A new al-Qaida “guidebook” for extremists aims to incite homegrown “lone wolves” into carrying out small-scale terrorist attacks inside the United States and other Western countries, using materials as easily obtainable as motor or cooking oil, sugar and matches to trigger massive traffic accidents, devastating fires and deadly explosions. 

Titled the “Lone Mujahid Pocketbook” and published by in the spring edition of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula’s “Inspire” online propaganda magazine, the guidebook uses a breezy style that borrows from social media speak and rap lyrics to encourage Islamic extremists in the West to commit acts of violence. 

“R U dreamin’ of wagin’ jihadi attacks against kuffar?” is asks, using a derogatory Arabic term for non-Muslims. “Have u been lookin’ 4 a way to join the mujahideen in frontlines, but you haven’t found any? Well there’s no need to travel abroad, coz the frontline has come to you.” 

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Among other things, it offers detailed instructions for torching parked cars, causing vehicular accidents by pouring motor oil on highway curves, starting forest fires, “making a bomb in the kitchen of your Mom” and using a pickup truck with blades welded on the front “as a mowing machine, not to mow grass but (to) mow down the enemies of Allah.”

Evan Kohlmann, a senior partner at the threat-assessment firm Flashpoint Global Partners and an NBC News analyst, said he says he sees the recommendation for aspiring terrorists to think small in a positive light. 

“Despite crafting elaborate terrorist plots in far-away hideouts, al-Qaida has not been able to execute a major attack inside the U.S. since 9/11,” he said. “Homegrown terrorism costs al-Qaida nothing, and it garners the same amount of public attention as "real" terrorism. It's a no-brainer.” 

He also said that the new guidebook shows that AQAP’s efforts to recruit terrorists in the West suffered a serious setback with the death of American al-Qaida recruit Samir Khan in Yemen in a U.S. drone strike in September 2011. 

“The quality of these publications from AQAP specifically has taken a significant nosedive since the death of Samir Khan,” Kohlmann said. “Quite a bit of this latest guide seems to have been baldly rehashed from the former work of Khan.  Apparently, it wasn't as easy to replace Khan's creative instincts as AQAP first suggested.”

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With the death in Pakistan of al-Qaida No. 2 Abu Yahya al-Libi in a Predator attack early Monday, the terrorist group’s highest councils once again face the daunting task of filling both a leadership void and selecting a next-generation jihadist capable of succeeding current leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

But despite the obvious dangers that go with a prominent al-Qaida post, counterterrorism experts inside and outside the U.S. government have identified at least five potential next-generation leaders -- three of them former U.S. residents and one an American citizen.

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“It would be a mistake for anyone to conclude there is no one on the bench,” said one U.S. official familiar with counterterrorism strategy, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “It’s a thinning bench, but there are still bad guys, with bad aspirations in al-Qaida’s core group in Pakistan.  However, these individuals are not as capable and don’t have the profile or following in the wider extremist movement that Abu Yahya or his predecessor, Abu Atiyah, had.”

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But Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counter Terrorism Center and an NBC News analyst, said the candidates to move up into al-Qaida’s senior ranks in the wake of al-Libi’s death all lack his seasoning.

“The real answer is NONE of them are serious by comparison with Abu Yahya across a very wide range of skills and respect,” he said.

Indeed, the U.S. has killed four of the five al-Qaida operatives identified as possible successors to Osama bin Laden at the time of his death on May 1, 2011. The only one who remains alive is Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s longtime No. 2 who assumed command shortly after bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs in Abbottabad, Pakistan..

The next generation of al-Qaida leaders, say counterterrorism officials, is an eclectic mix of fighters, propagandists, clerics and administrators.

Those identified as potential next-generation successors are:

-- Adnan Gulshair el Shukrijumah. The 36-year-old Saudi is known as “Jaffar the Pilot” because he has a pilot’s license. Reportedly the director of operations for al-Qaida. Shukrijumah spent his teenage years in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Broward County, Fla., where he earned a degree in computer science. He is reported to have had roles in the 2009 plot to bomb the New York City subway and was put on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list a year later. He has been sought by the U.S. since 2003.

-- Jaber A. El-Baneh. A 45-year-old Yemeni known as Jubair, el-Baneh emigrated to New York where he settled for a time in Buffalo.  He was viewed as the mastermind of the Lackawanna Six plot in 2003, having financed and recruited other members. After escaping to Yemen, he was jailed there but sprung in a jailbreak. A senior Obama administration official said last month that el-Baneh has risen to a leadership position in the Yemen-based Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).  “I do see, more and more, el-Baneh being a real concern,” said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. “He has longtime connections, including to Egyptian extremist elements. And he does seem to be more engaged in trying to support attacks.”

