By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter Producer
MANHATTAN — Failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad received a second-rate education in terrorism, acording to the New York Daily News.
The terror training Shahzad received in camps in Pakistan, and described for the News by sources including Attorney General Eric Holder and an unidentified Pakistani officer, was brief and shoddy.
"It doesn't seem like he was there long enough," a U.S. counterterror official told the paper.
A Pakistani officer explained that "hardcore" militants usually get between five and six months of training - while Shahzad received only two.
Shahzad admitted in early May to receiving terror training in the Waziristan area of Pakistan during 2009 and early 2010, but the Pakistani officer told the News that Shahzad's training lasted only "a couple of months."
"There is less belief that he had any formal training or was a hardened militant," the Pakistani officer explained to the paper. "He might have gotten some briefings, but not much."
The officer also claimed that Shahzad's shoddy tutelage came from members of the Tehrek-e-Taliban in the towns of Miran Shah and Mir Ali. Experts said there are no major training facilities in those areas.
"These areas are full of safe houses but there are no training facilities there," Robert Young Pelton, a journalist and expert on the region, told the News. "They're mainly preparing people for suicide bombings in Afghanistan."
These revelations helped explain why Shahzad made so many errors when preparing for his failed attack against New Yorkers.
In addition to using non-explosive fertilizer, Shahzad apparently forgot his keys in the bomb-rigged Pathfinder that he intended to detonate in Times Square.
