America’s intelligence community is skeptical over claims made by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) that it meticulously planned last week’s massacre at the Paris office of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo well in advance.

The spies say they have found no evidence so far to support AQAP’s declaration that it directly planned, ordered and funded the attack.  At least one of the Charlie Hebdo attackers – brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi – is known to have visited Yemen, had contact with AQAP, and returned with cash. 

But that was in 2011, and there’s no sign of a recent call of message from Yemen since.  At the very least, the Kouachi brothers were inspired by AQAP, at least before they were shot to death by French security forces.  And the group was known to have a grudge against Charlie Hebdo because of a series of cartoons that targeted the Prophet Muhammed.

Meanwhile, the gunman who killed four hostages at the kosher food mart in Paris towards the end of three days of terrorism does appear to have done a lot of prep work.  Police say Amedy Coulibaly rented a house outside Paris the previous week and filled it with an unspecified arsenal of late-model weapons. 

The police anti-terrorism unit also seized a scooter from the address that belong to a possible “fourth man” who acted as Coulibaly’s accomplice.  They’re now determining if this subject was the person who shot and seriously wounded a jogger on the same day the Kouachi brothers, killed 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.  French media reports that “fourth man” might already have escaped to Syria.