New York terror plot is foiled, FBI says

WASHINGTON -- The FBI in recent months foiled a terrorist plot to blow up transit tunnels leading into New York City after the agency spent a year monitoring Internet discussions between at least eight Al Qaeda sympathizers based on three continents, US officials said yesterday.

The suspected mastermind of the plot, Assem Hammoud , 31, was arrested a month ago in Beirut , the law enforcement officials said, while two more members of the group are in custody in other foreign countries. Five more suspects are being sought, but none are believed to be in the United States, the officials added, declining to provide further details because the investigation still is underway.

``We believe we interrupted this group early in their planning," Mark J. Mershon , the FBI's assistant director in charge of the New York office, told reporters yesterday after the case was first revealed by the New York Daily News. He said the terrorist plot, which appeared to be planned for this fall, ``has largely been disrupted."

New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly quickly sought to calm public fears. ``There was a lot of discussion" of the plot on the Internet, ``but there was no indication of any movement toward" launching the plan, Kelly said at a joint news conference in Manhattan. ``There is no indication that materials were secured."

The foiled operation, which came to light on the first anniversary of the London transit bombings, apparently called for suicide bombers to detonate explosives inside transit tunnels leading from New Jersey into lower Manhattan, causing water to flood into the financial district near where the World Trade Center once stood. Officials said the group appeared to be ready to begin conducting surveillance of potential targets and acquiring explosives.

``Any danger was disrupted," Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff told reporters yesterday after a media event in Boston. ``We don't wait until someone has lit the fuse before stepping in. It is a reminder of the fact that this type of threat remains with us. We cannot drop our guard."

But the plan was described by officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as unfeasible and by some terrorism specialists as amateurish, in part for discussing it in public Internet chat rooms.

The tunnels leading into New York are highly reinforced and lower Manhattan is above the water levels of the Hudson River. The city would not be deluged with water if one of the automobile or railway tunnels were destroyed, the Port Authority specialists said.

And coming just weeks after the revelation of two other seemingly outlandish plots that were disrupted in their early stages -- one in Toronto, one in Miami -- the news of the New York plot left some observers wondering how to assess the seriousness of such threats.

``The Miami plot was a setup [and] this one doesn't seem to have gotten very far along either," said Ian Cutbertson , director of the counterterrorism program at the World Policy Institute in New York, referring to the seven men arrested last month in an undercover FBI sting for allegedly plotting to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago and other landmarks.

``It seems to be Internet chatter about what we can do that is spectacular," Cutbertson added. ``But it plays into New Yorkers' worst fear: being caught in the tunnel when it is blown up."

Still, officials insisted yesterday that the tunnel plot was ``serious" and they admonished unnamed counterterrorism officials cited in the Daily News report for revealing the ongoing FBI operation.

Mershon complained it will now be more difficult to nab the individuals who are still at large. He added that the public disclosure could hamper the FBI's ability to maintain the cooperation of foreign intelligence agencies in countries where the United States is unpopular -- including Lebanon's internal security service, which has long struggled with Islamic militant groups.

Mershon said six foreign countries are involved in the investigation and that anyone who discussed the plot with the media was ``someone who doesn't understand the fragility of international relations."

A US counterterrorism official told the Globe that three of the six countries were Iraq, Pakistan, and Canada, demonstrating the scope of international terrorist links.

Chertoff hailed the foiled plot as an example of how law enforcement and intelligence communities have improved their ability to monitor potential terrorist plots well before they enter the operational stage.

``We acted quickly," he told reporters in Boston. ``Intelligence is better and intelligence sharing is better. We are able to detect more things that are going on. Sometimes that causes skeptics to say the people you are arresting aren't really serious [but] if you look back at [the] London [suicide attacks], it is a mistake to assume that the only terrorist is the James Bond type. Mixing a bomb in a bathtub does not exactly take rocket science."

US counterterrorism officials have increasingly been monitoring the Internet, which has become a preferred mode of communication for many Islamic radicals. A Justice Department report released last month when the Miami plot was announced said that ``terrorists are using the Internet not only to solicit funds and for recruitment but also for training and operational planning. This remains a significant challenge to our counterterrorism efforts."

New York lawmakers quickly seized on the news as new evidence that major East Coast cities remain at the top of the terrorist target list and should not be deprived of homeland security funds, which have been reduced this year as federal grants were spread more evenly across the country.

New York and Washington, which were struck on Sept. 11, 2001, saw their federal homeland security funding cut by about 40 percent, while Boston and its surrounding communities were cut by about one-third.

``The fact that New York's monies and Washington's monies were cut while places like Dillingham, Alaska, and Modoc County, California, got increases in terrorist funds shows that they'd better go back and reexamine" the funding formula, said Senator Charles Schumer , Democrat of New York, on CNN.

Professional counterterrorism specialists were not overly concerned, said Vincent Cannistraro , former head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.

``These guys are extremists, but not professional terrorists," Cannistraro said . ``They had no access to explosives. The FBI had been monitoring this for eight months. It was on a public website and is not clandestine. Professional terrorists don't usually plan in public. These guys were basically wannabes."

Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com.