Free Republic

Recent reports outlining what Time magazine has called the "untold story" of a cancelled al Qaeda plot against the New York subway system have excited considerable media hype and public consternation. The account is part of Ron Suskind's new book, The One Percent Doctrine, that was excerpted in the June 26 edition of Time. According to Suskind, al Qaeda developed a "revolutionary new WMD device" that would generate cyanide gas, and these weapons -- which he refers to as "mubtakkar" devices -- were to have been planted on subways by operatives who were in place and preparing to act in...

NEW YORK — Two men were arrested Friday night, a little more than two days before the start of the Republican National Convention, accused of conspiring to bomb a subway station and other high-profile targets here. New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, announcing the arrests at a press conference yesterday, said that the suspects — one a Pakistani national, the other a U.S. citizen — had been under surveillance for a year. The two men, identified as Shahawar Matin Siraj, 21, a Pakistani who lives in Queens, and James El Shafay, 19, a U.S. citizen living on Staten Island, were...