But Leiter, the former director of the National Counter Terrorism Center, said that whoever succeeds al-Libi will have to be a member of al-Qaida central, not one of its affiliate terror groups, meaning el-Baneh would not be considered.

-- Adam Gadahn. A 33-year-old American known as Azzam al Amriki, or “Azzam the American,” Gadahn, formerly regarded as an al-Qaida propagandist, is now viewed as a strategist. Materials found in bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound included correspondence between the al-Qaida leader and the American jihadi. “Bin Laden took his mail,” the U.S. official said of Gadahn. “He’s not just a propagandist --more a strategist-- clearly someone who is not a crazy person. There are a number of people who were there on 9-11.  That clearly gives him some standing.” Gadahn has been charged in California with treason, a capital crime, and giving material aid to terrorism.

-- Sheikh Khalid Abdur Rahman al-Hussainan. A 45-year-old Kuwaiti, known as Abu Zaid al-Kuwaiti, al-Hussainan is one of al-Qaida’s newest faces. He’s a charismatic cleric and teacher who’s responsible for “the religious training and the salvation of the soldiers of the al-Qaida network,” according to an al-Qaida publication. Educated at Saudi-Arabian universities, he worked for a time as a scholar at Kuwait´s Ministry for Religious Affairs. He’s considered less doctrinaire than the older generation trainers.  In an interview with an al-Qaida publication, he said he would “converse with them (his students) in an exciting way. We would make them laugh and kid around with them.”  

Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News counterterrorism analyst, notes, “Nobody talks about him, but he appears as a featured speaker on as-Sahab videos nowadays more often than Zawahiri and Abu Yahya combined.” (Click here to watch English subtitled video.)

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--Ali Sayyid Muhamed Mustafa al-Bakri. A 46-year-old Egyptian known as Abd al-Aziz al-Masri, al Bakri is not well known. But the National Counter Terrorism Center, the government’s  primary organization for tracking terrorism,  notes that he is a “member of the al-Qaida Shura council (its governing body) and a close associate of Zawahiri." Al-Bakri is considered dangerous because he has explosives and chemical weapon expertise and has trained al-Qaida operatives as far back as the late 1990s. He attempted to hijack a Pakistani passenger flight in December 2000.  “It is likely that he continues to train al-Qaida terrorists and other extremists,” reports the NCTC.

“Ever since the death of bin Laden, the al-Qaida core we’ve known since 9/11 is the closest it has ever been to a tipping point,” said the U.S. official familiar with counter terrorism strategy.  “This does not mean the group is dead or the threat is gone, but core al-Qaida in Pakistan is on life support, and its chances of recovery are more daunting when they lose a guy like Abu Yahya.

“Undoubtedly, some al-Qaida members will be tapped to try to backfill Abu Yahya’s responsibilities, but in the days that follow, the succession won’t be obvious either to them or Zawahiri.”

Indeed in the past year, mainly through Predator and other drone attacks, the U.S. has been able to “remove from the battlefield” in the words of one senior Pentagon official, one al-Qaida leader after another.

In addition to Abu Yahya, these senior al-Qaida officials have been killed since bin Laden’s death:

• Ilyas Kashmiri, al-Qaida’s director of external operations, killed in a drone strike in Pakistan on June 3;
• Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, mastermind of the East Africa embassy bombings and head of al-Qaida in East Africa, died in a shootout by Somali forces on June 11;
• Abdul Rahman Atiya, bin Laden’s chief of staff,  killed in a drone strike Pakistan on Aug. 22; 
• Anwar al Awlaki, a leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula and an American citizen, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen on Sept. 30;
• Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al Quso, mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, was killed in a drone strike in Yemen on May 6 of this year.

Officials across the spectrum of counter terrorism, in intelligence and special operations, say the last year of operations, starting with the killing of bin Laden, has been the most successful since the war on al-Qaida began following the Sept. 11 attacks.

“We have decimated them, decimated them,” said the senior Pentagon official.

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.

A terror attack Monday on a Yemeni military parade rehearsal that killed scores occurred amid increasing cooperation between the Yemen and U.S. governments, with the latter stepping up assistance to the Yemeni military and regularly targeting purported terrorist cells with drone strikes.

The cooperation reflects a growing  belief in U.S. national security circles that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemeni al-Qaida affiliate, is now a bigger and more dangerous threat than the central al-Qaida group in Pakistan. (AQAP on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the attack on the military parade and a shooting that targeted U.S. military trainers in the country. There were apparently no injuries in the second incident.)

