Terrorism, WMD Charges for Faisal Shahzad

Updated 7:23 p.m. ET

Authorities have brought terrorism and mass destruction charges against the suspect in the failed Times Square car bombing, saying he has confessed to receiving explosives training in Pakistan.

The charges against Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Pakistan, were contained in a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan. Shahzad was arrested overnight as he attempted to leave the country on a flight.

Special Section: Terrorism in the U.S.

The complaint says he confessed to buying an SUV, rigging it with a homemade bomb and driving it Saturday night into Times Square, where he tried to detonate it.

Shahzad admitted to receiving bomb-making training in Waziristan, the lawless tribal region where the Pakistani Taliban operates with near impunity, according to the complaint filed in Manhattan federal court. There is no mention of al Qaeda.

The complaint said he returned from Pakistan in February, telling an immigration agent that he had been visiting his parents for five months and had left his wife behind.

Officials plan to arraign Shahzad Wednesday at the Manhattan Federal Court, CBS News has learned. Court officials say he will not appear before a magistrate Tuesday as originally anticipated.

Read criminal complaint against Faisal Shahzad

Court documents unsealed Tuesday show investigators have collected considerable evidence linking Shahzad to the attempted bombing, reports CBS News national security correspondent Bob Orr.

Police discovered a key left behind in the smoking SUV that "opens the door to Shahzad's Connecticut residence." Investigators found a pre-paid cell phone used to call a fireworks store. He also received calls on that phone from Pakistan. And the woman who sold him the SUV positively identified Shahzad as the buyer.

Shahzad's arrest ended a frantic scramble that had begun hours earlier.

The FBI had been watching him since late Sunday after his name emerged in the investigation. But sources say he got spooked when word leaked late yesterday that the FBI was looking for a Pakistani American.

Shahzad left his Connecticut apartment and agents suspected he may run for the Canadian border. For a while - perhaps more than a hour - they weren't sure where he was, Orr reports.

But the focus quickly turned to Kennedy Airport. Shahzad raised red flags in paying cash, without a reservation, for a last minute flight and Emirates airlines alerted federal investigators.

Shahzad was on board a Dubai-bound flight that was taxiing away from the gate when the plane was stopped and FBI agents and New York Police Department detectives took him into custody late Monday, law enforcement officials said. One official said he claimed to have acted alone.

"Based on what we know so far, it is clear that this was a terrorist plot aimed at murdering Americans in one of the busiest places in our country," Attorney General Eric Holder said.

U.S. government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Shahzad made his last-minute flight reservation on the way to the airport and paid for his ticket in cash. The airline flagged the reservation and alerted authorities, Orr reports.

According to officials, Shahzad was placed on the federal no-fly list after authorities identified him. However, the addition was so recent that his name failed to trigger an automatic alert, an administration official told CBS News.

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Police sources tell CBS News a fully loaded 9mm gun was found in Shahzad's car at the airport, along with extra clips of ammunition.

Shahzad, 30, is a naturalized U.S. citizen and the son of a former top Pakistani air force officer and deputy director general of the civil aviation authority, according to Kifyat Ali, the cousin of Shahzad's father.

Ali told reporters outside a two-story home in an upscale part of Peshawar, the main city in northwestern Pakistan, that the family had yet to be officially informed of Shahzad's arrest in the United States.

"This is a conspiracy so the (Americans) can bomb more Pashtuns," Ali said, referring to a major ethnic group in Peshawar and the nearby tribal areas of Pakistan and southwest Afghanistan. "He was never linked to any political or religious party here."

He said Shahzad often stayed in Peshawar when he came back from the United States.

His mother and father, retired Air Vice Marshall Baharul Haq, had left the house for an undisclosed location because of the media interest.

The investigation stretched to Pakistan, where intelligence officials said several people had been detained in connection with the Times Square case.

CBS National Security Analyst Juan Zarate on Pakistan Links

One of the people, a man named Tauseef, was a friend of Shahzad. Officials did not say when the man was picked up. According to CBS News' Maria Usman, a total of four to eight people are being held after a series of law enforcement raids. Media reports described some of the others detained as relatives of Shahzad.

