Still Easier Than Arresting Actual Criminals
All these showboat arrests make me wonder if there's an election coming! Especially since this Triumph in the War on Terra was kept under wraps for three months before someone called the media. And again, we find a group of 'terrorists' with no real association with one another, no resources and no demonstrable real intent to commit a crime that it now turns out wouldn't have worked anyway.
“The so-called New York tunnel plot was a result of discussions held on an open Jihadi web site. They are not professionally trained terrorists, however, and had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed.
“Despite press reports that they had asked Abu Musab Zarqawi for assistance, there is no information to confirm that. It is known that the members discussed the possibility of approaching Zarqawi but none of them knew him or had any access to him.
“In sum, the plot, if that is what we would call it, was not well conceived, and there was no possibility of flooding Wall Street. There was no connection to a cell in the US. Finally, professional terrorists generally do not discuss targeting on open channels. As it was being monitored from the beginning of the open discussion, there was little chance anything concrete would have developed.”
Election year or no, the blatherings of a bunch of nitwits on some web forum somewhere don't constitute a crime. Or at least, they didn't used to.
“The so-called New York tunnel plot was a result of discussions held on an open Jihadi web site. They are not professionally trained terrorists, however, and had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed.
“Despite press reports that they had asked Abu Musab Zarqawi for assistance, there is no information to confirm that. It is known that the members discussed the possibility of approaching Zarqawi but none of them knew him or had any access to him.
“In sum, the plot, if that is what we would call it, was not well conceived, and there was no possibility of flooding Wall Street. There was no connection to a cell in the US. Finally, professional terrorists generally do not discuss targeting on open channels. As it was being monitored from the beginning of the open discussion, there was little chance anything concrete would have developed.”
Election year or no, the blatherings of a bunch of nitwits on some web forum somewhere don't constitute a crime. Or at least, they didn't used to.
Tags: War On Terra, Showboat Arrests
posted by Management at 11:12 PM
4 Comments:
Sources say no serious plot for NYC, just hate chatter
07/07/2006 @ 7:31 pm
Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna
One former intelligence field officer says, and two other CIA officials confirm, that the alleged plot by Muslim extremists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in New York City was nothing more than chatter by unaffiliated individuals with no financing or training in an open forum already monitored extensively by the United States Government, RAW STORY has learned.
“The so-called New York tunnel plot was a result of discussions held on an open Jihadi web site,” said Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and contributor to American Conservative magazine, in a late Friday afternoon conversation. Although Giraldi acknowledges that the persons involved – “three of whom have already been arrested in Lebanon and elsewhere - are indeed extremists," their online chatter is considerably overblown by allegations of an actual plot.
“They are not professionally trained terrorists, however, and had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed," Giraldi added. "Despite press reports that they had asked Abu Musab Zarqawi for assistance, there is no information to confirm that. It is known that the members discussed the possibility of approaching Zarqawi but none of them knew him or had any access to him.”
Two other intelligence officials with experience in the field on extremist operations concurred--and expressed concern that what could have been an operation to eventually track known extremists (should they eventually make actual contact with funds and training,) seems to have been exposed for political gain.
Some see this latest “ploy” as a direct challenge to a New York Times report earlier this week of the disbandment of Alec Station, the CIA unit responsible for tracking Osama bin Laden since before the September 11, 2001 attacks. Moreover, the article contends that officials say the unit was “disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center.”
Some members of Congress have said that they were not informed of the unit’s closure and expressed concern.
In response to reports that the unit was disbanded, Senator John Kerry (D-MA), who ran against President Bush in the 2004 election, responded earlier this week with a demand for the immediate reinstatement of the unit.
“I fully support efforts to adapt our response to the evolving nature of the threat," wrote Kerry in a letter to John Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence Office of the Director of National, "but this is not a compelling rationale for curtailing efforts to bring this mass murderer to justice."
The alleged bomb plot, sources suggest, may have been to alleviate Bush administration concerns that the Alec Station story would make them appear to be "weak on terror." It is not clear this early on, however, how much of a real and immediate threat the bomb plot may have been.
Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertof seemed unconcerned earlier today, when the news first broke. Chertoff said at a press conference Friday, "It was never a concern that this would actually be executed… We were, as I say, all over this."
The FBI, however, contends that the threat was very much real. "This is a plot that involved martyrdom and explosives," targeting the "tubes that connect Jersey and lower Manhattan," Assistant Director Mark J. Mershon told the Associated Press today.
Special Agent Rich Kolko, a spokesperson for the FBI, told RAW STORY in a late Friday phone call that, “Mr. Mershon clearly stated the position of the FBI in this case.”
“In sum, the plot, if that is what we would call it, was not well conceived, and there was no possibility of flooding Wall Street," Giraldi added. "There was no connection to a cell in the US. Finally, professional terrorists generally do not discuss targeting on open channels. As it was being monitored from the beginning of the open discussion, there was little chance anything concrete would have developed."
Plotters Plan Mass Suicide on Train on 9/11/06
July 07, 2006 6:00 PM
Brian Ross Reports:
Path2_nrFederal 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 under way.
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.
All 15 to 20 bombers were to board one car and detonate when the train was under the river, according to officials.
"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.