The cooperation is not limited to counter-terrorism. The U.S. is openly helping the new Yemeni government in counterinsurgency efforts against an AQAP-affiliated group, Ansar al-Sharia, in the south of the country.  The assistance includes “a small contingent” of military trainers and intelligence officers assisting the Yemeni forces.

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The presence of the American personnel in Yemen is raising concerns that Washington risks opening another front in the war against al-Qaida before it has fully extricated itself from long, bloody conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, said the AQAP’s successes in recent months give Washington little choice but to increase support for the new Yemeni government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi.

“AQAP’s enhanced footprint in southern Yemen increases the chances that the group will establish a regional safe haven,” said the official. “This would be a dangerous development because AQAP’s anti-government fight and its terrorist plotting against the West are its two main goals. Unless its gains are reversed, AQAP will have more flexibility to conduct external attacks from a position of strength.”

The Yemeni government position is about survival. Like Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, Yemen is under new management, after former President Ali Abdullah al-Saleh’s replacement by Hadi, his former deputy, in February.

Hadi’s position is precarious. Ansar al-Sharia, an Islamist insurgent group, is trying to further destabilize the water-starved, tribal-riven state, with the ultimate goal of toppling his government.

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But Hadi’s  increasing reliance on U.S. help has likewise caused him some difficulties, triggering protests among middle- and upper middle-class Yemeni youth who are resentful over the U.S. role in the country, particularly the drone strikes and surveillance.

Michael Leiter, former director of the National Counter Terrorism Center and now an NBC News analyst, said the deaths of nearly 100 Yemeni soldiers in Monday’s bombing are likely to bring two countries’ counter terrorism efforts closer.

“Hadi's rise has probably brought greater legitimacy to cooperation with the U.S.,” said Leiter. “… The president (Hadi) and elements of the security and defense establishment cooperate with the U.S. but want to keep that relatively quiet in order to avoid enflaming the domestic population.  .. . And, frankly, with horrific attacks like today, U.S. assistance often becomes more rather than less welcome.”

A Yemeni official, also speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak with the press on security operations, contended that  “broad cooperation” with the U.S. is necessary and marks a “new level” of friendly relations between the two countries. He said the U.S. role in Yemen is limited in terms of numbers, but significant in helping the government turn back Ansar al-Sharia, which he characterized as “militants, drug dealers and foreign groups.”

'Intelligence, satellite images and technical advice'
“The U.S. is providing intelligence information, satellite images and technical advice” valuable in both  counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts, said the official. Both the U.S. intelligence community and the Joint Special Operations Command, JSOC, are involved. He emphasized there are “no boots on the ground” fighting with Yemeni forces.

Neither the U.S. nor Yemeni official would put numbers on the U.S. involvement. Nor would the Yemeni  deny the presence of CIA officers on the ground.

The most high profile product of this cooperation has been the drone attacks on both counterterrorism and counterinsurgency targets. High profile attacks have killed three top AQAP officials in the past eight months, but there also have been an increasing number of attacks on lesser figures and even suspected gatherings of terrorists. The attacks, said the Yemeni official, have taken place “all over the country.”

In September, apparently helped by material uncovered in Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, U.S. drones killed two American citizens in Kashef, about 85 miles east of the capital, Sanaa. The dead were Anwar al-Awlaki, an AQAP leader blamed for recruiting other Americans to the group’s violent cause, and Samir Khan, co-editor of “Inspire,” a magazine whose articles included “How to Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.”

Then, earlier this month, the director of AQAP’s external operations, Fahd al Quso, was similarly killed by a drone attack in a remote mountain valley -- his whereabouts reportedly exposed by a British-Saudi-U.S. undercover intelligence operation. The penetration of AQAP by an informant  also resulted in the interception of a new, more sophisticated  version of the underwear bomb previously used unsuccessfully  to try to down U.S. airliners. (Yemeni intelligence, said the Yemeni official, had “no role” in that operation and was unaware of it.)

By some estimates, the tempo of the drone strikes against AQAP and Ansar al-Sharia is now even greater than in Pakistan, with the number of attacks in May surpassing even the most intense month of attacks against al-Qaida central in Pakistan. According to the “Long War Journal” website, which uses local reporting to track Predator strikes, 30 AQAP fighters (and seven civilians) have been killed in five drone strikes in the past 10 days alone. (Both U.S. and Yemeni officials say that such local reports are often inaccurate or exaggerated.)

