WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki personally directed and approved the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner which a Nigerian man tried to carry out on Christmas Day in 2009, according to new details released by federal prosecutors on Friday.

Awlaki, who was a leader of the militant group’s affiliate in Yemen, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), before he was killed in a drone strike last year, directed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to conduct a strike aboard an American airliner over U.S. soil.

“Awlaki’s last instructions to him were to wait until the airplane was over the United States and then to take the plane down,” according to court papers. Awlaki left it up to Abdulmutallab to pick the flight and date, the papers said.

Abdulmutallab, 25, is due to be sentenced Thursday in Detroit and faces up to life in prison after pleading guilty to charges he tried to down a Northwest Airlines jumbo jet with 289 people aboard on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

The bomb, hidden in his underwear, failed to fully detonate and he was subdued. The incident led U.S. security officials to quickly bolster airport security, deploying full-body scanners to try to detect explosives hidden in clothing.

In October, Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty days after his trial began, saying he had wanted to avenge the killing of innocent Muslims by the United States.

In a sentencing memorandum filed in federal court in Detroit, prosecutors urged a judge to sentence Abdulmutallab to the maximum of life in a U.S. prison.

WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) – Al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki personally directed and approved the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner which a Nigerian man tried to carry out on Christmas Day in 2009, according to new details released by federal prosecutors on Friday.

Awlaki, who was a leader of the militant group’s affiliate in Yemen, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), before he was killed in a drone strike last year, directed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to conduct a strike aboard an American airliner over U.S. soil.

“Awlaki’s last instructions to him were to wait until the airplane was over the United States and then to take the plane down,” according to court papers. Awlaki left it up to Abdulmutallab to pick the flight and date, the papers said.

Abdulmutallab, 25, is due to be sentenced Thursday in Detroit and faces up to life in prison after pleading guilty to charges he tried to down a Northwest Airlines jumbo jet with 289 people aboard on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

The bomb, hidden in his underwear, failed to fully detonate and he was subdued. The incident led U.S. security officials to quickly bolster airport security, deploying full-body scanners to try to detect explosives hidden in clothing.

In October, Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty days after his trial began, saying he had wanted to avenge the killing of innocent Muslims by the United States.

In a sentencing memorandum filed in federal court in Detroit, prosecutors urged a judge to sentence Abdulmutallab to the maximum of life in a U.S. prison.

By Ernest Scheyder and Jeremy Pelofsky

(Reuters) – International Paper Co (IP.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) has won U.S. antitrust approval to buy rival Temple-Inland Inc (TIN.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) for $3.7 billion on the condition it divests three corrugated packaging mills, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday.

The deal makes IP the largest North American producer of corrugated packaging, which is commonly used to make shipping boxes, ahead of rivals Packaging Corp of America (PKG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and MeadWestvaco Corp (MWV.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

“We’re strategically committed to the corrugated packaging business,” IP Chief Executive John Faraci told Reuters. “There’s more opportunities for IP and Temple’s businesses together.”

The deal should close next week, most likely by Monday, Faraci said. IP expects the combination to save $300 million within two years.

Without the divestitures, the combined company would have had control of 37 percent of the North American capacity for containerboard, which is used to make corrugated boxes, the department said.

As part of the agreement, Temple-Inland will sell its mills in Waverly, Tennessee, and Ontario, California, and International Paper will divest either its mill in Oxnard, California, or one in Henderson, Kentucky.

Feb 10 (Reuters) – International Paper Co has won U.S. antitrust approval to buy rival Temple-Inland Inc for $3.7 billion on the condition it divests three corrugated packaging mills, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday.

The deal makes IP the largest North American producer of corrugated packaging, which is commonly used to make shipping boxes, ahead of rivals Packaging Corp of America and MeadWestvaco Corp.

“We’re strategically committeed to the corrugated packaging business,” IP Chief Executive John Faraci told Reuters. “There’s more opportunities for IP and Temple’s businesses together.”

The deal should close next week, most likely by Monday, Faraci said. IP expects the combination to save $300 million within two years.

Without the divestitures, the combined company would have had control of 37 percent of the North American capacity for containerboard, which is used to make corrugated boxes, the department said.

As part of the agreement, Temple-Inland will sell its mills in Waverly, Tennessee, and Ontario, California, and International Paper will divest either its mill in Oxnard, California, or one in Henderson, Kentucky.

“They’re all relatively small facilities,” Faraci said. “They’re half the size of our average facility.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senior U.S. Justice Department officials are weighing whether to drop a major case that involved a sting operation to try to catch executives paying bribes to win lucrative contracts for military equipment, a prosecutor said on Tuesday.

The case encountered several setbacks along the way. U.S. authorities arrested 22 people two years ago and accused them collectively of trying to bribe two men who posed as representatives of Gabon’s defense ministry to win $15 million in deals to provide guns, body armor and other equipment. The representatives were actually FBI agents.

The case was broken into several trials, however. Two have ended in mistrials and three individuals have been acquitted. Three others caught in the undercover operation and a fourth man tied to the group have already pleaded guilty.

The head of the agency’s criminal division, Lanny Breuer, and U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Ronald Machen are evaluating “whether to continue to go forward” with the case, prosecutor Joseph Lipton told U.S. District Judge Richard Leon on Tuesday.

At Lipton’s request, Leon agreed to a two-week delay for Breuer and Machen to make a decision, giving them until February 21. The third trial was supposed to begin at the end of the month.

The Justice Department could also decide to proceed with the case – including retrying those involved in the mistrials – or try to seek plea agreements.

The group has been charged with conspiracy and for violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which prohibits the payment of bribes to foreign officials in order to secure business contracts.

BOSTON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Cardinal Health Inc (CAH.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) won an order on Friday blocking the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s suspension of its license to distribute potentially addictive medicines from its Florida facility.

