Rico says New York City was lucky and, until the hapless 'Pakistani Taliban' figures out how to make a
real bomb, maybe we'll stay that way. Here are some stories by Kareem Fahim, Corey Kilgannon, Michael Schmidt, Michael Grynbaum, William Rashbau, and Alan Baker from
The New York Times and Nahal Toosi and Ryan Lucas from the Associated Press:
To most people there, it was a sophisticated, technologically advanced response to a looming catastrophe. But the police reaction to the report of a car bomb in Times Square on Saturday night was more than a century in the making, drawing on the expertise of a unit that has seen its share of lean times over the years, and tragedies. A robot that looked like a moon rover was the latest issue, and an officer wore the most advanced Kevlar suit. Both were used after the authorities learned of a box with smoke pouring from it in the back of a Nissan Pathfinder sport utility vehicle parked on West 45th Street.
After the 9/11 attacks, the Police Department’s Bomb Squad came to be seen as the vanguard of the city’s terror response. On Saturday night, in its highest-profile test since then, they responded with flying colors, according to the unit commander, Lieutenant Mark Torre. They had been preparing for decades.
When the unit, created in 1903 and originally led by Lieutenant Giuseppe Petrosino, was called the Italian Squad, the bombs were sticks of dynamite, instruments of extortion used by the Black Hand to intimidate Italian merchants and residents.
Over the years, and depending on the perceived threat, the unit was called the Anarchist Squad and the Radical Squad, according to an article about the Bomb Squad printed in Spring 3100, an internal Police Department magazine. On 4 July 1940, two Bomb Squad detectives were killed trying to defuse a bomb planted in the British Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the unit chased the Mad Bomber, George Metesky, as he waged his battle against Con Edison with dozens of explosive devices. In the 1960s and 1970s, they were called simply the Bomb Squad, and they were spread thin. Dozens of well-known militant groups, including the FALN and the Weathermen, planted bombs all over the city, at times almost as fast as the technicians could be dispatched to deal with them.
Several of the unit’s members were killed or injured. A demolition expert in the unit, Officer Brian J. Murray, was killed in 1976 as he tried to defuse a bomb left at Grand Central Terminal. On 31 December 1982, bombs set outside police headquarters and other locations maimed two squad members.
When William F. McCarthy became the Bomb Squad’s commander in 1984, the memory of the Police Headquarters bombing was still fresh, but it had done nothing to diminish the fearlessness of some of his officers. They were, he said, an “incredibly talented and competent risk takers.” The sense of humor tended toward the macabre, and the prevailing ethos was “hardly kumbaya,” he said.
More than half the squad then had served in Vietnam, and included Bronze Star and Purple Heart winners and thirteen Marine Corps combat engineers. Lieutenant McCarthy, who had been the commander of the Organized Crime Unit, knew nothing about bombs, but more than a little about discipline. “I was a strong boss,” he said. “These were powerful personalities.”
Lieutenant McCarthy stayed in the unit until 1987, and helped write guidelines for bomb disposal that became the national standard. The guidelines started with a warning: The history of bomb disposal is scarred by injury and death. He added that the adoption of new safety techniques and tools seemed to occur only after accidents or tragedies.
After 11 September 2001, the unit— which is charged with investigating suspicious items and helping in bombing investigations— was thrust into the forefront of the city’s law enforcement agencies, said Lieutenant Torre, who joined the Bomb Squad in 1993, and became its commander in 2002.
Immediately after the attacks, the Bomb Squad was besieged by calls about suspicious packages. Today the calls are fewer, and the unit responds to two to three hundred suspicious packages a year. But in the post 9/11 world, there have been more requests to help with security sweeps or to get advice on security matters. Lieutenant Torre said that millions of dollars in grants had let the unit buy new equipment, including some of the tools used in Times Square on Saturday.