The larger concern in terms of U.S. involvement may be the counterinsurgency effort. The Los Angeles Times reported  last week that at least 20 U.S. Special Operations troops are using satellite imagery, drone video, eavesdropping systems and other technical means to help pinpoint targets for the Yemeni military offensive that’s currently under way in the south. 

The Yemeni official would only say that targeting is “very selective” and that “No Americans are fighting on the side of the Yemenis,” a point on which U.S. officials agree.

While the Yemeni official said the offensive has made great strides recently, there have been setbacks, including the killing of 32 Yemeni soldiers on May 7 when AQAP overran a Yemeni position. That was the deadliest single encounter for government forces in the war with AQAP until Monday’s attack.

The Yemeni official said that the public is supportive of both operations, despite a social media protest by the country’s youth that has drawn some attention.

He claimed that no civilians have been killed in the drone strikes and stated that that care has been taken to strike at times and places where only AQAP and its allies are present.

There’s no doubt that U.S. cooperation -- and the drone strikes—will continue. The U.S. wants to kill Ibrihim Hassan Al-Asiri, the AQAP’s expert bomb-maker, before he trains others in his craft. 

But the mere presence of U.S. military personnel in the country carries risk of a confrontation that could quickly escalate. This weekend, for example, a local Yemeni newspaper reported unidentified gunmen opened fire on a car that belonged to U.S. military trainers as they left the tourist al-Hodeida Land Resort in the western part of the country. None of the Americans were believed to have been injured.

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.

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Just days before the news broke about the CIA's takedown of a plot involving a sophisticated new underwear bomb, al-Qaida’s affiliate in Yemen publicly boasted that it had vastly expanded and improved its capabilities for making such devices.

That boast -- contained in a largely overlooked passage of Inspire, the online propaganda organ of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) -- has fueled concerns that there may be other versions of the seized device and more bomb makers assembling them, according to U.S. security officials and members of Congress who have been briefed on the case.

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"They have a team of engineers, scientists and doctors. It's a little spooky,"  said Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, a member of the Homeland Security Committee who was briefed this week on the intelligence operation that U.S. officials say thwarted an AQAP plot to bomb a U.S.-bound airliner. "In my view, it’s very likely they have produced more of these."

One hint at the expansion of AQAP's bomb-making capabilities can be found in passages in an article entitled "Wining on the Ground," found on the 57th page of the latest 59-page edition of Inspire, released by AQAP last weekend.

In 2009, AQAP had only a "very modest and small laboratory in a rural area" to make bombs, the author of the article –identified as Yahya Ibrahim -- wrote.

That was the year AQAP dispatched a suicide bomber to use a chemical underwear bomb to attempt to assassinate Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdul Azizbin, director of Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism program, and later deployed another operative from Nigeria to try to blow up a U.S. airliner bound for Detroit. Neither device detonated properly, though the bomber in the first attack was killed.

But now, after obtaining “a large deal of chemicals from military laboratories" in a key city in southern Yemen -- "the modest lab has transformed into a modern one," the Inspire article stated.

"Hence, no wearisome measures are taken anymore to obtain the needed large amount of chemicals for explosives," it said. "Also, the operations now do not lack money as before." 

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This was not the first time AQAP has signaled that its bomb-making capabilities may be greater than U.S. officials have suggested.

In an issue of Inspire in late 2010, the group appeared to mock comments by U.S. officials focusing on the critical role of its top bomb-maker, Ibrahim Hassan Asiri -- who has been widely credited with designing the underwear bombs.

"Isn't it funny how America thinks AQAP has only one major bomb maker?" an article stated. 

Gregory Johnsen, a highly respected Yemen scholar who specializes in AQAP at Princeton University, said the propaganda outlet’s statements are likely true.

"We have to assume that there is not only one bomb-maker," he said. "It makes sense that he (Asiri) is somebody who has taught others" about making such bombs.

Johnsen said that the expansion of AQAP's bomb-making operations would be just one example of the dramatic gains the group has made in the past few years. As a result of the internal chaos in Yemen, and its shrewd exploitation of civilian casualties caused by U.S. air strikes, AQAP has made major advances, Johnsen said.

By U.S. intelligence estimates, the number of AQAP fighters has tripled to more than 1,000. It has also seized swaths of territory in southern Yemen, where it runs its own court system, deploys police officers and provides electricity to some towns, Johnsen said.

U.S. intelligence officials say they have no specific information indicating that other improvised explosive devices (IEDs) similar to the one that was turned over by a CIA informant last month have been produced and possibly spirited out of Yemen.

