3rd Man Detained in Connection With Terror Plot, Official Says - New York Times

3rd Man Detained in Connection With Terror Plot, Official Says - New York Times


October 7, 2005
3rd Man Detained in Connection With Terror Plot, Official Says
By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM and JANON FISHER
A third man has been detained in a suspected plot to detonate explosives on the city's subway system, a government official said today, as police officers searched passengers' bags on subways, buses and ferries.
Authorities are holding Al Qaeda operatives in connection with the suspected plot, although no details were available on who they are, where they were detained or what agency captured them, said the government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The official said the person who provided the information about the men had undergone explosives training with them at an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan.
Security in and around the city's transit network was sharply increased Thursday after city officials announced that they had been notified by federal authorities in Washington of a terrorist threat that for the first time specified the city's transit system.
The measures were made public Thursday by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, along with Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and the head of the New York F.B.I. office, Mark J. Mershon, after an American military operation with the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. in Iraq, according to law enforcement officials. The operation, carried out this week, was aimed at disrupting the threat, the officials said.
Some officials in Washington have played down the nature of the threat. While not entirely dismissing it, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security described it as "specific yet noncredible," adding that the intelligence community had concluded that the information was of "doubtful credibility."
Today in Washington, President Bush said the city had decided on its own to inform the public about the threats.
"Our job is to gather intelligence and pass it on to local authorities," Mr. Bush told reporters in a White House picture-taking session with Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany of Hungary. "And they make the judgments necessary to respond. The level of cooperation between the federal government and the local government is getting better and better. And part of that level of cooperation is the ability to pass information on. And we did, and they responded."
When asked whether he thought New York officials had overreacted, the president demurred. "I think they took the information we gave and made the judgments they thought were necessary," he said. "And the American people have got to know that, one, we're collecting information and sharing it with local authorities on a timely basis. And that's important."
Earlier today, the White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters: "In this case, we notified New York City officials early on of the intelligence information that we had received. And while it is specific, you heard our Homeland Security officials say it is of doubtful credibility. It is something we continue to analyze."
But in an afternoon news conference in New York, Mr. Bloomberg said he believed he had made the right decision by informing the public about the possibility of a terrorist attack.
"If I'm going to make a mistake, you can rest assured it's going to be on the side of being cautious," he said. "If it happened again, I would make exactly the same decision."
Mr. Kelly agreed, saying: "I can't think of anything other than what could have been done than what we proceeded to do."
Asked about the disagreement over how seriously to take the threat, the mayor said that intelligence information is rarely clear cut.
"You'll never get a consensus in the intelligence community on any one thing," he said. "In the end, you will find that not everyone's on the same page."
At subway stations today, riders said they were generally unworried about the latest warning.
"I'm a fourth-generation New Yorker," said Alexandra Noya, 35, as she got off a train at Columbus Circle. "If it's going to happen, it's going to happen." The warning from the mayor and police commissioner, she said, "didn't deter me."
Jimmy George, 65, from Teaneck, N.J., said he doubted the seriousness of the threat. Mr. George said he believed the timing was related to the coming New York City mayoral election.
"Is it time to wag the dog?" he said. "It's election time. It seems during election times there's always some type of threat."
Bradford Ellis, who turned 35 today, said the threat was likely real, but said he was comfortable taking his chances riding the train.
"Everybody was calling me today, telling me I shouldn't get on the subway because it's my birthday," he said. "But you can't let it affect you. I think it's a possible threat, but I don't live my life on possibilities."
At the Times Square station, an M.T.A. conductor, Ray Volsario, said he was not told about the threat by supervisors, and learned about it from television news.
"They don't tell us anything," he said. "We're supposed to be the eyes and ears of the subway system - why are we the last to know?"
A portion of Penn Station was evacuated for about two hours this morning after police responded to reports about a suspicious package and a possibly toxic substance inside a bottle. Mr. Kelly, the police commissioner, said the package turned out to be harmless litter. The bottle, said Mr. Kelly, appeared to be a "Drain-O type" fluid.
"It appears to be a prank," said Mr. Kelly. Authorities took away the bottle to analyze the liquid, he said.
Information about the threat, came to light last weekend from an intelligence source who told federal authorities that the three men in Iraq had planned to meet with other operatives in New York, said several law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
One official said the group would number about a dozen. Another official said the total was closer to 20 people involved. The men planned to use strollers, briefcases and packages to hide a number of bombs that they planned to detonate on the subways.
