While the al-Qaida offshoot known as the Khorasan Group only burst into the public consciousness in the past week, the group has been on the radar of counterterrorism officials for a while, and intelligence officials say they have tracked the individual members of the group for years.
Its members are part of al-Qaida's core operation, a roster of individuals who fought together in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and even lived together, in exile, in Iran after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.