August 2, 2004
NYC Responds to Latest Terror Threats +
According to this Washington Post story, the CIA brass first learned of the threats to the financial buildings on Thursday night, and by Sunday, extra precautions here were put in place. (Manhole covers sealed, additional patrols on bridges and tunnels, Statue of Liberty half-open, but under heavy guard, etc.)
The streets around Grand Central Terminal are closed, and commercial trucks are banned from some of the bridges.
New Yorkers' response has been typically bold: Bloomberg rang the opening bell at the NYSE this morning, and said we won't be "cowed." The terror threat level in NYC remains at Orange, but I think it's apparently to everyone that we have varying "shades" of Orange Alert in the city: whenever these federal warnings come out, they are invariably followed by (A) city officials insisting we've been Orange Alert since around the time Bloomberg took office and that nothing will change, and (B) a noticeable increase in security precautions around the city, such as more machine-gun toting soldiers in the subways, stepped-up patrols on the bridges, and so on. Maybe we should call our heightened status within the Orange alert "Deep Orange" or something, since the city clearly acts differently than it does during our usual Orange status.
Other NYers are similarly resolute. WNBC quotes Donna Mendez, a Citgroup employee: "Since 9/11 I think any of us who work here know we're a target. We're not going to let (terrorists) stop us from doing what we do, that's what they want." This is consistent with what people have said in other media reports.
I heard on TV this morning that these attacks against the financial institutions have been in the works since before 9/11, and that makes me wonder how current the threats really are. Everyone is acting with a sort of "hair on fire" urgency, but maybe these plans were abandoned long ago. A year ago, officials were saying that terrorist chatter indicated NYC was no longer a viable target because security was so tight. Has that changed? [Update: It looks like others are thinking the same thing: both the NYT and the Washington Post are reporting today (Tuesday) that the information is "nothing new," though some officials stress they didn't realize al-Qaeda had been compiling all the information.]
Overall, I think another 9/11-style attack is far less likely than a suicide bomb in a movie theater or bus. We're doing an awful lot to prepare against sarin gas entering our ventilation systems, but we're doing next to nothing, it seems, to shore up "soft targets" against attacks that would leave a couple hundred (rather than a thousand or more) casualties. I also think it is far more likely that car bomb attacks in the US will blow up at checkpoints, rather than more principal targets. The effect of such an attack during rush hour would be easy to accomplish but fear-inducing for the general populace, spreading the "anyone can be a victim" idea that terrorists seem to be keen on.
Like everyone has said, we need to go about our lives, but it seems inevitable that one of these days, something is going to explode in the city, and the grip of fear that we all experienced in fall of 2001 will return for a while.
categories:
Terrorism
posted by adm at August 2, 2004 9:11 PM
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