U.S. law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that Shahzad attended a terror training camp in Pakistan. One official said Shahzad told the FBI about his training. Attorney General Eric Holder said Shahzad was providing valuable information about the nearly catastrophic attack but he would not elaborate.

A second official said the camp was in the lawless tribal region of Waziristan, where the Pakistani Taliban operates with near impunity. The group has taken credit for the attack, but officials say there's no evidence to back that up.

Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation.

The training raises the possibility the attack was a coordinated international plot.

CBS News' Farhan Bokhari reports that, if Shahzad does have solid links to terror groups in Pakistan's most populous province, that will present the American-allied government with some difficult choices as to whether they can afford a new front in their fight against extremists.

A Pakistani TV station reported that Shahzad spent time in Karachi and visited the northwestern city of Peshawar during his stay in Pakistan. Peshawar is a gateway for foreigners seeking to travel into nearby tribal regions, where militant groups have long had sanctuary.

In Washington, Pakistani Embassy spokesman Nadeem Haider Kiani said it's too soon to tell what motivated the bomber. Asked whether there were ties to foreign terrorist groups, Kiani said early indications suggest the bomber was "a disturbed individual."

President Barack Obama said "hundreds of lives" may have been saved Saturday night by the quick action of ordinary citizens and law enforcement authorities who raised the alarm about the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder rigged with a crude bomb made of gasoline, propane and fireworks. The SUV, which had begun smoking, was parked on a bustling street in Times Square.

"As Americans and as a nation, we will not be terrorized. We will not cower in fear. We will not be intimidated," Obama said.

The FBI read Shahzad his constitutional rights after he provided information, and he continued to cooperate, FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said.

Officials familiar with the probe say investigators plan to go through Shahzad's citizenship application line by line to see if he lied about anything. He became a citizen in Hartford, Conn.

Another law enforcement official said Shahzad was not known to the U.S. intelligence community before the failed bombing attempt, in which authorities found a crude bomb of gasoline, propane and fireworks in a 1993 Nissan Pathfinder parked on a bustling street in Times Square.

A source told Orr the FBI and New York police "were on to this guy early." The break in the case apparently came from the communications surrounding the sale of the SUV.

Law enforcement officials say Shahzad paid $1,300 cash three weeks ago for the Pathfinder, going first for a test-drive in a mall and offering less than the $1,800 advertised price. Peggy Colas, 19, of Bridgeport, sold the car to Shahzad after he answered an Internet ad, law enforcement officials said. The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case.

The vehicle identification number had been removed from the Pathfinder's dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine, and investigators used it to find the owner of record, who told them a stranger bought it. As the SUV buyer came into focus, investigators backed off other leads.

The source tells CBS News that Shahzad was thought to have been at his apartment in Connecticut Monday night when details began leaking in the media that the FBI was looking for a Pakistani American. This apparently unnerved him and prompted him to try and run.

The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan was handling the case and said Shahzad would appear in court later Tuesday. FBI agents searched the home at a known address for Shahzad in Bridgeport, Conn., early Tuesday, said agent Kimberly Mertz, who wouldn't answer questions about the search.

Authorities removed filled plastic bags from the house in a mixed-race, working-class neighborhood of multifamily homes in Connecticut's largest city. A bomb squad came and went without entering as local police and FBI agents gathered in the cordoned-off street. FBI agents appeared to have found fireworks in the driveway that they were marking off as evidence.

Shahzad was being held in New York and couldn't be contacted. A phone number at a listed address for Shahzad in Shelton, Conn., wasn't in service.

He used to live in a two-story grayish-brown colonial with a sloping yard in a working-class neighborhood in Shelton. The home looked as if it had been unoccupied for a while, with grass growing in the driveway and bags of garbage lying about.

Shahzad graduated from the University of Bridgeport with a bachelor's degree in computer applications and information systems in 2000 and later returned to earn a master's of business administration in 2005, the school said.

A neighbor in Bridgeport described him as quiet.