But John Brennan, President Barack Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, said Tuesday in an interview with PBS that U.S. officials are taking additional measures "to prevent any other type of IED similarly constructed from getting through security procedures."

At the same time, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued new "guidance" calling for enhanced security at foreign airports, including additional pat-downs and random searches, as well as other steps aimed at detecting such bombs.

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Two congressional leaders vowed Tuesday to investigate how word of a successful operation to foil a bomb plot by a Yemen-based al-Qaida affiliate leaked to reporters for the Associated Press. 

“This leak could have been … devastating and still could have significant long term damage,” Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said after a closed door briefing on the operation. “I believe it's absolutely essential a full investigation is carried out as to who was responsible for this leak. 

“I can't emphasize how closed this was, how compartmentalized it was, and how secret it was, and yet the fact that it could have gotten out in any kind of detail at all, … that even a hint of it could have gotten out, is really, really shocking.”

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King’s words were echoed by Rep Charles “Dutch” Ruppersberger III of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. 

 

“When you have a leak it could cost American lives, your allies’ lives,” he told reporters at the Capitol. “It also deters people from giving information. So, it's very important that we make sure that we have a sensitive investigation, it has to be a classified, need-to-know type of situation.” 

The Associated Press broke the story Monday of the foiled plot by members of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula to detonate on a U.S.-bound airliner a refined version of an “underwear bomb” used in two previous failed terror plots. 

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The news service said it had learned about the plot last week but agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish a story immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still under way. Once officials said those concerns were allayed, the AP said it decided to disclose the plot Monday despite requests from the Obama administration to wait for an official announcement Tuesday. 

If word of the operation had leaked out prior to the weekend, it could have disrupted an attack in Yemen by a U.S. Predator drone that U.S. officials say killed Fahd al-Quso, whom they described as director of external operations at AQAP, who was “involved (in the bomb plot) in an intimate fashion.”

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Updated at 8:01 a.m. ET -- An insider who worked with the United States and an allied security service to thwart an al-Qaida bomb plot hatched in Yemen was the man picked to carry out the suicide attack on a U.S.-bound airliner, U.S. and Yemeni officials tell NBC News.

An unidentified Yemeni  government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the supposed suicide bomber was working for Western intelligence “from day one.”

The insider also provided information that allowed the U.S. to launch a Predator drone strike that killed the group’s operations chief, senior U.S. officials told NBC News earlier Tuesday.

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"It was managed so that it was not a threat," said one senior Obama administration official, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity. “We were confident that we had inside control over any plot that might have been associated with this device.

 

 

“The device never got near an airplane. To our knowledge, it never got near an airplane or airport.”

The bomb -- a refined version of an “underwear bomb” used in two previous failed terror plots -- was driven out of Yemen by the insider into Saudi Arabia. It is now in the hands of U.S. bomb experts at the FBI labs in Quantico, Va., where experts have been examining it for a week, the officials said. The infiltrator also is safely out of Yemen.

The officials also said that a successful Predator attack that killed Fahd al-Quso over the weekend was related to the plot and was a “part of a 1-2 blow against Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP),” the north African affiliate of the al-Qaida terrorist network.  Al Quso, described as director of external operations at AQAP, was “involved (in the bomb plot) in an intimate fashion,” said the senior administration official. 

The officials declined to identify the allied security service involved in penetrating the plot, but multiple U.S. sources told NBC News that British intelligence was "heavily involved" in shutting down the plot. Separately, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said that multiple friendly security services were involved in the operation. 

The plot, which U.S. officials described Monday as a plan to detonate aboard a U.S.-bound jetliner a refined version of the “underwear bomb” that failed to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009. That device, worn by convicted bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, did not detonate.

The bomb aboard Northwest Flight 253 was the second failure of such a device. Four months prior, a suicide bomber attempted to kill Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdul Azizbin, director of Saudi Arabia’s counterterrorism program, at his palace in Jeddah. The bomber died in the attack, but the prince only suffered burns to one hand.

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The new bomb had a more refined detonation mechanism and was "totally non-metallic," which officials told NBC News would have made it more difficult to detect by traditional security screening processes.

The senior administration official would not comment on whether the would-be bomber, who is believed to be a Yemeni national, was in custody, but did say, “We do not believe the intended user of the device poses a threat."

The official also disputed reports indicating that al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula sought to detonate the bomb around the anniversary of al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden’s death, saying, “They hoped it would be carried out this month, but (there is) nothing from our insight that it was to coincide with anniversary or in retaliation for OBL’s death.”

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