[11] The Obama administration saw a need for retaliatory options, including a unilateral military strike in Pakistan, if a future successful attack was to be traced to Pakistan-based militants.

[12] On October 5, 2010, Shahzad was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty to a 10-count indictment in June, including charges of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting an act of terrorism.

[3] The vehicle was left, unoccupied, on a tourist-crowded block at the eastern corner of 1 Astor Plaza near the entrance to the Minskoff Theatre which was housing the musical The Lion King.

[3] Shortly after the bomb was discovered, the police looked for a male who was seen on surveillance footage, changing his shirt in Shubert Alley (which runs between 44th and 45th Streets, just west of Broadway).

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly speculated that the attack could be lone-wolf terrorism, saying: "A terrorist act doesn't necessarily have to be conducted by an organization, an individual can do it on their own.

[30][31] The police also investigated whether the bomb was planted in relation to threats posted on the Revolution Muslim website against the creators of the controversial animated sitcom South Park.

[26][29] The license plates recovered from the Pathfinder did not match its registration, and had apparently been taken from a Ford F-150 pickup truck awaiting repair at a Stratford, Connecticut, garage.

[25][71] Between January 1999 and April 2008, Shahzad reportedly brought approximately $82,500 in large increments into the U.S., drawing the attention of the Department of Homeland Security.

[10][59][75][76] The New York Times reported that sometime in 2009, he had sought his father's permission join the Taliban insurgency against American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

[71] On July 3, 2009, he reportedly traveled to Pakistan and is believed to have visited the city of Peshawar, where jihadist groups are known to recruit foreign fighters to join them in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

[82][83] He began to purchase the ingredients for his bomb over an extended period of time to avoid detection; it is believed that this tactic was taught at the training camp in Pakistan.

[85] On April 28, three days before the attempted bombing, he drove the Pathfinder from Connecticut to Times Square, apparently in a dry run to figure out where he would park the vehicle during the attack.

[95][96][97] Using the internet, Shahzad made contact with militants and jihadists, including Baitullah Mehsud, the founder of the Pakistani Taliban who was killed in a drone strike in 2009.

[72][100] Al-Awlaki is known for having had contact with a number of people who were later involved in terrorist attacks, including three of the September 11th hijackers; Nidal Hasan, who perpetrated the 2009 Fort Hood shooting; and Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

His militant English-language online content, which calls for holy war against the West, is considered the catalyst for a number of attacks, including Shahzad's.

Civil rights lawyer Ron Kuby, who had represented other terrorism defendants, said that in his experience terrorists usually talked freely because they had no interest in fighting the charges.

[107] Ken Wainstein, a former United States Attorney who had headed the Justice Department's anti-terrorism efforts, said that he found many were motivated by pride.

[115][116] The FBI also conducted searches at a gas station in the nearby town of Brookline, in Camden and Cherry Hill, New Jersey, and in Centereach and Shirley, New York, on Long Island.

[124] Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat and Chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing, and Terrorism Risk Assessment, said Pakistani officials had arrested "alleged facilitators" as part of a "far broader investigation.

"[125] Pakistani authorities arrested more than a dozen suspects in the investigation of the attempted car bombing, including two or three people at a house in Karachi's Nazimabad district where Shahzad is said to have stayed.

[132] Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly were in Washington, D.C., to attend the 2010 White House Correspondents' Dinner, but returned immediately to New York after they were informed of the incident.

Bloomberg's initial statement was to the effect that it may have been perpetrated by a domestic terrorist, saying to CBS's Katie Couric, "If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that: homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something.

"[125] President Barack Obama called the bomb attempt a "sobering reminder of the times in which we live", and said that Americans "will not cower in fear" as a result of it.

[25] White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, similarly, said "Anybody that has the type of material that they had in a car in Times Square, I would say that was intended to terrorize, absolutely.

[137][138][139] Identical legislation was introduced in the United States House of Representatives by Pennsylvania Congressman Jason Altmire, a Democrat, and Charlie Dent, a Republican.

[141] Muslim leaders in the U.S. urged the public to "distinguish between acts of violence and terror and Islam, a religion that they said encourages peace and love", reported The Wall Street Journal .

[146] Professor Fouad Ajami characterized the car bombing attempt as part of "a long twilight war, the struggle against radical Islamism".

He described Shahzad, Nidal Malik Hasan, and Anwar Awlaki as being part of "a deadly breed of combatants in this new kind of war", for which the United States was simultaneously "the object of their dreams, and the scapegoat onto which they project their deepest malignancies".

[147] In Dubai's Gulf News, a columnist responded to Ajami's column by writing: "What is now needed is for smart police officers in the East and the West to work together to arrest and bring to justice criminals who have little respect for life itself – though we must also try politicians who launched perpetual wars and thinkers who pretended to add value by opining that our civilizations are doomed to clash.

"[148] Initially, according to a report by the Associated Press, a Pakistani Taliban group claimed responsibility for an attack against the U.S. in a video posted on YouTube, saying it was revenge for the killing of Baitullah Mehsud and the top leaders of al-Qaida in Iraq — Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri — as well as for general American "interference and terrorism in Muslim Countries, especially in Pakistan."