"It was a conspiracy involving more than a dozen people aimed at delivering a number of devices into the subway," one of the officials said.
One official said the information suggested an attack could happen as early as today; another pointed to the middle of the month.
"This is a piece of information that came in as a result of operations that go on all the time, and to corroborate that information or not we had to go after certain people," one official said.
Mr. Mershon said: "F.B.I. agents and other U.S. government personnel continue to work around the clock to fully resolve this particular threat. Thus far, there is nothing that has surfaced in that investigation or those enforcement actions which has corroborated an actual threat to the city."
Mayor Bloomberg seemed to try to inform New Yorkers without alarming them. He said that while the threat was not corroborated, it was specific enough to warrant an immediate and overwhelming response.
"It was more specific as to target; it was more specific as to timing, and some of the sources had more information that would lead one to believe that it was not the kind of thing that appears in the intelligence community every day," Mr. Bloomberg said.
The mayor urged New Yorkers to continue riding the subways, as he said he would, but cautioned them to be watchful, saying several times, "If you see something, say something."
As he spoke, thousands of city police officers were swarming the transit system. An officer will be assigned to each subway station, and Commissioner Kelly said the Police Department is significantly stepping up uniformed and plainclothes patrols, increasing sweeps through subway cars and posting officers at each subway tunnel that passes beneath city waterways. The department's heavily armed "Hercules teams" and other specialized units will also focus on the transit system, he said.
Bag searches will also be significantly increased, the commissioner said, with a focus on briefcases, baby strollers, luggage and other packages and containers, and he asked subway riders to curtail their use. The searches will take place not only on the subways, but also on buses and ferries, and the Police Department has coordinated the increased scrutiny with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, New Jersey Transit, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Amtrak. Mr. Kelly used narcotics detectives from Brooklyn and Queens and other investigators from the department's Warrant Division to increase security in the subways. Officers mobilized at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
On Thursday, Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Mershon declined to discuss the events in Iraq, or where they had occurred, saying that it was classified.
Counterterrorism officials in Washington said the information received this week was highly specific, including details about the possible use of suitcase bombs and explosives hidden in strollers. That information, along with the more general concern that terrorists might stage an attack modeled on the July bombings in London, prompted immediate concern, the officials said.
On an average weekday, an estimated 4.7 million rides are taken on New York's subway system, which has 468 stations.
Russ Knocke, a spokesman for Homeland Security, said the credibility of the threat was still to be determined.
He said Homeland Security "received intelligence information regarding a specific but noncredible threat to the New York City subway system."
Mr. Knocke said Homeland Security shared the information "early on with state and local authorities in New York," adding, "There are no plans to alter the national threat level or the threat level in New York City."
He would not say any more about the content of the threat or the origin of the information.
Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's deputy commissioner of public information, would not discuss whether the source information suggested that operatives were in New York. He would say only, "We're looking at all aspects of this case."
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, city and national law enforcement authorities have at times reacted differently to similar threat information. In part, this is because of the varying roles that different agencies play. The New York Police Department, for example, is responsible for protecting the city and its subways and therefore is more likely to act quickly. The F.B.I.'s prime antiterrorism mission, on the other hand, is thwarting plots and apprehending any suspected terrorists - a task that is almost always complicated by information becoming public. But on Thursday, city and F.B.I. officials in New York stood side by side and seemed to present a similar message. Officials from Homeland Security did not take part in the briefing.
Of the information from Iraq, one official said: "Suffice it to say it was credible enough for us to be working it very hard and very diligently literally around the clock and around the world. Sometimes it looks incredibly detailed, and then it washes out into nothing, and sometimes pretty vague in nature and it turns into something real. You can't know until you go through the process, and we're going through the process."
William A. Morange, the transportation authority's security director and a member of a citywide counterterrorism task force, was informed several days ago about the threat, said Tom Kelly, a spokesman.
"We were kept well apprised of all the developments since earlier this week," Mr. Kelly said.
The Police Department also put into effect a broad range of measures aimed at stepping up security around the city that did not address the specific threat, but were aimed at tightening the city's security cordon. They included increased truck searches on East River crossings and banning trucks from the Brooklyn Bridge.
The department will also increase the use of radiation detectors, and detectives from the department's Intelligence Division will check parking lots and garages in Manhattan and in other areas of the city.
Reporting for this article was contributed by David Johnston, Eric Lipton and Eric Lichtblau, in Washington, and Sewell Chan, Kareem Fahim and Timothy Williams, in New York.
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company