Taliban instructed Faisal Shahzad

WASHINGTON: Pakistani-American terror suspect Faisal Shahzad, arrested for the Times Square bombing plot, was instructed by the Pakistani Taliban to always pay cash and not to leave a "paper trail" in transactions, a media report said on Monday.

"He was told to be very careful about not letting anything track back to him. No receipts and no paper. No nothing," an official source close to the investigation was quoted as saying by the Los Angeles Times. "He was told to leave no paper trail at all," it said.

It said Shahzad had paid in cash for his gun, as also for the van he bought from a Connecticut-based teenager.

The investigators probing the plot are trying to determine the amount of money provided to carry out the operation, and who put up the funds and how it was paid out to Shahzad, the report said.

Another report in the same paper has said that Shahzad, a naturalised citizen of the United States, might have been disturbed by increasing US drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal belt.

Agents interviewing the 30-year-old have learned that he was upset over repeated CIA drone attacks on militants in his the country of his birth.