Associated Press
NEW YORK -- Hundreds of federal agents and police officers widened their investigation of a potential terrorism plot involving an alleged al-Qaida associate on Wednesday as questions lingered about whether early missteps might have made the chore harder.
Investigators have fanned out in a New York City neighborhood to re-interview "people previously encountered" during previous raids there, and to locate others who know them, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the probe. The effort also includes a review of phone and other records that could link potential suspects to one another or identify new ones.
"Many of the people we've spoken to have been cooperative," said the official.
The official said business owners also are on the list of possible witnesses in a potential homemade-bomb plot. The official declined to identify those businesses, but authorities regularly monitor sales by suppliers of chemicals that could be used in improvised explosives.
Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Denver airport shuttle driver whom authorities have linked to al-Qaida; his father; and Ahmad Wais Afzali, a Queens imam, were charged last weekend with lying to the FBI. Authorities say they found bomb-making instructions on a hard drive on Zazi's laptop but knew of no specific time or place for a possible attack.
The arrests came after the series of high-profile raids of several city apartments in the Queens neighborhood where Zazi had recently visited, and were followed by a flurry of nationwide warnings of possible strikes on transit, sports and entertainment complexes.
A criminal complaint suggests police acting without the FBI's knowledge might have inadvertently blown the surveillance and forced investigators' hand by questioning Afzali -- considered a trusted police source in the community -- about Zazi and other possible plotters.
