Feds: Qaeda Leaders Ordered NYC Subway Bomb Plot

Prosecutors say two al Qaeda leaders met with New York terror suspects in Pakistan and ordered them to conduct a suicide bomb attack on city subways.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Knox identified them as senior operative Saleh al-Somali and Rashid Rauf. Both are believed to have died in strikes in the past year and a half in Pakistan.

Rauf was reportedly killed in a drone attack in Waziristan in November 2008 and Al-Somali was reported dead in Waziristan in a drone attack a year later, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr.

Knox made the disclosure in Brooklyn federal court Friday as Zarein Ahmedzay pleaded guilty to the suicide bomb plot last September.

Ahmedzay admitted to conspiracy to use weapons of destruction and providing material support to al Qaeda. He was charged with admitted al Qaeda associate Najibullah Zazi.

Authorities say they and another high school classmate from New York planned the attacks for days after the eighth anniversary of Sept. 11.

According to the government, Zazi and his co-conspirators were told by al Qaeda to "hit well-known structures and maximize the number of casualties," Orr reports.

They agreed to carry out suicide attacks during the month of Ramadan (between August 22, 2009 and September 20, 2009) and Ahmedzay scouted unnamed potential targets in Manhattan, Orr reports.

The three Americans, who met the la Qaeda leader in Waziristan, said they wanted to join the fight in Afghanistan, but al Qaeda leaders convinced them to return to the U.S. to conduct suicide operations, Orr reports.

In a statement following today's plea, U.S. prosecutors said that "al Qaeda leaders explained that they would be more useful to al Qaeda and the jihad if they returned to New York and conducted attacks there."

Zazi, a Colorado airport van driver, admitted earlier this year that he tested bomb-making materials in a Denver suburb before traveling by car to New York with the intent of attacking the subway system to avenge U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan.