joining us so jessica yellin. jessica, a quite extraordinary james bond-style plot here. tell me more about this. reporter: well, the plot was under way for many months, and it got so far that money was actually transferred for an assassination. what the iranians didn t know, piers, was the person they hired to carry this out was a dea informant working for the u.s. government. so it was never actually going to take place. but that was a massive stroke of luck, presumably. reporter: absolutely. once this dea informant was contacted by the iranians, the fbi was brought in. what we know tracing the timeline was the president was notified in june. the arrest of the naturalized u.s. citizen, the iranian we all have a mug shot of now was on september 29th. so it unfolded over the course of about four months where u.s. law enforcement was tracking it for all that time. secretary of state clinton said today the idea that they would attempt to go to a mexican drug cartel to s
under way for many months, and it got so far that money was actually transferred for an assassination. what the iranians didn t know, piers, was the person they hired to carry this out was a dea informant working for the u.s. government. so it was never actually going to take place. but that was a massive stroke of luck, presumably. reporter: absolutely. once this dea informant was contacted by the iranians, the fbi was brought in. what we know tracing the timeline was the president was notified in june. the arrest of the naturalized u.s. citizen, the iranian we all have a mug shot of now was on september 29th. so it unfolded over the course of about four months where u.s. law enforcement was tracking it for all that time. secretary of state clinton said today the idea that they would attempt to go to a mexican drug cartel to solicit murder for hire to kill the saudi ambassador, nobody can make it up. it is an extraordinarily outrageously aw dash out plot, isn t it? r
reporter: well, the plot was under way for many months, and it got so far that money was actually transferred for an assassination. what the iranians didn t know, piers, was the person they hired to carry this out was a dea informant working for the u.s. government. so it was never actually going to take place. but that was a massive stroke of luck, presumably. reporter: absolutely. once this dea informant was contacted by the iranians, the fbi was brought in. what we know tracing the timeline was the president was notified in june. the arrest of the naturalized u.s. citizen, the iranian we all have a mug shot of now was on september 29th. so it unfolded over the course of about four months where u.s. law enforcement was tracking it for all that time. secretary of state clinton said today the idea that they would attempt to go to a mexican drug cartel to solicit murder for hire to kill the saudi ambassador, nobody can make it up. it is an extraordinarily outrageously