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27Nov/10Off

Feds: Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Ore.

PORTLAND, Ore. -Federal agents in a sting operation arrested a Somali-born teenager just as he tried blowing up a van he believed was loaded with explosives at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, authorities said.
The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, 19, was arrested at 5:40 p.m. Friday just after he dialed a cell phone that he thought would set off the blast but instead brought federal agents and police swooping down on him.
Yelling "Allahu Akbar!" — Arabic for "God is great!" — Mohamud tried to kick agents and police after he was taken into custody, according to prosecutors.
"The threat was very real," said Arthur Balizan, special agent in charge of the FBI in Oregon. "Our investigation shows that Mohamud was absolutely committed to carrying out an attack on a very grand scale."
White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Saturday that President Barack Obama was aware of the FBI operation before Friday's arrest. Shapiro said Obama was assured that the FBI was in full control of the operation and that the public was not in danger.
"The events of the past 24 hours underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism here and abroad," Shapiro said. "The president thanks the FBI, the Department of Justice and the rest of our law enforcement, intelligence and Homeland Security professionals who have once again served with extraordinary skill and resolve and with the commitment that their enormous responsibilities demand."
A law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that federal agents began investigating the suspect after receiving a tip from someone who was concerned about the teenager. The official declined to provide more detail about the relationship between Mohamud and that source.
The FBI affidavit that outlined the investigation alleges that Mohamud planned the attack for months, at one point mailing bomb components to FBI operatives, whom he believed were assembling the device.
According to the official, Mohamud hatched the plan on his own and without any instruction from a foreign terrorist organization, and he planned the details, including where to park the van for the maximum number of casualties.
The affidavit said Mohamud was warned several times about the seriousness of his plan, that women and children could be killed, and that he could back out, but he told agents: "Since I was 15 I thought about all this;" and "It's gonna be a fireworks show ... a spectacular show."
Mohamud, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Corvallis, was charged with attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. A court appearance was set for Monday.
Authorities allowed the plot to proceed in order to build up enough evidence to charge the suspect with attempt.
The alleged plot in Portland follows a string of terrorist attack planning by U.S. citizens or residents, including a Times Square plot in which Faisal Shahzad pleaded guilty to trying to set off a car bomb at a bustling street corner. U.S. authorities had no intelligence about Shahzad's plot until the smoking car turned up in Manhattan.
Late last month, Farooque Ahmed, 34, of Virginia was arrested and accused of casing Washington-area subway stations in what he thought was an al-Qaida plot to bomb and kill commuters. Similar to the Portland sting, the bombing plot was a ruse conducted over the past six months by federal officials.
U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton released federal court documents to The Associated Press and the Oregonian newspaper that show the sting operation began in June after an undercover agent learned that Mohamud had been in regular e-mail contact with an "unindicted associate" in Pakistan's northwest, a frontier region where al-Qaida and Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents are strong. The person Mohamud had been in e-mail contact with was a friend living in Pakistan who had been a student in Oregon in 2007-2008, the official told the AP.
The two used coded language in which the FBI believes Mohamud discussed traveling to Pakistan to prepare for "violent jihad," the documents said.
In June an FBI agent contacted Mohamud "under the guise of being affiliated with" the suspected terrorist.
An undercover agent met with him a month later in Portland, where they "discussed violent jihad," according to the court documents.
As a trial run, Mohamud and agents detonated a bomb in Oregon's backcounry earlier this month.
"This defendant's chilling determination is a stark reminder that there are people — even here in Oregon — who are determined to kill Americans," Holton said.
Friday, an agent and Mohamud drove to downtown Portland in a white van that carried six 55-gallon drums with detonation cords and plastic caps, but all of them were inert, the complaint states.
They left the van near the downtown ceremony site and went to a train station where Mohamud was given a cell phone that he thought would blow up the vehicle, according to the complaint. There was no detonation when he dialed, and when he tried again federal agents and police made their move.
Omar Jamal, first secretary to the Somali mission to the United Nations, condemned the plot and urged Somalis to cooperate with police and the FBI.
"Talk to them and tell them what you know so we can all be safe," Jamal said.
Somalia Foreign Minister Mohamed Abullahi Omaar said his government is "ready and willing" to offer the U.S. any assistance it may need to prevent similar attempts. He said the attempt in Portland was a tragedy for Mohamud's family and the "people he tried to harm."
"Mohamud's attempt is neither representative nor an example of Somalis. Somalis are peace loving people," said Omaar, whose government is holed up in a few blocks of the capital, Mogadishu, while much of the country's southern and central regions are ruled by Islamist insurgents.
Tens of thousands of Somalis have resettled in the United States since their country plunged into lawlessness in 1991, and the U.S. has boosted aid to the country.
In August, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment naming 14 people accused of being a deadly pipeline routing money and fighters from the U.S. to al-Shabab, an al-Qaida affiliated group in Mohamud's native Somalia,
At the time, Attorney General Eric Holder said the indictments reflect a disturbing trend of recruitment efforts targeting U.S. residents to become terrorists.
Officials have been working with Muslim community leaders across the United States, particularly in Somali diasporas in Minnesota, trying to combat the radicalization.
—
Pickler reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Malkhadir M. Muhumed in Nairobi, Kenya, and Lolita C. Baldor and Darlene Superville in Washington also contributed to this report.

