WASHINGTON, Aug 3: Pakistan is believed to have handed over a key Al Qaeda operative, Ahmad Khalfan Ghailani, to US authorities who have taken him to an undisclosed location, US and diplomatic sources told Dawn on Tuesday.

Ghailani, the alleged mastermind of the 1998 bombings of two US embassies in East Africa that killed 224 people, was arrested in Gujrat last week. Some sources, however, claim that he was caught earlier but his arrest was disclosed only after he and a dozen of his accomplices arrested from an Al Qaeda hideout in Gurjat had been thoroughly 'debriefed' by US and Pakistani intelligence officials.

Ghailani was apparently handed over to a CIA team on Sunday night and was flown out of the country in an unmarked plane, the sources said. Meanwhile, US intelligence and law enforcement officials are saying that much of the information that led to the declaration of a high security alert in Washington and New York was three or four years old.

Briefing reporters in Washington on the nature of the threat, some officials even questioned the Bush administration's decision to declare a high security alert based on dated information.

The administration, however, defended its decision saying that they had reasons to believe that Al Qaeda was planning attacks in the United States during this election year.

In separate appearances, both President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney said the new alert underscores the continuing threat posed by Al Qaeda. "It's a serious business. We would not be contacting authorities at the local level unless something was real," said Mr. Bush.