The woman stepped off Hadda Street into a pair of courier offices in Yemen’s capital. In Fed Ex and UPS storefronts tucked along shopping centers in San’a, she mailed two Hewlett-Packard printers to the United States.
She used a fake name, address and phone number. She paid in cash. Then she disappeared.
Hidden inside each printer was a bomb powerful enough to down an airplane.
Authorities think it was the most sophisticated effort yet by al-Qaeda in Yemen to strike inside the U.S. Though details are still emerging, a senior U.S. official said evidence points to a plot to blow up cargo planes inside the U.S., either on runways or over American cities.
Alerted to the plot by Saudi intelligence, security officials chased the two packages across five countries, trying frantically over the next two days to prevent an explosion that could have come at any moment.
The pursuit — recounted to The Associated Press by officials in the U.S., Britain, Yemen, Germany and the United Arab Emirates — shows that even when the world’s counterterrorism systems work, preventing an attack is often a terrifyingly close ordeal.
Contents were screened in Yemen
UPS and FedEx employees screened the packages in Yemen, according to two U.S. officials who, like most people interviewed, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.
In Yemen, cargo screening is done manually, one official said. Employees looked at the contents of the packages, but never took the printer apart.
Both packages were cleared for delivery.
The packages were dropped off Wednesday, Oct. 27. The FedEx bomb was loaded aboard a passenger jet, a Qatar Airways plane that seats 144. It left Yemen on Oct. 28, for Doha, Qatar. The UPS bomb left Yemen early that same evening, headed to Cologne, Germany.
As Thursday evening turned to Friday morning in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the CIA station received an urgent call from Saudi intelligence. Two bombs were being shipped from Yemen, bound for the United States. One was UPS, the other FedEx, and the Saudis had both the tracking numbers.
A senior CIA official in Riyadh relayed the tip to the agency’s headquarters in Virginia, where it was early Thursday evening. CIA officials called the White House, and homeland security adviser John Brennan briefed President Barack Obama.
U.S. and Saudi authorities put Europe on alert. Britain’s intelligence division, MI-6, also received a tip through its office in Yemen.
With U.S. intelligence on notice, officials in Saudi Arabia summoned the local liaison for Germany’s Federal Criminal Police into a meeting to discuss the bombs.
When the meeting began, a senior German official said, it was 1:34 a.m. Friday in Germany and the UPS bomb was sitting at the airport in Cologne, waiting to leave for England. The liaison officer called Germany, and authorities rushed to stop the plane.
At 2:40 a.m., police ordered that the package could not leave the country. It was too late. The cargo plane had taken off 36 minutes earlier.
When the UPS plane landed in England, it was just after 10 p.m. Thursday in Washington and 3 a.m. Friday in England. The bombs had begun their journey more than 24 hours before and neither had been found.
British investigators were waiting for the plane, tipped off by Saudi, U.S. and German officials. Leicestershire police set up a security perimeter and pulled the package off the plane. Police searched the plane, and even the printer, for hours, but found nothing.
Dubai police find the FedEx bomb
Meanwhile, the FedEx bomb arrived in Dubai aboard a passenger plane from Qatar, where it had spent the night.
Dubai police, having been tipped off to the package, discovered the bomb shortly after it arrived, according to a UAE official security source. The sun was coming up Friday morning in Washington as investigators in Dubai got the first look at al-Qaeda’s device.
In England, police gave the all-clear. Despite not finding the bomb, authorities cleared the plane for takeoff for Philadelphia, and on to Chicago.
Before it could leave, however, British officials were told about the discovery in Dubai and were urged to look again. At 2 p.m. local time, nearly 12 hours after the UPS bomb arrived in England, police resumed the search.
Exactly when police in England discovered the bomb remains unclear, but authorities there removed the security perimeter and left the airport at 5:30 p.m. local time.
