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what the wake-up call was for airport screeners. >> the big concern is from al qaeda in yemen. this group has had isis when it comes to the sophisticated devices. there is an expert bombmaker experimenting with shoe bombs and underwear bombs and surgi l surgically implanting bombs on humans. he has been sharing that intelligence. al qaeda in syria in 2014, were planning a similar laptop bomb. that group in yemen is richer now. better than 2009 and 2010 when it put together the printer bomb plot and underwear bomb throplo.
sophisticated devices, concealing bombs inside electronics. they have a master bomb maker ibrahim al asiri, a saudi who's very good at building these kind of devices. and for years has been developing underwear bombs, shoe bombs, even the group has experimented with surgically implanting devices inside people so that they can get them on planes. there's intelligence that's come out on that. and this is a group which is believed to have shared this technology with a number of other al qaeda affiliates in the region, including al qaeda's affiliate in syria, the so-called khorasan group, a group that western intelligence learned in the summer of 2014 were plotting to get a bomb inside electronics in some kind of laptop or other device onto a plane. and actually, that plotting led to new rules being introduced by the tsa for foreign airports
ever since 9/11 this has been a constant object of fascination for many different terror groups, from al qaeda in the arabian peninsula who were experimenting as you heard from phil mudd, with liquids and with underwear bombs to isis who managed to bring down a russian plane in the sinai peninsula with explosives placed in a soda can, and now to this more sophisticated apparently laptop threat, which as you mentioned al shabaab appeared to abuse in somalia, and it was very lucky in that case, wolf, that the plane wlags still flying at a low enough altitude that even though that bomb blew open a large hole in the wall of the fuselage, the pilot was still able to land plane. one other thing i would mention is when you look at the will remnants of what we're seeing of isis in mosul and you look at the weapons factories that they have, they are not just building crude rockets anymore, wolf. they are building high-tech
down that russian airliner and it has airport security on the lookout for sure, but what are they looking for? shoe bombs, underwear bombs, other things we've never even thought about before that make the latest screening technology obsolete? you might be surprised at how fast the technology is growing. yes, we are twins. when i went on to ancestry, i just put in the name of my parents and my grandparents. i was getting all these leaves and i was going back generation after generation. you start to see documents and you see signatures of people that you've never met. i mean, you don't know these people, but you feel like you do. you get connected to them. i wish that i could get into a time machine and go back 100 years, 200 years and just meet these people. being on ancestry just made me feel like i belonged somewhere. discover your story. start searching for free now at ancestry.com.
coming up with more sophisticated devices. he's been experimenting, it is believed, with new generations of shoe bombs and new generations of underwear bombs. >> and brian todd joins us. now, what more are you learning about the airbus' tail? >> anderson, in the course of reporting on this incident over the past couple of days, we've learned that this very same aircraft in november of 2001 had what's called a tail strike. in that incident, it was landing in cairo. it was operated by another airline at the time. it was landing in cairo and the nose was too high. so, the tail struck the tarmac and it sustained considerable damage. now, airline officials of this particular russian airline say that that was completely repaired and that it passed all the inspections since then. but we've had several airline security and safety experts tell us that in these inspections, it's very sometimes easy to miss maybe a slight fracture or other stress point in that part of a plane. and it could have gone
generations of shoe bombs, new generations of underwear bombs. >> reporter: also tonight, al qaeda's leader, i man al zawahiri in a recording we believe released sunday after the crash called on jihadists to fight the west and russia. no claim of responsibility from al qaeda in the sinai crash. analysts say, given that this would have been a huge terrorist success for al qaeda, their silence suggests they may not be responseible for this incident. >> investigators are looking at abnormal sounds around the time the plane disappeared. >> yes. russia's interfax news agency cites unnamed source saying the voice recorder captured uncharacteristic sounds the moment before the flight disappeared from radar. it's not clear what those sounds were. one analyst says it could reflect whatever catastrophic event was occurring. that's got to be a point of the investigation as well. >> let's go to our pentagon
thinking you could get battery power on board a plane now and do damage? >> or some other triggering device. there have been cellphone bombs used in the past famously in 1996 but they have not been used often. the fear is al qaeda allies in syria have worked on now bomb designs. they are the ones that brought you the underwear bombs. you would think they would be focused on isil rather than attacking the u.s. homeland and dhs isn't saying this is imminent and not to panic, but if there is something to this, you almost wonder whether the recent success in iraq have pushed their al qaeda competitor
effort. we need to quarterback this effort so that in a sense, the training, the intelligence, the lethal assistance, non-lethal assistance, the salaries all of this has to be done in a way that actually helps groups we're doing and insures that everyone is contributing in a consistent fashion. one of the problems with the effort to the syrian opposition has not just been that they have been fractured but that the effort to help them has also not been a coordinated one. now time to make that a very coordinated one. we need to run it. the $500 million is a good step but needs to be part of a larger plan. jenna: we're curious talking about the larger plan and friends we can rely on in the region. i hope you come back, ambassador, to do more extensive conversation about that. nice to see you as always. thank you. >> always my pleasure, thank you. jon: they tried sneaker bombs and underwear bombs. now the new security at airports with word that terrorists are working on bombs that could slip right through security checkpoints and on board
authorities in yemen are today beginning to acknowledge they may have a huge prize after reaching operations against al qaeda. they are now as we were initially reporting yesterday carrying out those dna tests to determine if this man is among the dead from that drone strike. his name, ibrahim squr, the bombmaker possibly responsible for making those underwear bombs. remember those used in detroit in 2009 on that plane, among other bombs? joining me now, we know this man has been in hiding for quite a while. this would be huge if they got him. >> yeah, no two ways about it, brooke. it would be absolutely massive. ibrahim is perhaps the most wanted man in yemen. the most high-value target in that country. which is full of high-value aqap targets. you look at the list of plots
designs. this affects overseas flights coming into the u.s. of course, it is already tsa policy for passengers to take off their shoes going through security checkpoints to be x-rayed. a law enforcement official says that passengers as a result of this new warning may notice additional searches including explosive detection swabs. to be clear, there's no specific threat or plot known. an intelligence official told me this, quote, this threat is not specific or credible enough to require a specific response. they often issue an alert out of an abundance of caution. i spoke with cnn terrorism analyst peter bergen to get an understanding of what kind of groups would be capable of this. here's what he said. >> the dhs warning is nonspecific, but the universe of people who have known capably is not large. al qaeda in yemen continues to put underwear bombs on planes, continues to try to put cartridge bombs on planes.