msnbc   |  November 01, 2010

Ex-Gitmo detainee provided bomb tip-off

The tip-off that led to the discovery of parcelbombson two cargo planes came from a former Guantanamo detainee. NBC's Pete Williams reports.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> homeland security secretary janet lap lit know says the threat may not be over.

>> i'm not going to rule out the possibility that there could be some other piece of cargo out there. we deal with millions and millions of poupds of car go every day. i can say that all car go that emanates from yemen has been brought to a grinding halt.

>> pete, we are, as i mentioned at the top, learning about how this all unfolded and unraveled thankfully.

>> this is quite a remarkable story, tamron. these packages were on their way to the u.s. they were in the pine line when they received an urgent piece of intelligence saying you need to look for these two packages. now it turns out the source of that intelligence is actually a former detainee who had been held by the united states at guantanamo bay . he had been held at gitmo. he was released in 2006 , sent back to saudi arabia where he's from, where he went to what they call a reprogramming center, where the saudis attempt to dissuade people from their views about al qaeda . after that at some point he ended up escaping, apparently going to yemen. then two weeks ago the saudi government announced he had surrendered. that's all they said at the time. now it turns out according to multiple officials, he was the source of this critical intelligence. so really it's a remarkable thing. the united states has been criticized in the past for releasing people from guantanamo bay who joined up with al qaeda . here's a case of someone who escaped or rather was released from guantanamo bay and did the united states an extremely big favor by stopping these packages.

>> pete williams live with the latest on the terror plot. thank you.