Authorities piece together clues in N.Y. car bomb plot

By Jerry Markon and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 2, 2010

U.S. officials were racing Sunday to determine whether the attempted car bombing in New York's Times Square was connected to international terrorism, as a Taliban group issued a statement claiming responsibility for the plot.

The group, Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan, said the attack was to have been revenge for the killings of "Muslim martyrs," particularly two senior leaders of al-Qaeda in Iraq who were recently killed by U.S. and Iraqi forces. But terrorism experts on Sunday were skeptical that the group could have organized it quickly enough to avenge deaths that occurred less than two weeks ago.

Officials said there was there was no indication that the attempted bombing was connected to terrorist groups, even as they cautioned that such evidence could yet emerge.

A federal law enforcement official with expertise in explosives said that investigators "at this point are leaning more to characterizing this as a solitary incident, rather than something organized."

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