The DEA ordered suspension because Cardinal knew, or should have known, that the pharmacies were inappropriately filling prescriptions for oxycodone by physicians for illegitimate reasons, the company said.

Cardinal filed a request in federal court in Washington for a temporary restraining order to block the DEA order, saying it unfairly affected all shipments of all controlled substances to about 2,700 pharmacies, hospitals and other customers.

U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton responded quickly in granting Cardinal’s request, noting the company had already suspended shipments to the four pharmacies in question, two independent and two CVS outlets.

The DEA suspension order “is unnecessary to address the problem the DEA alleges because the plaintiff is not currently supplying controlled substances to the four pharmacies identified,” Walton wrote in a brief order.

Cardinal “has also pledged to terminate sales of controlled substances to any pharmacy or customer that the DEA believes is likely engaging in illegal activity or diversion.”

He noted the suspension would have disrupted supplies to thousands of hospitals, pharmacies and healthcare providers.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Thursday asked federal prosecutors and lawyers for the Megaupload.com file-sharing service to allow users who uploaded material to retrieve it as long as it was not copyrighted material.

The group, which advocates for Internet privacy and digital rights, sent a letter on behalf of one user asking “that all concerned work together to make sure innocent users are returned their legal property.”

“We are hopeful that our client and other third parties can obtain access to their material without resorting to legal action, but if that is not the case, we intend to take the necessary steps to ensure the return of their materials,” said Cindy Cohn, legal director and general counsel for EFF.

A copy of the letter was sent to the judge in Virginia overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady.

Megaupload and its senior executives were indicted last month on charges that it was peddling copyrighted music, movies and television shows, raking in millions of dollars from advertising and subscriber fees.

Prosecutors warned last week that one of the companies that hosted the Megaupload site and material was considering erasing the material this week, but the company has since decided against it for now.

“Carpathia Hosting has no immediate plans to reprovision some or all of the Megaupload servers,” the company’s chief marketing officer, Brian Winter, said in a statement on Wednesday. He said if that changes, the company will post notices on its websites, www.carpathia.com and www.megaretrieval.com.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Thursday senior Justice Department officials should have known about the controversial tactics that led to a bungled operation to track guns to Mexico because some details were practically at their fingertips.

The Obama administration has been under fire for almost a year about the operation dubbed “Fast and Furious”. The program was meant to determine how guns were being smuggled from Arizona to violent drug cartels, but the guns were not fully tracked.

The operation, which ran from late 2009 until early 2011, came to light after two weapons from it were found in Arizona in December 2010 near the scene where U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was killed in a shootout with illegal immigrants.

While as many as 2,000 weapons were sold by gun dealers to people believed to be serving as straw purchasers for the Mexican drug cartels, fewer than 600 were recovered as of January 2011.

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Republican Representative Darrell Issa, issued a memorandum detailing how other federal law enforcement agents were already tracking drug cartel gun smugglers a year before Terry was killed.

He and other Republicans on the panel said at a hearing that senior Justice Department officials should have also known that guns were trafficked without surveillance from wiretap applications and details they had about a similar sting during the Bush administration known as “Wide Receiver”.

“All of those people should be ashamed that Brian Terry is dead because they didn’t do as good of a job as they should,” Issa said during the hearing.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday sought to blunt political attacks on the Obama administration over a botched gun sting operation, finding that the idea of allowing weapons to go across the border to Mexico came from field agents and prosecutors.

Democrats issued the report just two days before Republicans on the same panel plan to grill Attorney General Eric Holder about the most recent operation, dubbed “Fast and Furious” in which as many as 2,000 guns may have been trafficked to Mexican drug cartels.

President Barack Obama’s fellow Democrats issued an 89-page report that said the operations and strategies dated back to the Bush administration and were the brainchild of field agents and prosecutors, not officials at the upper levels of government.

“Unfortunately this strategy failed to include sufficient operational controls to stop these dangerous weapons from getting into the hands of violent criminals, creating a danger to public safety on both sides of the border,” Representative Elijah Cummings, the senior Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said in a letter accompanying the report.

Two guns from the Fast and Furious operation were found at the scene where a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Brian Terry, was killed during a shootout with illegal immigrants. It was not clear, however, if those weapons fired the fatal shots.

That operation ran from late 2009 to early 2011 out of the Phoenix offices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Attorney. The goal was to try to track guns being smuggled from the initial purchaser to senior drug cartel members.

However, in most cases ATF agents did not follow the guns beyond the initial buyer. Republicans have questioned who in the administration knew about and approved the operation and its tactics and when. They have issued subpoenas for documents and for witnesses to testify.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A former Central Intelligence Agency officer has been arrested and charged with illegally disclosing classified information to journalists, including the identity of a covert officer and details about the capture of terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah, the Justice Department said on Monday.

John Kiriakou, 47, worked for the CIA from 1990 to 2004 as an intelligence officer and then worked as a senior staff member for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2009 until May 2011.

He was accused of revealing to one journalist in 2008 the identity of the covert CIA officer who was involved in the agency’s program to secretly capture terrorism suspects, bring them to U.S.-run detention facilities and interrogate them.

Kiriakou was also accused of revealing to three reporters the identity of a second CIA officer involved in the capture and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, believed to be al Qaeda’s field commander who was captured in March 2002 in Pakistan.

The case emerged after their names were included in sealed filings made by defense lawyers in the cases involving terrorism suspects held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to the criminal complaint.

The covert officer’s name was never publicly revealed, but the New York Times published the second officer’s name in 2008. U.S. authorities said they never provided that information to the defense lawyers.

Kiriakou provided contact information for both officers as well as details about the second officer’s role in the Zubaydah operation, it said.