In an interview, Richard Esposito, a journalist and co-author of Bomb Squad, a 2007 book about the New York unit, said many of its investigators retired after 9/11, and “a lot of fresh blood came in”. They studied bombings overseas, and gathered information on improvised explosive devices. The unit got new X-ray devices, bomb suits, and computers. It also got more money.
Lieutenant Torre would not say how many people are in the squad— “We don’t like to show all our cards”— but said it was the oldest and largest municipal bomb squad in the country. Admission into the unit is highly selective, he added, noting that in some years, they have accepted one in ten applicants. New members apprentice for more than a year and train for six weeks at the FBI Hazardous Devices School in Huntsville, Alabama. “I could not have been prouder of the performance and success of my people last night,” Lieutenant Torre said.
Even in Times Square, where little seems unusual, the Nissan Pathfinder parked just off Broadway on the south side of 45th Street— engine running, hazard lights flashing, driver nowhere to be found— looked suspicious to the sidewalk vendors who regularly work this area. And it was the keen eyes of at least two of them, both disabled Vietnam War veterans who say they are accustomed to alerting local police officers to pickpockets and hustlers, that helped point the authorities to the Pathfinder, illegally and unusually parked next to their merchandise of inexpensive handbags and $2.99 I Love NY tee-shirts.
Shortly before 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, the vendors— Lance Orton and Duane Jackson, who both served during the Vietnam War and now rely on special sidewalk vending privileges for disabled veterans— said they told nearby officers about the Pathfinder, which had begun filling with smoke and then emitted sparks and popping sounds.
Over the next several hours, numerous firefighters and police officers— from patrol officers to those in specialized units— all did their part in minimizing the potential damage and handling a volatile situation. And, Sunday night, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg honored one of the officers, Wayne Rhatigan, by taking him to dinner in Times Square.
But, in a city hungry for heroes, the spotlight first turned to the vendors. Mr. Orton, a purveyor of tee-shirts, ran from the limelight early Sunday morning as he spurned reporters’ questions while gathering his merchandise on a table near where the Pathfinder was parked. When asked if he was proud of his actions, Mr. Orton, who said he had been selling on the street for about twenty years, replied: “Of course, man. I’m a veteran. What do you think?”
Mr. Jackson, on the other hand, embraced his newfound celebrity, receiving an endless line of people congratulating him while he sold cheap handbags, watches, and pashmina scarves all day on Sunday. He told and retold his story to tourists, reporters, and customers: how he heard the “pop, pop, pop” coming from the vehicle, and then detected “the smell of a cherry bomb or firecracker or something”.
“There are a bunch of us disabled vets selling here, and we’re used to being vigilant because we all know that freedom isn’t free,” said Mr. Jackson, 58, of Buchanan, New York. “All of us vets here are the eyes and ears for the cops,” he said. “Whether it’s three-card monte games or thieves, we know the cops here by first name; we have their cell numbers,” said Mr. Jackson, who said that he had been a street vendor for many years. He spoke of his time in the Vietnam War— he served in the Navy from 1970 to 1973 aboard the aircraft carrier Ranger— and how, as a street vendor, he tended to a table near the World Trade Center during both the bombing in 1993 and the terrorist attack in 2001.
Officer Rhatigan was reserved about his role. He told reporters of the team effort involved, he referred to “guys with bomb suits” as “incredible heroes”, and recalled his first thoughts as he approached the Pathfinder. He said the vehicle “reeked of gunpowder” and seemed oddly abandoned, “a little bit more than just a parked car with a cigarette in the ashtray. It was just a combined effort of everybody,” he added. “That’s what we do.”
The first firefighters who arrived were responding to a report of a car fire at the site, but realized upon arrival that explosives could be in the vehicle, said Tom Meara, a battalion chief, who was at the scene.
Lieutenant Mike Barvels of Engine Company 54, also at the scene, said firefighters moved people away and readied fire hoses, but then decided to leave the vehicle untouched since the popping and sparking indicated the possible presence of a bomb. “We took a defensive position and cleared people away,” Lieutenant Barvels said.
