Yemeni jet bomb plotters may have done 'dry run'

American intelligence officials in September intercepted several packages containing books, papers, CDs and other household items shipped to Chicago from Yemen and considered the possibility that the parcels might be a test run for a terrorist attack, two officials said.
Now the intelligence officials believe that the shipments , whose hour-by-hour locations could be tracked by the sender on the shippers' websites, may have been used to plan the route and timing for two printer cartridges packed with explosives that were sent from Yemen and intercepted in Britain and Dubai on Friday.

After US counterterrorism agencies received information linking the packages to al-Qaida in Yemen, officers stopped the shipments and searched them. They found no explosives , and the packages were permitted to continue to what appeared to be "random addresses" with no connection to the terrorist group in Chicago . The apparent test run might have permitted plotters to estimate when planes carrying doctored cartridges would be over Chicago or another city. That would enable them to set timers on the devices to set off explosions where they would cause greatest damage. The shipments were first reported by ABC News.