Feds: Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Ore.

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11Sep/10Off

9/11 events go on in shadow of Islam controversies

NEW YORK -Family members of Sept. 11 victims recited loved ones' names through tears on the ninth anniversary of the attacks Saturday, avoiding direct mention of the political furor centered two blocks from ground zero. The city braced for protests over the mosque planned there as elected officials pleaded for religious tolerance.
Demonstrators both for and against the Islamic center began to gather after the annual observance, which is normally known for a sad litany of families reading names of loved ones lost in the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Speaking at "hallowed ground" at the Pentagon, President Barack Obama alluded to the controversy over a mosque — and a Florida pastor's threat, later rescinded, to burn copies of the Muslim holy book. Obama made it clear that the U.S. is not at war with Islam and called the al-Qaida attackers "a sorry band of men" who perverted religion.
"We will not give in to their hatred," Obama said. "As Americans, we will not or ever be at war with Islam."
Family members gathering at observances in New York and Pennsylvania brought flowers, pictures of loved ones and American flags, but no signs of opposition or support for the mosque. Reading victims' names along with architects and construction workers rebuilding at ground zero in New York, they urged a restrained tone.
"Let today never, ever be a national holiday. Let it not be a celebration," said Karen Carroll, who lost her brother, firefighter Thomas Kuveikis. "It's a day to be somber; it's a day to reflect on all those thousands of people that died for us in the United States."
Standing before microphones, stifling sobs, some family members who read names sought to emphasize sentiments on all sides of the mosque argument.
Some — like Elizabeth Mathers, whose father, Charles Mathers, worked at Marsh & McLennan at the trade center — stressed that ground zero is hallowed.
"New York, please be mindful this is a sacred site and should be respected as such," she said.
Many sought to embrace unity and a spirit of reaching out, which is what the developers of the Islamic center have said is their goal.
"May we share your courage as we build bridges with other people to prevent this from happening again and to preserve human dignity for all," said Robert Ferris, saluting the dozens of building workers who joined families in reading names.
Ferris lost his father, who worked at Aon Corp.
Bagpipes and drums played to open the ceremony, followed by brief comments by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
"Once again we meet to commemorate the day we have come to call 9/11. We have returned to this sacred site to join our hearts together, the names of those we loved and lost," Bloomberg said. "No other public tragedy has cut our city so deeply. No other place is as filled with our compassion, our love and our solidarity."
Moments of silence were held at 8:46 a.m., 9:03 a.m., 9:59 a.m. and 10:28 a.m. to mark the times the hijacked jetliners hit the north and south towers of the World Trade Center, as well as the times they collapsed.
Hundreds of family members later placed roses in a reflecting pool at ground zero in front of a memorial, leaving scrawled remembrances on paper around it. Visible behind the podium of mourners were the beginnings of two skyscrapers rising at the site along with a transit hub.
