[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by W

Their plot was derailed in early 2002 when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative.

Originally Posted by Redux

The plot was "derailed in early 2002...." when the Jemaah Islamiyah (J-I) guys were arrested in Malaysia.

Please note the critical difference in these two statements.

We know when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative. We don't know who that was. We don't know when the J-I guys were arrested, but we know it's later:

Originally Posted by W

Subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations made clear the intended target, and how al Qaeda hoped to execute it. This critical intelligence helped other allies capture the ringleaders and other known operatives who had been recruited for this plot.

And we also know that J-I remained active and powerful in October 2002 when they carried out the Bali bombings.

And we know that ringleader Hambali was arrested in August 2003 in Thailand.

Makes sense that it would take that kind of time. The torture memo I referenced lays out what leads to it:

More specifically, we understand that KSM admitted that he had tasked Majid Khan with delivering a large sum of money to an al Qaeda associate. Khan subsequently identifed the associate (Zubair), who was then captured. Zubair, in turn, provided information that led to the arrest of Hambali. The information from these captures allowed CIA interrogators to pose more specific questions to KSM, which led the CIA to Hambali's brother, al-Hadi. Using information from multiple sources, al-Hadi was captured, and he subsequently identified the Guraba cell.

Based on all this and the flawed Timothy Noah piece in Slate, I'll guess this: the plot began to unravel in the first early 2002 arrest, but we didn't necessarily KNOW that it was unraveling, and the trail that led to the arrests of the rest of the cell in late 2003 were provided by later intelligence. KSM intel figured into subsequent understanding of the plot and associated arrests.