Feds see no link between terror suspects

DALLAS, Oct. 2 (UPI) -- Key members of Congress have learned there is no connection among the terror plots disrupted in Texas, New York and Illinois recently, a lawmaker says.

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, says officials from the FBI and Homeland Security briefed lawmakers about plots to blow up a Dallas office tower, bomb a federal building in Illinois and attack New York City trains, The Dallas Morning News reported Friday.

Federal officials told lawmakers the three schemes were not related.

"That was asked very directly, and they were very definitive," said McCaul, who has access to classified intelligence.

He says investigators apparently sought near-simultaneous arrests to avoid the risk that one arrest would warn the other suspects even though the plots were unrelated.

The Texas suspect, Jordanian citizen Hosam Maher Husein Smadi, 19, was in the United States on an expired visitor's visa.