Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born cleric killed Friday, was seeking to use weapons of mass destruction to attack westerners in his role as chief of external operations for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, according to a senior U.S. official.

The terror leader was specifically seeking to use poisons including cyanide and ricin, as he was planning and directing attacks against the United States from his foreign base, the official said.

The details of al-Awlaki’s influence come as top U.S. officials privately brag about the U.S. strike that killed him as a major coup in a long string of Al Qaeda leaders taken out by the Obama administration, most notably Usama bin Laden earlier this year.

But al-Awlaki was also a major figure within Al Qaeda, with the senior U.S. official noting that Al Awlaki played a very important operational role in Umar Faruk Abdulmutallab’s attempted attack on a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

The senior U.S. official stated that al-Awlaki “specifically instructed Abdulmutallab to set off the device while over U.S. airspace to maximize casualties.”

The senior U.S. official also said that al-Awlaki also assisted in overseeing the October 2010 plan to detonate explosive devices on board U.S. cargo aircraft.

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