Laura Bush, first lady at the time of the attacks, joined current first lady Michelle Obama at a service in Shanksville, Pa., for victims of the flight that crashed in a field there, while the president attended the service at the Pentagon.
"May the memory of those who gave their lives here continue to be an inspiration to you and an inspiration to all of America," Michelle Obama said, thanking Bush for helping the country through the aftermath of Sept. 11.
The mosque debate pits advocates of religious freedom against critics who say putting an Islamic center so close to ground zero disrespects the dead. While the rallies taking place in New York embroiled victims' family members in a feud over whether to play politics, a threat to burn copies of the Quran was apparently called off.
Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who made the threat, flew to New York on Friday night and appeared Saturday on NBC's "Today" show. He said his church would not burn the Quran, a plan that inflamed much of the Muslim world and drew a stern rebuke from Obama.
"We feel that God is telling us to stop," he told NBC. Pressed on whether his church would ever burn the Islamic holy book, he said: "Not today, not ever. We're not going to go back and do it. It is totally canceled."
Lending credence to Jones' comments, a "Burn a Koran Day" banner outside his Florida church was taken down.
Still, protests continued Saturday in Afghanistan, where most people were unaware of Jones' decision. Police fired warning shots to prevent protesters from storming the governor's residence in Puli Alam in Logar province, officials said. Villagers set fire to tires and briefly blocked a highway to Pakistan, a provincial spokesman said.
Jones said that he flew to New York in the hopes of meeting with leaders of the Islamic center but that no such meeting was scheduled.
Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, leader of the planned mosque, said Friday that he was "prepared to consider meeting with anyone who is seriously committed to pursuing peace" but had no meeting planned with Jones.
Activists in New York insisted their intentions were peaceful. More than 1,000 protesters on both sides of the issue were expected to converge near the mosque site, a former clothing store two blocks north of the trade center site.
John Bolton, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, was expected to send a videotaped message of support to the anti-mosque rally, as was conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart. Anti-Islam Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who advocates banning the Quran and taxing Muslim women who wear head scarves, planned to address the crowd in person, as do a handful of Republican congressional candidates who have made opposition to the mosque a centerpiece of their campaigns.
Muslim prayer services are normally held at the site, but it was padlocked Friday and closed Saturday, the official end of the holy month of Ramadan. Police planned 24-hour patrols until next week. Worshippers on Friday were redirected to a different prayer room 10 blocks away.
Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the New York ceremony, where 2,752 people were killed when two jetliners flew into the trade center. More than 200 other people died in Pennsylvania and at the Pentagon.
—
Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz, Tom Hays and David B. Caruso in New York; Jennifer C. Yates in Shanksville; Erica Werner in Washington; and Rahim Faiez and Robert H. Reid in Kabul, Afghanistan.

