US authorities still had not commented Wednesday on an alleged attempt to bomb an American Airlines plane, as media speculated that the suspect trained with members of the al-Qaeda terror network.
Four days after Richard Colvin Reid, 28, tried to set fire to his explosives-laden shoes on a trans-Atlantic flight, neither the White House nor other US authorities had spoken officially on the alleged would-be suicide bombing -- the most serious terror attempt since the September 11 attacks.
One US expert said the deafening silence around the incident showed that US authorities were in "threat prevention mode," as they worked with French and British authorities to investigate the suspect.
"That kind of threat prevention mode is going to preclude people from being as forward with information as they might have been otherwise," said Matthew Levitt, an expert on terrorism at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"It's the first major threat incident since 9/11 and so the authorities are going to be very tight-lipped about it until they really know everything that is going on," he said.
Passengers and crew overpowered Reid in his attempt to ignite his shoes with a match on the Boeing 767 flight from Paris to Miami on Saturday.
He was handed over to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation after the plane was diverted to Boston, where it made an emergency landing after doctors were finally able to subdue Reid using sedatives from the plane's medical kit.
Media leaks have been the only source of information about the case so far, both on the chemical make-up of the explosives, and on his alleged links to al-Qaeda.
European law enforcement authorities have evidence that Reid trained in Afghanistan with Zacarias Moussaoui, the man indicted for conspiracy in connection with the September 11 attacks, ABC News reported Wednesday.
Reid was also a frequent visitor to a mosque in Brixton, south London, where Moussaoui went to pray, according to media reports.
But the official silence almost a week after the attempt continued Wednesday.
"There is clearly someone else out there," Levitt added. "This guy was not acting alone."
Bureau Report