On 45th Street on Sunday, tourists seemed aware of the vendors’ role in alerting the police. Mr. Orton was not working at his usual spot, but Mr. Jackson was.
At his vending table, one tourist, Wayne Jackson, a self-described born-again Christian from Saskatchewan, prayed with Mr. Jackson for several minutes and asked God to “alert us to more attempts on this brave country”. Several police officers, in bulletproof vests, shook the vendor’s hand. A woman with a British accent rushed up and said: “Are you the one who saved us? Thank you.” “It could have been a lot worse,” Mr. Jackson told a bank of television cameras and then turned to say to a customer, “That’s eight bucks on the watches.”
As for Mr. Orton, he rested on Sunday at a relative’s house, leaving others to talk on his behalf. “When he was in Vietnam, he said they had to make decisions and judgments from their gut, from their own feelings,” said Miriam Cintron, the mother of Mr. Orton’s son. “His instinct was telling him something’s not right. I guess he was right.” She said Mr. Orton would mediate disputes between the police and other vendors, and when something did not look right, he would alert the police. “He always said, ‘Downtown is where they’re going to come to, and I’m going to be right there,’” Ms. Cintron said. When Mr. Orton left Times Square about 7 a.m. on Sunday, he did so to a hero’s reception. As he walked down the street, employees from Junior’s restaurant stood outside applauding him. He briefly entered the restaurant before heading toward 44th Street. Using a cane and wearing a white fedora, Mr. Orton limped away and hopped a cab home to the Bronx, but not before repeating a terror-watch mantra: “See something, say something.”
Law enforcement officials offered a more detailed description of the makeup of the failed car bomb found in Times Square on Saturday night, and said they were reviewing surveillance footage that showed a white man who appeared to be in his 40s walking away from the area as he looked over his shoulder and removed a layer of clothing.
Raymond W. Kelly, the New York City police commissioner, said on Sunday that the materials found in the Nissan Pathfinder— gasoline, propane, firecrackers, and simple alarm clocks— also included eight bags of a granular substance, later determined to be a non-explosive grade of fertilizer, inside a 55-inch-tall metal gun locker. The bomb, Mr. Kelly said, “would have caused casualties, a significant fireball.”
Had it exploded, said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, “It would have been, in all likelihood, a good possibility of people being killed, windows shattered, but not resulting in a building collapse.”
While the authorities said they were treating the failed bombing— described as a “one-off” by Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security— as a potential terrorist attack, they said there was no evidence of a continued threat to the city.
Additional patrols will be placed in Midtown, Mr. Kelly said, but no significant increase in the city’s police presence was planned.
FBI agents and detectives had identified and were seeking to interview the owner of the Pathfinder, which was traced to Connecticut. The owner’s name was not made public. No motive had been determined in the attempted bombing, and federal and local officials said there was no evidence to support a claim of responsibility issued Sunday by a Pakistani Taliban group that has a reputation for making far-fetched attempts to take credit for attacks. The police and FBI officials are also investigating a separate tip received by a news organization, but Mr. Kelly said it had not turned up any suspects.
Investigators were reviewing surveillance footage that showed an unidentified man walking away from West 45th Street, where the Nissan Pathfinder had been parked. The police said the man was a “person of interest”. The man was seen in Shubert Alley, which runs between 44th and 45th Streets, looking furtively over his shoulder and removing a dark shirt, revealing a red one underneath, officials said. The man then stuffed the dark shirt into a bag, officials said.
Asked if he considered the failed bombing the work of terrorists, Mr. Kelly said: “A terrorist act doesn’t necessarily have to be conducted by an organization. An individual can do it on their own.” Mr. Kelly held his briefing as Times Square experienced an uneasy return to normalcy after a night of high drama that saw the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers. All Broadway shows ran as scheduled on Sunday, playing on streets where, just hours before, onlookers watched behind orange netting as a police bomb squad used a robot to break into the smoke-filled Pathfinder, which was discovered about 6:30 p.m.
