Insurgents Allegedly Plotted U.S. Attack

Insurgents tied to Al Qaeda in Iraq allegedly attempted to use student visas to get into the United States to carry out a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, U.S. intelligence officials tell CBS News.

The plot was discovered when documents were found during the course of raids before and after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's death in June 2006, intelligence officials say. Contrary to some reports, though, the documents involved were not found in a Zarqawi safe house.

The plot was first revealed in written testimony by Defense Intelligence Agency chief Gen. Michael Maples last Thursday. Maples wrote: "Documents captured in a raid on Al Qaeda in an Iraq safe house revealed AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) was planning terrorist operations in the U.S."

Intelligence officials described the plot as "very preliminary, very fragmentary, and aspirational only" — "not operational." All of the individuals involved in the plot "are gone," say intelligence officials — either captured or dead.

Officials stressed that numerous measures have been taken and authorities are satisfied that any threat that existed has been "negated."

"There is no specific threat that we're aware of related to this," said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko. "This is one of many pieces of threat information that works its way into the intelligence community system that needs to be evaluated."