The foiling of an al Qaeda bomb plot by American and Yemeni intelligence experts is being hailed as an intelligence "coup."
Details of the unravelling of this latest plot were revealed Tuesday, when officials said a would-be suicide bomber entrusted with the Yemen branch of al Qaeda's latest nonmetallic underwear bomb was actually a double-agent working with the CIA and Saudi intelligence agencies.
Instead of sneaking the bomb onto a U.S.-bound plane for a suicide mission timed to coincide with the anniversary of Osama bin Laden's death, he delivered it to the U.S. government.
While the FBI is still analyzing the explosive device, officials have already described it as an improvement over two earlier devices they believe were created by the same al Qaeda master bomb maker in Yemen, Ibrahim Hassan al-Asiri, or one of his students.
The latest were bombs hidden inside printer cartridges intended for cargo planes in 2010, the year after another underwear bomb on Christmas Day fizzled over Detroit.
In an interview with CTV's Canada AM Wednesday morning, former CSIS senior intelligence officer Michel Juneau-Katsuya said the revelations lead him to two conclusions.
"This is a demonstration, unfortunately, of the creativity and intensity of al Qaeda, particularly the branch from Yemen," Juneau-Katsuya said in an interview from Trois-Rivieres, Quebec.
It's also, he said, "a very big coup" for the western world to not only identify the immediate ring that this group was working with, but to also snatch the device they'd likely been working on for some time.
The announcement also comes at crucial time for U.S. President Barack Obama, Juneau-Katsuya said, noting the presidential election race is now gathering steam in the States.
"I think the Obama administration needs it now to a certain extent," he said, recalling the president's angry reaction to the 2009 underwear bombing attempt over Detroit.
Obama vowed then that U.S. intelligence agencies would not repeat the mistakes of the time.
"It was exactly the same attempt, by exactly the same group that was trying to do this," Juneau-Katsuya said, "but this time it looks like they co-operated."
The device has been described an upgrade containing the chemical detonator lead azide also used in the 2010 plot. Despite its nonmetallic construction, U.S. transportation safety officials said it would likely have been caught by new security systems in that country, though it might have slipped through checks overseas.
Security procedures remained unchanged at America's airports, however, while the Transportation Security Administration reiterated its standing suggestions for security measures that could detect such devices or others like it.
All passengers on U.S.-bound flights are already checked against terrorist watch lists and law enforcement databases.