Two street vendors had flagged down a mounted police officer after they noticed smoke coming from the Pathfinder, which had been parked haphazardly at the curb with its engine running and its flashers on. The area was cleared so the police could examine the vehicle, which was first seen on video surveillance cameras at 6:28 p.m., heading west on West 45th Street. The Pathfinder was brought to a forensics center in Jamaica, Queens, where investigators were scouring it for DNA evidence and hairs, fibers, and fingerprints. No fingerprints have yet been found, officials said, but analysis was in its early stages. FBI agents and detectives from the Joint Terrorist Task Force were also trying to determine where the three canisters of propane and two red plastic five-gallon containers of gasoline in the Pathfinder had been purchased.
The gun locker, which weighed about 75 pounds empty and upward of 200 pounds with the eight bags of fertilizer in it, could provide important clues because it was likely to be more easily traced than many of the other items found in the SUV. The weight of the locker and the material inside raised questions as to whether it might have required more than one person to load it into the vehicle.
Identifying the owner of the Pathfinder— an important development, according to one official— was achieved through the SUV’s vehicle identification number, which had been stripped from the car’s dashboard but was stamped on other car parts, like the engine block and axle. Initially, investigators believed the last owner was in Texas and had donated the car to a charity in North Carolina, one official said. But that information proved to be incorrect. The license plate on the SUV was connected to a different vehicle that was awaiting repairs in Stratford, Connecticut, where FBI agents and the local police awoke the owner of the repair shop at 3 a.m. on Sunday. The shop owner, Wayne LeBlanc, who runs Kramer’s Used Auto Parts, said that the authorities had seized a black Ford F-150 pickup truck. “We’re trying to help them identify who took the plates,” he said. The SUV had no E-ZPass, but license plate readers and cameras at the area’s tollbooths were being checked to determine where the car had entered Manhattan, one official said.
Most of the ingredients of the explosive device could have been bought at a home-supply store. The canisters of propane were similar to those used for barbecue grills. The firecrackers were consumer-grade M-88s sold legally in some states, including Pennsylvania.
The device was found in the back of the SUV, Mr. Kelly said, with the gasoline cans closest to the back seat and the gun locker behind them. The fertilizer was in clear plastic bags bearing the logo of a store that the police declined to identify. The wires from battery-powered fluorescent clocks ran into the gun locker, where a metal pressure-cooker pot contained a thicket of wires and more M-88s, Mr. Kelly said. “It was believed that the timers would ignite the can of explosives, and that would cause the five-gallon cans to go on fire and then explode the propane tanks and have some effect on that rifle box,” Mr. Kelly said.
Investigators believed that the fuses on the firecrackers had been lit, but they did not explode, officials said. The burning fuses apparently ignited a portion of the Pathfinder’s interior, causing a small fire that filled the inside with smoke, one law enforcement official said. Another official said that pops heard by a firefighter as he approached the vehicle might have been made by the fireworks failing to fully detonate.
Investigators were reviewing similarities between the incident in Times Square and coordinated attacks in the summer of 2007 at a Glasgow airport and a London neighborhood of nightclubs and theaters. Both attacks involved cars containing propane and gasoline that did not explode. Those attacks, the authorities believed, had their roots in Iraq. “You can find similarities among different attacks, but there is nothing that we have at this point that has established that link,” Mr. Browne said. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said that “so far, there is no evidence that any of this has anything to do with one of the recognized terrorist organizations.”
Meanwhile, a Homeland Security official said that the Transportation Security Administration had increased security outside airports to counter threats like car bombs. The agency held a conference call Sunday night with federal officials at airports in the New York City region to discuss increased security at departure gates. The authorities said they are studying hundreds of hours of surveillance footage from more than eighty cameras, including images of the man leaving the scene of the SUV that were shot by a tourist in Times Square. Detectives flew by helicopter to Pennsylvania to interview the tourist. The police and FBI officials were also investigating a 911 call placed around 4 a.m. on Sunday that described the failed bombing as a diversion before a bigger explosion, two law enforcement officials said, although Mr. Kelly said there was no record of that call.