9/11 events go on in shadow of Islam controversies

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19Aug/10Off

FACT CHECK: Islam already part of WTC neighborhood

WASHINGTON -A New York imam and his proposed mosque near ground zero are being demonized by political candidates — mostly Republicans — despite the fact that Islam is already very much a part of the World Trade Center neighborhood. And that Muslims pray inside the Pentagon, too, less than 80 feet from where terrorists attacked.
And that the imam who's being branded an extremist has been valued by both Republican and Democratic administrations as a moderate face of the faith.
Even so, the project stirs complicated emotions, and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf is a complex figure who defies easy categorization in the American Muslim world.
He's devoted much of his career to working closely with Christians, Jews and secular leaders to advance interfaith understanding. He's scolded his own religion for being in some ways in the "Dark Ages." Yet he's also accused the U.S. of spilling more innocent blood than al-Qaida, the terrorist network that turned the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon and four hijacked airplanes to apocalyptic rubble.
Many Republicans and some Democrats say the proposed $100 million Islamic cultural center and mosque should be built elsewhere, where there is no possible association with New York's ground zero. Far more than a local zoning issue, the matter has seized congressional campaigns, put President Barack Obama and his party on the spot — he says Muslims have the right to build the mosque — divided families of the Sept. 11, 2001, victims, caught the attention of Muslims abroad and threatened to blur distinctions between mainstream Islam in the U.S. and its radical elements.
A look at some of the claims and how they compare with the known facts:
_"The folks who want to build this mosque — who are really radical Islamists who want to triumphally prove that they can build a mosque right next to a place where 3,000 Americans were killed by radical Islamists — those folks don't have any interest in reaching out to the community. They're trying to make a case about supremacy." — Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a potential 2012 presidential candidate.
_Some of the Muslim leaders associated with the mosque "are clearly terrorist sympathizers." — Kevin Calvey, a Republican running for Congress in Oklahoma.
_"This radical is a terrible choice to be one of the faces of our country overseas." — Statement by GOP Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Peter King of New York.
THE FACTS:
No one has established a link between the cleric and radicals. New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne said: "We've identified no law enforcement issues related to the proposed mosque."
Ros-Lehtinen and King were referring to the State Department's plan, predating the mosque debate, to send Rauf on another religious outreach trip to the Middle East as part of his "long-term relationship" with U.S. officials in the Bush and Obama administrations. The State Department said Wednesday it will pay him $3,000 for a trip costing the government $16,000.
Rauf counts former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from the Clinton administration as a friend and appeared at events overseas or meetings in Washington with former President George W. Bush's secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and Bush adviser Karen Hughes.
He has denounced the terrorist attacks and suicide bombing as anti-Islamic and has criticized Muslim nationalism. But he's made provocative statements about America, too, calling it an "accessory" to the 9/11 attacks and attributing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to the U.S.-led sanctions in the years before the invasion.
In a July 2005 speech at the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Center in Adelaide, Australia, Rauf said, according to the center's transcript:
"We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al-Qaida has on its hands of innocent non-Muslims."
While calling terrorism unjustified, he said the U.S. has supported authoritarian regimes with heinous human rights records and, faced with that, "how else do people get attention?"
In the same address, he spoke of prospects for peace between Palestinians and the Israelis — who he said "have moved beyond Zionism" — and of a love-your-neighbor ethic uniting all religions.
—
_"Mr. President, ground zero is the wrong place for a mosque." — Rick Scott, Republican candidate for Florida governor.
_"Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There's no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center." — Gingrich.
_"Just a block or two away from 9/11." — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, another 2012 GOP presidential prospect.
THE FACTS:
No mosque is going up at ground zero. The center would be established at 45-51 Park Place, just over two blocks from the northern edge of the sprawling, 16-acre World Trade Center site. Its location is roughly half a dozen normal Lower Manhattan blocks from the site of the North Tower, the nearest of the two destroyed in the attacks.
The center's location, in a former Burlington Coat Factory store, is already used by the cleric for worship, drawing a spillover from the imam's former main place for prayers, the al-Farah mosque. That mosque, at 245 West Broadway, is about a dozen blocks north of the World Trade Center grounds.
Another, the Manhattan Mosque, stands five blocks from the northeast corner of the World Trade Center site.
To be sure, the center's association with 9/11 is intentional and its location is no geographic coincidence. The building was damaged in the Sept. 11 attacks and the center's planners say they want the center to stand as a statement against terrorism.
—
_"There should be no mosque near ground zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. ... America is experiencing an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization." — Gingrich.
_"This religion's plan is to destroy our way of life. ... If we have to let them build it, make them build it nine stories underground, so we can walk above it as citizens and Christians." — Ron McNeil, a House GOP candidate in the Florida Panhandle, in an exchange reported by The News Herald in Panama City.
THE FACTS:
Such opinions are shared by some Americans, while others are more reluctant to paint the religion with a broad brush and more welcoming of the faith in this country. Bush himself, while criticized at the time for stirring suspicions about American Muslims, traveled to a Washington mosque less than a week after the attacks to declare that terrorism is "not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace."
In any event, the U.S. armed forces field Muslim troops and make accommodations for them. The Pentagon opened an interfaith chapel in November 2002 close to the area where hijacked American Airlines flight 77 slammed into the building, killing 184 people.
Muslims gather there for a daily prayer service Monday through Thursday and hold a weekly worship service on Fridays, drawing no complaints. Similar but separate services are provided for other faiths.
—
Associated Press writers Tom Hays in New York and Anne Flaherty in Washington contributed to this report.

