US intelligence officials feared that al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen were plotting to attack the United States and actually intercepted what they now believe were “dry run” shipments to Chicago in mid-September, according to several people briefed on the plot and a senior US official.
The senior US official told ABC News that the “dry run” involved a carton of household goods including books, religious literature, and a computer disk, but no explosives, shipped from Yemen to an address in Chicago by “someone with ties to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.”
Another person briefed on the incident said it is now believed the terrorists sent the package “so they could track how long it took and whether there would be any problems for the package getting through the system.”