The SUV was parked near the headquarters of Viacom, fueling suspicions that the attack was related to a controversy surrounding South Park, the Comedy Central cartoon program that recently censored an episode that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad. Viacom owns Comedy Central, and police have not ruled out the connection.
Pakistan's Taliban chief promised attacks on major U.S. cities, in a video apparently dated early April and released following the weekend's car bomb attempt in New York City, a monitoring group said Monday.
It followed reports of another video in which the group apparently tried to take credit for that attempted strike.
U.S. authorities have played down the potential connection between the Pakistani militant network and the car bomb attempt in New York's Times Square, saying the group does not have the global infrastructure to carry out such a strike. However, the Pakistani Taliban could expand their reach through their alliances with al-Qaeda and other groups.
The latest video is about nine minutes long and features Hakimullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban chief, according to IntelCenter, a U.S.-based group that monitors militant media.
Mehsud does not specifically mention New York, but says he is speaking on 4 April of this year, and promises that, "God willing, very soon in some days or a month's time, the Muslim community will see the fruits of most successful attacks of our fedayeen in USA." (Fedayeen usually refers to suicide bombers, which the car bomb attempt in New York did not involve.) Mehsud also refutes earlier Pakistani and American claims that he died in a U.S. missile strike in January, a belief Pakistani intelligence officials recently revised. The video follows a second, shorter clip in which the group appears to claim responsibility for the attempted car bomb, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, another monitoring organization.
In the one minute, eleven second video allegedly released by the Pakistani Taliban, the militant group says the attack is revenge for the death of its leader, Baitullah Mehsud, and the recent slaying of al-Qaeda in Iraq leaders Abu Omar al-Baghdadi and Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who were killed by U.S. and Iraqi troops last month north of Baghdad.
SITE, a U.S.-based terrorist tracking organization, first uncovered the video on YouTube. The tape, which later appeared to have been removed from the website, makes no specific reference to the attack in New York, nor does it mention that the location or that it was a car bomb.
New York City's police commissioner said there's no evidence of a Taliban link to the failed car bomb. In a copy of the tape provided by SITE, an unidentified voice speaking in Urdu, the primary language in Pakistan, says the group takes "full responsibility for the recent attack in the USA." The speaker says it comes in response to American "interference and terrorism in Muslim Countries, especially in Pakistan for the Lalmasjid operation," a reference to the Pakistani army's 2007 storming of the Red Mosque in Islamabad where militants were holed up inside.
The claim could not be immediately verified. But if it turns out to be genuine, it would be the first time the Pakistani Taliban has struck outside of South Asia. It has no known global infrastructure like al-Qaeda. In at least one past instance, the Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for an attack it played no role in. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to comment on the claim. The claim came a day after police in New York found a potentially powerful car bomb that apparently began to detonate but did not explode in a smoking sport utility vehicle in Times Square. The vehicle contained three propane tanks, fireworks, two filled five-gallon gasoline containers, and two clocks with batteries, electrical wire, and other components, officials said.
The Pakistani Taliban is one of Pakistan's largest and deadliest militant groups. It has strong links to al-Qaeda and is based in the northwest close to the Afghan border. The group has carried out scores of bloody attacks inside Pakistan in recent years, mostly against Pakistani targets, but it has made no secret of its hatred toward the United States.
Last year, its then-commander, Baitullah Mehsud, vowed to "amaze everyone in the world" with an attack on Washington or even the White House. But Mehsud also reportedly said his men were behind a mass shooting at the American Civic Association in Binghamton in April 2009. That claim turned out to be false.
Rico says they gotta blame somebody for this, why not Pennsylvania? Of course, they could've bought dynamite in several states and done the job right. (And a "one minute, eleven second video"? Of course it is; inside Rico joke, sorry...)
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