"We know from the intelligence community that al-Zarqawi welcomed the tasking and claimed he already had some good proposals," Townsend said.

Reading from notes, she said that in the spring of 2005, bin Laden instructed Hamza Rabia, a senior operative, to brief al-Zarqawi on al-Qaida plan to attack sites outside Iraq, including the United States. Townsend did not disclose where in the United States those attacks were being plotted.

Around the same time, Abu Fajah al-Libi, a senior al-Qaida manager, suggested that bin Laden send Rabia to Iraq to help al-Zarqawi plan the external operations, Townsend said. It is unclear whether Rabia went to Iraq, she said.

She said the information was declassified because the intelligence community has tracked all leads from the information, and that the players were either dead or in U.S. custody.

yahoonews.com