Late yesterday, the FBI released additional information about the plot to bomb the tunnels leading into Manhattan that was broken up yesterday:
A terrorist plot to attack transit tunnels under New York’s Hudson River was broken up in its early planning stages, U.S. authorities said yesterday, with three suspects arrested overseas, including a Lebanese man the FBI said was an al-Qaeda follower.
FBI assistant director for New York Mark J. Mershon said investigators had disrupted the plot before the suspects could come to the United States and begin to gather intelligence and explosives for the attack. He said there was no threat now to the PATH commuter lines, which carry tens of thousands of people between New York and New Jersey each day.
While media reports this morning have said that the plot was not very far along, ABC News’s Brian Ross reports that the situation may have been far more serious:
Federal law enforcement officials tell ABC News a plot designed to use 15 to 20 suicide bombers on one commuter train as close to Sept. 11 as possible was well underway.
The specific target was the PATH commuter trains that run in a tunnel under the Hudson River into New York City.
“This is a plot that would have involved martyrdom, explosives and certain of the tubes that connect New Jersey with lower Manhattan,” said Mark Mershon, Assistant Director-in-Charge of the FBI New York Field Office. “We’re not discussing the modality behind, beyond that.”
But law enforcement officials say the plotters had already accessed detailed blueprints and drawings of the PATH tunnels, available on the internet.
And like the London bombers, the plan was to load backpacks with explosives.
And while the idea of flooding the financial district reported yesterday may have been impractical, there’s no question that the right amount of properly placed explosives could have a disasterous impact:
“There’s no question that they are vulnerable. With the right amount of explosives, the tunnel could be compromised,” said Gerry Hauer, former Director of New York City’s Office of Emergency Management and now an ABC News consultant.
This, quite honestly, is likely to be true of any tunnel leading into New York. Or any tunnel in America for that matter. Its frankly not surprising that they would consider going after targets like these. Nor is it surprising where at least some of these terrorists come from:
Officials say none of the plotters was in the United States but that several of them were nearby in Canada. Others had planned to travel to New York from Saudi Arabia.
As Captain Ed said, talk about deja vu and irony.
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