in 2007 about the discussions with U.S. officials.

In the 2006 book, "Losing Iraq: Inside the Post-War Reconstruction Fiasco," Columbia University Professor David L. Phillips quoted Zarif as saying Iran was reluctant to turn over the al Qaeda officials to the U.S. or other governments, as the US requested, until and unless the U.S. repatriated high-ranking officials of the MEK -- an acronym derived from the group’s Farsi name, Mojahedin-e-Khalq.

The MEK opposed the Iranian regime and was housed, trained and armed by Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq War. After the U.S. defeated Iraq in April 2003, the MEK came under U.S. control.

While confirming that the U.S. and Iran discussed trading the MEK leaders for the al Qaeda group, two former U.S. officials told NBC News that the proposal came from the Iranian side and was essentially a non-starter.  

"The Iranians told us, 'We will only talk if you do something about MEK,' the most preferred option was giving them up," said one senior intelligence official at the time. "But someone would have to be a really bad person for us to turn him over to Iran. We could have done something to rein them in, yeah, but as bad as the agency thought these guys (the MEK) were, and we did, it would have been a Draconian step ... and we weren't prepared to do that."

That wasn't the only reason for the Bush administration's reluctance, said the former official.

"There were interests in the Pentagon, (neo-conservative members of the Bush administration) who thought the MEK could be the vehicle that would overthrow the government of Iran," the former official said, adding sarcastically, "the same way they had such great success with Ahmad Chalabi in Iraq." 

Over CIA objections, Pentagon officials had fostered a relationship with Chalabi in hopes that he could establish himself as a leader of Iraqi dissidents in post-Saddam Iraq . Chalabi, however, was unable to deliver on his promises to unite the many dissident factions.

At the same time, Iran had its own reasons for holding onto the al Qaeda members, according to one U.S. counterterrorism official. Many in U.S. intelligence believe that Iran wanted to keep them as bargaining chips -- and not just with the U.S. They were in effect hostages. If al Qaeda or allied Sunni terrorist groups carried out attacks in Iran, as had occurred in the 1990s, the group could face harm. 

Whatever chance the talks had of succeeding ended in May 2003. Just days after Zarif met with Zalmay Khalilzad, then the Bush administration's special envoy to Afghanistan, al Qaeda attacked a residential compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing 31 people, including nine Americans, according to the former U.S. officials. It was the largest number of U.S citizens killed by al Qaeda since the 9-11 attacks.

After the Riyadh attack, U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the U.S. had intercepted phone conversations implicating al Qaeda members in Iran in the bombings. The CIA was uncertain how much the Iranian government knew about the planning for the attack, but as one former U.S. official said, "It was hard for us to believe that a government as controlling as Iran didn't know" what was happening "in their country when we knew what was going on in their country. It was an article of faith."

At that point, the former official said, the Bush administration shut down communications with Iran and encouraged the Saudis to tell the Iranian government that it would not tolerate any further attacks, noting that U.S. officials also suspected Iran played a role in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers, an American military residence outside Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. That attack killed 19 U.S. servicemen.

"The Saudis were encouraged to confront Iran," said the official. "We also pointed out that al Qaeda's long-term goal was to decapitate the Saudi regime. We reminded them of that."

A national security official within the Bush administration said the U.S. believed that following the protest, Iran did put additional restrictions on the al Qaeda officials. The former U.S. official said that during the latter half of the 2000s, no operational communications were detected between the al Qaeda leaders in Iran and what is known in the intelligence community as "al Qaeda Central" – bin Laden and his then-deputy and current al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

"Every once in a while, we would intercept non-operational communications from them to relatives back home. That was it," said one former high-ranking U.S. official.

Why has Abu Ghaith been released, or as one current U.S. official reported, "expelled" from Iran? Little is known publicly, but one of the former U.S. officials speculates that with bin Laden dead and al Qaeda Central operations near moribund, he and the other members of the “management council” have little value as leverage or as hostages. 

Abu Ghaith is unlikely to have any operational information because he has been in Iran for so long.  Now, the current and former U.S. officials say, his intelligence value may be more about his captivity in Iran and whether he was released or escaped.

Abu Ghaith will be back in court early next month for a preliminary hearing, at which point a trial date will be set. At that point, either the prosecution or defense is likely to reveal a bit more about what is one of the last remaining mysteries of the 9-11 aftermath.

Where are they now?
The U.S. is uncertain as to the whereabouts of many of the other al Qaeda leaders who were held by Iran.

At least one other high ranking official of al Qaeda found his way out of Iran in recent years. Mahfouz Ould al-Walid, known by his nom de guerre “Abu Hafs the Mauritanian,” was released from jail in July 2012 by Mauritanian authorities after reportedly being extradited by Iran.  Officials in the West African nation said they freed the former senior adviser to bin Laden after he renounced al Qaeda.

There have been reports over the last several years that Al-Adel, the former al Qaeda military leader, also has left Iran, but U.S. officials say none has been verified.

Saad bin Laden was inadvertently killed in July 2009 in a Predator drone strike in Pakistan directed at another suspected terrorist, U.S. officials say.