FACT CHECK: Islam already part of WTC neighborhood

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10Jul/10Off

6 US troops, 12 civilians killed in Afghan attacks

KABUL, Afghanistan -Six American service members and at least a dozen civilians died in attacks Saturday in Afghanistan's volatile east and south, adding to a summer of escalating violence as Taliban militants push back against stepped-up operations by international and Afghan forces.
NATO said four U.S. service members died in the east: One as a result of small-arms fire, another by a roadside bomb, a third during an insurgent attack and the last in an accidental explosion. Two other U.S. troops died in separate roadside bombings in southern Afghanistan. Their deaths raised to 23 the number of American troops killed so far this month in the war.
Also, unknown gunmen killed 11 Pakistani Shia tribesmen in the east and at least one person died when a bomb planted on a motorbike exploded in Kandahar city in the south, officials said.
Explosions also hit two convoys of international troops in different parts of the country, with Germany saying two of its troops were wounded by a roadside bomb in the northern province of Kunduz. Another explosion targeted NATO troops in Khost in the east, but the alliance said there were no casualties.
Afghan and international forces also said a combined commando unit killed a Taliban operative and captured eight others in an overnight raid in Paktia province in the east, though local villagers claimed the men were innocent civilians. In the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, thousands of Afghan's staged an anti-U.S. protest over another night raid that killed two security guards.
Insurgent attacks have intensified across the country and the international coalition has been stepping up raids to root out militant leaders as 30,000 more American troops arrive to try to turn around the war and build a stable Afghan government nine years after U.S.-backed forces toppled the Taliban's hard-line Islamist regime.
Last month was the deadliest of the war for the multinational force, with 103 international troops killed, 60 of them Americans.
A remotely detonated motorcycle bomb killed one person Saturday in Kandahar city, the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban, authorities said.
The blast set cars ablaze and shattered windows at a popular shopping center. One man was killed as he drove by in a car just as the bomb exploded, the provincial government said in a statement.
The province is the site of a U.S.-led military operation to strengthen government control.
In the eastern border province of Paktia, unidentified gunmen killed 11 Pakistanis who had crossed into Afghanistan to buy supplies, according to Rohullah Samon, spokesman for the provincial governor.
Samon said 11 Shia minority Muslim tribesmen died and three people, including a child, were wounded in the ambush of their minibus in Chamkani district.
Elsewhere in Paktia, a combined Afghan-coalition commando force raided a compound in Ahmad Abad district overnight, killing one person and arresting nine others, officials said.
The Ministry of Defense said the elite force killed an insurgent operative and captured eight others with weapons. The ninth person arrested was determined to be a civilian and turned over to local authorities, it said in a statement.
Paktia spokesman Samon complained that local authorities were not informed of the raid. He said villagers protested outside government offices Saturday, saying the dead man and those captured were innocent civilians. They promised a larger demonstration the next day if the eight prisoners were not released.
Combined coalition and Afghan forces have been stepping up night raids across the country trying to break up Taliban leadership and operations capability.
In the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, more than 1,000 people protested Saturday against the deaths of two security guards in another night raid near a market.
The crowd chanted "Death to America! Long live Islam!" Protesters said the security guards were unjustly killed when combined Afghan and international forces landed by helicopter at the bazaar before dawn Wednesday.
NATO spokesman Col. Wayne Shanks said the two guards were shot when they raised their weapons at the commandos and refused orders to put them down. He said the raid succeeded in capturing a Taliban operative who supplied bomb-making material.
The coalition says the new wave of raids has captured more than 100 senior- and midlevel Taliban figures since April and killed dozens more. But the success rate has not made much of a dent in insurgent attacks.
On Saturday, an explosion tore through a NATO convoy traveling in the eastern province of Khost, though no one was killed. The German army later said two of its soldiers were slightly wounded by a roadside bomb in the northern province of Kunduz — the second homemade explosive attack on German troops in the area that day.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force has been in Afghanistan since shortly after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, when U.S.-backed forces toppled the regime that sheltered the al-Qaida terrorist leadership following the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States.
—
Associated Press Writer Mirwais Khan in Kandahar contributed to this report.

6 US troops, 12 civilians killed in Afghan attacks

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21Jun/10Off

NYC car bomb suspect pleads guilty, calls it `war’