The FBI identified the ringleader as 32-year-old Assem Hammoud of Lebanon.
Lebanese officials arrested him in April at the request of the FBI, and he reportedly has now admitted he was about to go to Pakistan for training at an al Qaeda camp.
"We know that he has acknowledged pledging a bayat or allegiance to Osama bin Laden, and he proclaims himself to be a member of al Qaeda," said Mershon.
Security was stepped up today at the PATH tunnels.
Officials said today two other alleged plotters had also been arrested, but at least five of them remain at large.
"This shows we are able to disrupt terror plots such as this," said New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. "Secondly, it shows that New York remains in the terrorists' cross hairs."
Officials say the plot was uncovered more than a year ago by U.S. and Canadian intelligence agents watching a jihadist internet chat room.
Officials say the suspects communicated freely, thinking that no one could track them.
Similar chat rooms were used by the alleged terrorists arrested recently in Toronto and Miami.
"The chat rooms have literally exploded since 9/ll because we are now right in the midst of electronic jihad," said Jack Cloonan, former senior agent on the FBI's bin Laden squad in New York and now an ABC News consultant.
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.
Officials say even after their leader was arrested in April, the plotters continued to make plans, and officials say they can't be sure the plan is fully stopped, even now.
-- Hammoud was arrested in three months ago, in April?
The plot was uncovered more than a year ago?
Anybody else wondering why today was chosen to unveil the plan? Maybe the anniversary of the attacks in London?
The Tunnel of Fear
It’s hard to know what to make of the FBI’s reported disruption of a plot to blow up the Holland Tunnel. But the timing of the leak — and its intended political impact — is indisputable.
Maybe this was a credible threat. Maybe it was a lot of hot air seethed in an Internet forum. (By the way, was anyone else disturbed to discover that when the FBI talks about picking up terrorist “chatter,” it’s literally coming from Jihadi chat rooms?!) Whatever the case, we should applaud the capture of Amir Andalousli in Lebanon. One less Osama wannabe on the streets of Beirut isn’t a bad thing.
But let’s examine the alleged plot: As reported by the Daily News, Andalousi wanted to drown lower Manhattan by detonating a bomb in the Holland Tunnel. (UPDATE: The specific targeting of the Holland Tunnel is now in dispute.) OK, first: The physics are impossible. Worst case scenario: The tunnel floods. Water in the tube isn’t going to magically spout out the mouth and make Wall Street look like the Lower 9th Ward. Even the directors of that Stallone Holland Tunnel epic Daylight would have found that plot device implausible. So shame on the Daily News for fearmongering with its coverline: “Gang sought to flood downtown.”
Now let’s turn to the timing. Here’s the most important line in the piece:
FBI and New York City Police Department officials would not comment about the investigation, which has been kept under wraps for months.
In other words, this is old news . . . of an incipient plot . . . that was defused before it left the chat room. [UPDATE: ABC’s The Blotter reports that Andalousi has been in custody for roughly three months, since April.]
So why did someone leak it to a tabloid for publication on today of all days? Consider: Today is the one-year anniversary of the July 7 bombings in London. It also marks four months to the day from November’s mid-term elections.
Karl Rove & Co. are, once again, playing the Fear Card in an election year. Anyone who doubts that simply hasn’t been paying attention for the last five years.
UPDATE: CBS and an ex-CIA spook question the seriousness of the plot.
UPDATE: Tunnel of Terror
New information has come to light on the curious timing of yesterday’s leak of the Holland Tunnel/PATH Train terror plot, and credible intelligence sources are casting doubt on the seriousness of the threat.
Begging the question, ‘Why did we just hear about this yesterday?’, ABC’s blog, The Blotter reports that the alleged ringleader Assem Hammoud, a.k.a. Amir Andalousi, has been in captivity for nearly three months:
Lebanese officials arrested him in April at the request of the FBI.
Meanwhile, although the assistant director of the FBI insists that this plot was “the real deal,” CBS’s blog, The Public Eye, is skeptical:
Frightening? Sure. “Serious?” Well, the jury is still out. The “largely aspirational” plot never went beyond e-mails, there was no credible link to Al Qaeda, and there was no specific mention of the Holland Tunnel, just the mass transit system more generally; additionally, sources say “no one in the United States ever took part in the Internet conversations and . . . no one ever purchased any explosives or scouted the transit system.”
This backs up solid reporting by Raw Story’s Larisa Alexandrovna, who quoted former CIA spook Philip Giraldi — no purveyor of “ostrich-like moonbat lunacy” himself, indeed a frequent contributor to American Conservative magazine — on the true danger posed by the plot:
“The so-called New York tunnel plot was a result of discussions held on an open Jihadi web site. They are not professionally trained terrorists, however, and had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed.
“Despite press reports that they had asked Abu Musab Zarqawi for assistance, there is no information to confirm that. It is known that the members discussed the possibility of approaching Zarqawi but none of them knew him or had any access to him.
“In sum, the plot, if that is what we would call it, was not well conceived, and there was no possibility of flooding Wall Street. There was no connection to a cell in the US. Finally, professional terrorists generally do not discuss targeting on open channels. As it was being monitored from the beginning of the open discussion, there was little chance anything concrete would have developed.”
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