Al Qaeda’s chief financial officer, Sheik Saeed, whose real name was Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, also was killed in a drone strike in Pakistan on May 21, 2010, according to NBC News terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann, also a senior partner with the Flashpoint Partners consulting company. There is no indication of when or under what circumstances Saeed left Iran. 

Other former Iranian captives whose whereabouts are unknown include  Thirwat Shihata, former head of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad; Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, deputy chair of the management council; and Abu Dahak, a Yemeni who reportedly acted as a facilitator with Chechen rebels

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Osama bin Laden's son-in-law, who acted as a spokesman for al-Qaida, has been apprehended, transported to New York and charged with conspiracy to kill Americans, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.

Sulaiman Abu Ghaith appeared alongside bin Laden in a 2001 video in which they took responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and warned of more, before he dropped out of sight for more than a decade before his arrest.

"I commend our CIA and FBI, our allies in Jordan, and President Obama for their capture of al-Qaida spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith," said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., a member of the Homeland Security Committee, who first announced the news. 

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"I trust he received a vigorous interrogation, and will face swift and certain justice," added King, who is also chairman of the Sub-Committee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence.

Prosecutors say from at least May 2001 to around 2002, Abu Ghaith served alongside bin Laden, appearing with him and his then-deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, speaking on behalf of the terrorist organization and in support of its mission, and warning that attacks similar to those of September 11, 2001 would continue.

The government says around May 2001, Abu Ghaith urged individuals at a guest house in Kandahar, Afghanistan, to swear allegiance to bin Laden. On the evening of Sept. 11, 2001, after the terrorist attacks on the United States, bin Laden summoned Abu Ghaith and asked for his assistance. He agreed to provide it.

On the morning of Sept. 12, 2001, Abu Ghaith appeared with bin Laden and Zawahiri, and spoke on behalf of al-Qaida, warning the United States and its allies that "[a] great army is gathering against you" and called upon "the nation of Islam" to do battle against "the Jews, the Christians and the Americans," the court document says.

Also, after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Abu Ghaith delivered a speech in which he addressed the then-U.S. Secretary of State and warned that "the storms shall not stop, especially the Airplanes Storm," and advised Muslims, children, and opponents of the United States "not to board any aircraft and not to live in high rises."

Abu Ghaith arranged to be, and was, successfully smuggled from Afghanistan into Iran in 2002, where he spent most of the decade, U.S. officials said.

Even as government officials applauded the arrest of Abu Ghaith, his transport to the United States stirred controversy among lawmakers who were apparently caught by surprise by the news.

"We believe the administration's decision here to bring this person to New York City, if that's what's happened, without letting Congress know is a very bad precedent to set," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who held a press conference with Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H.

"And when we find somebody like this, this close to bin Laden and the senior al-Qaida leadership, the last thing in the world we want to do, in my opinion, is put them in civilian court. This man should be in Guantanamo Bay," Ayotte said.

"So we're putting the administration on notice," said Graham. "We think that sneaking this guy into the country, clearly going around the intent of Congress when it comes to enemy combatants, will be challenged."

Earlier, in an interview on MSNBC, House Intelligence Chair Mike Rogers, R-Mich., strongly criticized the administration for bringing Abu Ghaith to the United States.

Rogers, a former FBI agent, said that Mirandizing a top al-Qaida suspect and bringing him to the United States for trial creates a host of problems — instead of sending him to the facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which was built to handle high value prisoners.

"Al-Qaida leaders captured on the battlefield should not be brought to the United States to stand trial," Rogers said. "We should treat enemy combatants like the enemy. The U.S. court system is not the appropriate venue."

The Obama administration has been trying to clear out Guantanamo and not bring any new prisoners there.

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said it's fine with him if Abu Ghaith is put on trial in New York because key state and city officials had been consulted in advance, unlike in the case of terror suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

"Unlike with KSM, Kelly and others had been consulted ahead of time about this and they gave the green light to do it. As you know, (Police Commissioner) Ray Kelly, Mayor (Michael) Bloomberg and I opposed the trial of (Mohammed) in New York and we successfully made sure that didn't happen," said Schumer. "On issues like this, I defer to Commissioner Kelly, and I think the mayor does as well. And he thinks it's OK to do it here, and I'll go by that," Schumer said. 

Jordanian sources confirmed that Abu Ghaith was sent by Turkey via Jordan to Kuwait, and intercepted in Jordan and brought to the U.S.

According to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Turkish officials captured Abu Ghaith in the capital Ankara, where a court ruled he had entered the country illegally with a fake passport. The Turkish government then ostensibly deported Abu Ghaith to his birthplace Kuwait, but arranged for him to transit through Jordan where he was ultimately taken into custody by U.S. law enforcement, the officials said.

U.S. officials told NBC that prior to his interception in Turkey, Abu Ghaith, who dropped out of sight after 2002, had spent most of a decade in Iran.

"Nobody's heard a peep. Some people thought he was being held prisoner in Iran, others thought he might be dead," said Evan Kohlmann, an American counter-terrorism analyst for NBC News. 

NBC News chief Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski and Moufaq Khatib NBC News producer in Jordan contributed to this report.

 

This story was originally published on Thu Mar 7, 2013 11:47 AM EST