NEW YORK -Calling himself a Muslim soldier, a defiant Pakistan-born U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Monday to carrying out the failed Times Square car bombing and left a sinister warning that unless the U.S. leaves Muslim lands alone, "we will be attacking U.S."
Faisal Shahzad entered the plea in U.S. District Court in Manhattan just days after a federal grand jury indicted him on 10 terrorism and weapons counts, some of which carry mandatory life sentences. He pleaded guilty to them all.
Widely circulated snapshots of Shahzad — a U.S.-trained financial analyst and married father of two — show him with a neatly trimmed beard, all smiles and looking carefree behind sunglasses or with his American wife. When led into court Monday, he had on a white skull cap and prisoner's uniform, his beard shaggy and his demeanor serious.
U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum challenged Shahzad repeatedly with questions such as whether he looked at the people in Times Square, especially the children, to see who they were or whether he really built the bomb by himself. He repeatedly insisted he acted without help from others in the U.S. and built the bomb "all by myself."
"One has to understand where I'm coming from," Shahzad said calmly. "I consider myself ... a Muslim soldier."
The 30-year-old described his effort to set off a bomb in an SUV he parked in Times Square on May 1, saying he chose the warm Saturday night because it would be crowded with people he could injure or kill. He said he conspired with the Pakistan Taliban, which provided more than $15,000 to fund his operation and five days of explosives training late last year and early this year, just months after he became a U.S. citizen.
He explained that he packed his vehicle with three separate bomb components, hoping to set off a fertilizer-fueled bomb packed in a gun cabinet, a set of propane tanks and gas canisters rigged with fireworks to explode into a fireball. He also revealed he was carrying a folding assault rifle for "self-defense."
Shahzad said he lit a fuse and waited 2 1/2 to five minutes for the bomb to erupt.
"I was waiting to hear a sound but I didn't hear a sound. ... So I walked to Grand Central and went home," he said.
The judge repeatedly interrupted Shahzad, including when he said his plot was to retaliate against the U.S. and the forces of up to 50 other countries that had "attacked the Muslim lands."
Cedarbaum said: "But not the people who were walking in Times Square that night. Did you look around to see who they were?"
"Well, the people select the government," Shahzad said. "We consider them all the same. The drones, when they hit ... "
Cedarbaum interrupted again: "Including the children?"
Shahzad answered: "Well, the drone hits in Afghanistan and Iraq, they don't see children, they don't see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody. It's a war, and in war, they kill people. They're killing all Muslims."
Later, he added: "I am part of the answer to the U.S. terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people. And, on behalf of that, I'm avenging the attack. Living in the United States, Americans only care about their own people, but they don't care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die."
Cedarbaum asked him if he understood some charges carried mandatory life sentences and that he might spend the rest of his life in prison. He said he did.
At one point, she asked him if he was sure he wanted to plead guilty.
He said he wanted "to plead guilty and 100 times more" to let the U.S. know that if it did not get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, halt drone attacks and stop meddling in Muslim lands, "we will be attacking U.S."
Sentencing was scheduled for Oct. 5.
The Bridgeport, Conn., resident was arrested trying to leave the country May 3, two days after the bomb failed to ignite near a Broadway theater.
Authorities said Shahzad immediately cooperated, delaying his initial court appearance for two weeks as he spilled details of a plot meant to sow terror in the world-famous Times Square when it was packed with thousands of potential victims.
The bomb apparently sputtered, emitting smoke that attracted the attention of an alert street vendor, who notified police, setting in motion a rapid evacuation of blocks of a city still healing from the shock of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
According to the indictment issued last week, Shahzad received a total of $12,000 prior to the attack from the Pakistani Taliban through cash drop-offs in Massachusetts and Long Island.
Attorney General Eric Holder said after the plea: "Faisal Shahzad plotted and launched an attack that could have led to serious loss of life, and today the American criminal justice system ensured that he will pay the price for his actions."
FBI New York Acting Assistant Director-in-Charge George Venizelos called the plea "right on the mark" and praised the work of "ordinary citizens who alerted law enforcement of suspicious activity."
Shahzad was accused in the indictment of receiving explosives training in Waziristan, Pakistan, during a five-week trip to that country. He returned to the United States in February.
The indictment said he received $5,000 in cash on Feb. 25 from a co-conspirator in Pakistan and $7,000 more on April 10, allegedly sent at the co-conspirator's direction. Shahzad confirmed the payments in court Monday and said the Pakistan Taliban also gave him more than $4,000 when he left training camp, where he spent 40 days.
Shahzad, born in Pakistan, moved to the United States when he was 18.
Pakistan has arrested at least 11 people since the attempted attack. An intelligence official has alleged two of them played a role in the plot. No one has been charged.
Three men in Massachusetts and Maine suspected of supplying money to Shahzad have been detained on immigration charges; one was recently transferred to New York.
Federal authorities have said they believe money was channeled through an underground money transfer network known as "hawala," but they have said they doubt anyone in the U.S. who provided money knew what it was for.

NYC car bomb suspect pleads guilty, calls it `war'

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