GREAT FOR BEING SHARP AND ON THE JOB!
I'm kind of busy and didn't have time to search completely, but I backtracked quickly and didn't see this posted. Sorry if it's already here.
N.Y. TARGETED: MEMO
NYPD BIG SECRETLY WARNED OF WMD THREAT
By DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly addressed building workers at Riverside Drive building yesterday.
Police officials fear that New York will be hit with another Al Qaeda terror strike, according to an NYPD memo obtained by the Daily News.
"Based upon intelligence derived from numerous reliable sources, including captured Al Qaeda leaders, it is clear that Al Qaeda and other related terror groups are planning to utilize WMD [weapons of mass destruction] ... to attack New York City," wrote NYPD Assistant Chief Phil Pulaski in a Jan. 12 memo to the city's Office of Emergency Management.
The memo was written as part of the NYPD's bid to get more control of chemical and hazardous spills under Mayor Bloomberg's new emergency response protocols.
The memo apparently worked. When Bloomberg issued the new protocols earlier this month, the NYPD was named the primary agency for all haz-mat operations, although the Fire Department will remain in charge of rescue and decontamination efforts.
NYPD officials tried to play down the memo yesterday, characterizing it as a general list of threats based on previously released Al Qaeda documents and their assaults overseas.
"He was not referring to any specific threat," NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said of Pulaski's memo. "He was outlining tactics, materials and intentions used or articulated by al Qaeda in the past."
Nonetheless, the memo lists a range of other frightening assaults that terrorists either have been "trained" or "directed" to pursue in New York.
They include:
Renting "strategically selected" apartments in residential buildings and simultaneously igniting gas lines "to cause a catastrophic explosion and building collapse."
Acquiring commercial driver's licenses in order to use tanker trucks as improvised WMDs.
Engaging in "acts of sabotage" against "manufacturing/storage sites, railroads/subways and energy production" facilities.
"Relentlessly" trying to use airplanes as "airborne WMDs."
The memo adds that a truck bomb was the "preferred" method for detonating a "large ... improvised explosive device."
Browne noted that warnings related to terrorists acquiring commercial driver's licenses were based on the case of Iyman Faris, 34, a Pakistani-born American who, police said, plotted to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge last year.
Faris had a trucker's license and had cased the bridge but ultimately told his handlers the "weather was too hot" in New York - a reference to the city's tight security.
Similarly, Browne said suggestions that Al Qaeda was looking to blow up apartments came from the "Al Qaeda Handbook," a guide for would-be terrorists that was submitted as evidence in 2001 as part of the federal trial into embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.