"Nobody ever had a problem with him," said Dawn Sampson, 34, who lives across the street from Shahzad's third-floor apartment. She said he had remodeled it and had put on the market to rent for $1,200, a fee she thought was much too high.

Watch: How Faisal Shahzad was Caught

Shahzad was placed on a "no-fly" list Monday after he was identified as the buyer, Pistole said. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano declined to say how Shahzad was able to board the flight if he was on the "no-fly" list.

Napolitano credited Customs officials for recognizing Shahzad's name on a passenger manifest and stopping the flight.

Counterterrorism officials send electronic notifications to airlines when watch lists are updated, but it is up to the airlines to check the web forum where the notifications are sent. If Emirates airlines had done this, the airline would have been able to flag Shahzad when he purchased his ticket later that night. Because they didn't law enforcement officials were not aware of his travel plans until they received the flight manifest 30 minutes before takeoff, an official said.

Because Customs and Border Protection officials were on the lookout for Shahzad since the early afternoon, they recognized his name on the manifest and ordered the flight to be stopped so they could arrest him. The flight had not left the gate at that point, the official said.

"There's a series of built-in redundancies, this being one of them," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said. "If there's a mistake by a carrier, it can be double-checked."

In air traffic control audio captured by the website LiveATC.net, controllers can be heard ordering the Emirates airplane back to the gate just moments before it was set to take off.

The controller clears the pilot to enter the runway for takeoff before saying, "Actually, I have a message for you to go back to the gate immediately." He adds, "I don't know exactly why but you can call your company for the reason."

"I was never in any fear that we were in danger of losing him," Attorney General Holder said.

The SUV was parked near a theater where the musical "The Lion King" was being performed. The bomb inside it had cheap-looking alarm clocks connected to a 16-ounce can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended to detonate gas cans and set off propane tanks in a chain reaction "to cause mayhem, to create casualties," police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

A metal rifle cabinet in the SUV's cargo area was packed with fertilizer, but NYPD bomb experts believe it was not a type volatile enough to explode like the ammonium nitrate grade fertilizer used in previous terrorist bombings.

Police said the SUV bomb could have produced "a significant fireball" and sprayed shrapnel with enough force to kill pedestrians and knock out windows.

A vendor alerted a police officer to the parked SUV, which was smoking. Times Square, clogged with tourists on a warm evening, was shut down for 10 hours. A bomb squad dismantled the bomb and no one was hurt.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the arrest should not be as used as an excuse for anti-Muslim actions. "We will not tolerate any bias or backlash against Pakistani or Muslim New Yorkers," he said.

Authorities did not address Shahzad's plans in Dubai. The airport there is the Middle East's busiest and is a major transit point for passengers traveling between the West and much of Asia, particularly India and Pakistan.

Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik said initial information showed Shahzad and his family came from the Pabbi region of northwest Pakistan, but that Shahzad had a Karachi identity card.

Several Pakistani officials said the U.S. had not made a formal request for help in the probe.

Two security officials in the northwest said Shahzad and his family came from the village of Mohib Bandar in Pabbi, but moved to the North Nazimabad district of Karachi several years ago. They said he was a graduate of an engineering college and the son of a senior Pakistani air force officer.

But a Shahzad family member in the region told a local journalist that the officials were mistaken and that the family had nothing to do with the suspect in the United States. Faisal and Shahzad are very common names in Pakistan.

More than a dozen people with U.S. citizenship or residency, like Shahzad, have been accused in the past two years of supporting, attempting or carrying out attacks on U.S. soil, illustrating the threat of violent extremism from within the U.S.

Among them are Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, a U.S.-born Army psychiatrist of Palestinian descent, charged with fatally shooting 13 people last year at Fort Hood, Texas; Najibullah Zazi, a Denver-area airport shuttle driver who pleaded guilty in February in a plot to bomb New York subways; Chicagoan David Headley, who confessed to scouting targets hit in the Mumbai, India massacre; and a Pennsylvania woman who authorities say became radicalized online as "Jihad Jane" and plotted to kill a Swedish artist whose work offended Muslims.