intelligence officials

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, accused in the attempted Christmas Day airliner attack, had contacts with at least two suspected terrorists while a student in London, investigators tell NPR.

Intelligence officials have linked him to a suspect in a 2006 plot against airliners and to a man implicated in a plan to behead a Muslim soldier.

Intelligence officials have long hoped that data mining — collecting vast amounts of personal information — would uncover some sort of discernable terrorist pattern.

But as hopes for that outcome dim, analysts are turning to a system that searches through data to find common threads.

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The Central Intelligence Agency in recent years has taken on new assignments such as monitoring rogue regimes and tracking terrorists.

The agency has another mission: analyzing the global economy. Intelligence officials say the global financial crisis has emerged as the top U.S. security threat.

And to help figure it out, the CIA is recruiting Wall Street bankers.

The al-Qaida leader's message to President Obama this week shows he's still in the fight. But intelligence officials say the combination of Pakistan's military push, the U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan and stepped-up drone strikes is putting pressure on the terrorist organization.

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