The NYPD has not stepped up patrols in wake of the discovery of a sophisticated new al-Qaida airline bomb plot – but officials remain "concerned" that bomb-maker Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri is still at large.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said the NYPD remains on "high alert" but has not changed its efforts.
“He’s still at large, and we’re still concerned about him,” Kelly said Tuesday. “He’s being searched for.”
The CIA, with help from a well-placed informant and foreign intelligence services, conducted a covert operation in Yemen in recent weeks that disrupted a nascent suicide plot and recovered a new bomb, U.S. officials said.
It's not clear who built the bomb, but because of its sophistication and its similarity to the Christmas Day bomb, authorities suspected it was the work of al-Asiri or one of his students. It was initially believed that al-Asiri had been killed in a drone attack last year.
Al-Asiri constructed the first underwear bomb and two others that al-Qaida built into printer cartridges and shipped to the U.S. on cargo planes in 2010.
Officials said the bomb represents an upgrade over the underwear bomb that failed to detonate aboard a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas 2009.
FBI experts are picking apart that non-metallic device to see if it could have slipped through security and taken down an airplane.
Working with an informant close to al-Qaida in Yemen, the CIA caught wind of the bomb plot last month, officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.
The would-be bomber was supposed to buy a plane ticket to the United States and detonate the bomb inside the country, officials said.
Before the bomber could choose his target or buy his ticket, however, the CIA swooped in and seized the bomb.
The fate of the would-be bomber remains unclear. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told CNN on Tuesday that White House officials told him "He is no longer of concern."
Though analysis of the device is incomplete, U.S. security officials said they remained confident in the security systems that were in place.
"These layers include threat and vulnerability analysis, prescreening and screening of passengers, using the best available technology, random searches at airports, federal air marshal coverage and additional security measures both seen and unseen," Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said.
"The device did not appear to pose a threat to the public air service, but the plot itself indicates that these terrorist keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said during a news conference in New Delhi with Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna.