New al Qaida plot?

last updated 8 January 2015

Riyadh

Al Qaida is plotting new attacks on U.S. soil through operatives who don’t meet the traditional terrorist profile, FBI and CIA officials told the Los Angeles Times this week. The unnamed officials, who are investigating the terror attacks that killed 35 people in the Saudi capital last month, said they believed al Qaida had adapted its tactics to evade global policing efforts. The terrorist network has recruited nontraditional operatives—those that don’t fit the profile of an unmarried, middle-class, young Arab man—so they can gain entry into the U.S. “They have done their homework,” said one official, “and figured out ways to get people in.” Analyses of recent attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco indicate that al Qaida strategy is still being directed by the fugitive Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.