Now we know how the feds were able to track dumbest-terrorist-ever Faisal Shahzad’s supposedly-anonymous cell phone. Shahzad, in effect, gave up the number himself.

Shahazad provided his real telephone number “when he returned to the United States from Pakistan in February,” the New York Times reports. The phone number he gave, entered in a Customs and Border Protection agency database, came up when investigators were checking the record of calls made to or from the prepaid cellular telephone” Shahazad used in the attack.

Earlier speculation had centered around military spy planes listening in on Shahzad’s communications. This explanation doesn’t rule out the use of those signals intelligence craft. But it doesn’t exactly confirm it, either.

Either way, Shahzad’s volunteering of his phone number is one of a number of colossal screw-ups Shahzad made during his ten-fingered terror attempt. He left pictures and personal information on social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut. He gave his real e-mail address when he went shopping online for the car in his car bomb. He left the keys to his home and to a car registered in his name in the murder vehicle. He wrote down his real name (well, inverted) when buying the fireworks that he thought might set off his improvised explosive device, which turned out to be almost comically ill-constructed.

One counterterrorism officer gave an explanation to the New York’s Steve Coll about how Shahzad — who
supposedly trained at militant camps in Pakistan — could have been so lousy at his craft.

He said that when a singleton of Shahzad’s profile—especially a U.S. citizen—turns up in a place like Peshawar, local jihadi groups are much more likely to assess him as a probable U.S. spy than as a genuine volunteer. At best, the jihadi groups might conclude that a particular U.S.-originated individual’s case is uncertain. They might then encourage the person to go home and carry out an attack—without giving him any training or access to higher-up specialists that might compromise their local operations. They would see such a U.S.-based volunteer as a “freebie,” the former officer said—if he returns home to attack, great, but if he merely goes off to report back to his C.I.A. case officer, no harm done.

[Photo: Orkut]
By: Noah Shachtman