NYC police pair transferred amid terror plot investigation
Work disrupted as unit sought imam’s assistance
NEW YORK - The New York Police Department has transferred two senior commanders, days after one of the department’s two sometimes competing antiterrorism units played a role in compromising a sensitive federal terrorism investigation, current and former police officials said yesterday.
The investigation was disrupted two weeks ago when detectives from one of the units, the Intelligence Division, sought assistance from an imam in Queens, who then alerted the central suspect in the case to the inquiry.
The transfers came in recent days amid intense activity in the case.
Federal agents and police detectives have been hunting through New York City and other places for operatives in a suspected Al Qaeda bomb plot.
The department has acknowledged no missteps in the effort by Intelligence Division detectives to seek assistance from the imam, a disclosure that contributed to a significant disruption in the investigation.
But the transfer of the Counterterrorism Bureau commander to the Intelligence Division, which has sometimes clashed with its local and federal partners, suggests that senior police officials are seeking to improve relations between the units.
The commander is widely respected and has overseen a large contingent of detectives who were assigned to work with the FBI on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
The department’s chief spokesman, Paul J. Browne, did not respond to telephone calls and email messages seeking comment about the transfers.
The decision to show photographs of the main suspect and several other men to the imam, Ahmad Wais Afzali, who had provided information to the Police Department in the past, forced the authorities to conduct raids and arrest the suspect sooner than they might have otherwise.
The development, according to several law enforcement officials, could make it harder for the authorities to identify others involved in what prosecutors have said was a plot to detonate bombs in the United States and develop evidence against them.
The authorities nonetheless arrested the suspect, Najibullah Zazi, 24, his father, Mohammed Wali Zazi, 53, and Afzali, 37, over the weekend.
The men, who were charged only with making false statements during a terrorism investigation, were expected to appear in court today in Brooklyn and Denver. Officials anticipate additional charges will be filed against the younger Zazi.
The effort to enlist the imam, along with its impact on the inquiry, comes after a long history of tensions and rivalry between the police and the FBI.
While relations between the two agencies have improved, the creation of the Counterterrorism Bureau and the expansion of the Intelligence Division after the attack of Sept. 11, 2001, brought new tensions, with a rivalry between the two antiterrorism units.
While the investigation’s disruption upset some officials in Washington, as the inquiry progressed they said that they had come to view the issue as an unfortunate, if unintentional, misstep.
