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By Fred Burton
Reports emerged last week in New York City that the U.S. government had thwarted an apparent plot to bomb the Holland Tunnel and flood lower Manhattan. Though there was some question about some of the details of the plot -- as initially published by the New York Daily News -- the report prompted FBI and metropolitan law enforcement authorities, along with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to call a press conference and discuss the case publicly.
According to the authorities, the target of the plot was not the Holland Tunnel, but rather two commuter rail tunnels running under the Hudson River that connect New York City and New Jersey. Officials at the press conference -- who included Mark Mershon, the special agent in charge of the FBI's New York field office, New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and Samuel J. Plumeri, the director of the New York/New Jersey Port Authority Police Department -- said they had been aware of the plot for about a year. At their request, authorities in Lebanon arrested a man at the center of their investigation -- 31-year-old Lebanese national Assem Hammoud -- in late April. (Hammoud also uses a nom de guerre, Ameer Andalusi, which was the name originally reported in the Daily News story.) At the press conference, authorities also emphasized that no imminent threat had been posed to the rail tunnels before Hammoud was arrested. As Police Commissioner Kelly put it: "There was a lot of discussion, there was planning being done; but there was no indication that there was any movement toward these facilities." He added, "There is no indication that materials were secured or that specific reconnaissance was done."
The New York tunnels case is interesting to study -- not because anything actually happened, but because of what it reveals about the current state of jihadism in the United States and, even more significantly, the approach the U.S. government is taking in ensuring that potential plots do not give rise to actual attacks in the homeland. As this case clearly demonstrates, the counterterrorism approach has shifted from one based on waiting until a strike is about to be carried out -- and then "making the big case" -- to one based on the concept of pre-emption and taking action at the earliest possible stage.
The New York Tunnels Case
Like other suspects arrested in the United States and Canada, it appears that Hammoud, and the other men he allegedly was conspiring with, conform to what we refer to as the al Qaeda 4.0 model. That is, they appear to be part of a loose but cohesive network of grassroots jihadists who think beyond their immediate area and who have contact with jihadists elsewhere -- usually via the Internet. As we have noted previously, the Internet is both a great enabler and an Achilles' heel for such groups. That appears to have been the case with Hammoud, whose postings in a jihadist chat room brought him to the attention of authorities.
Given the similarities between some aspects of the cases, it would not be beyond the realm of possibility that Hammoud may have had connections to other suspects who have been arrested previously in Canada, Britain and the United States. The investigation into his online activities began last summer, before the suspects in the earlier cases had been arrested, and all were allegedly planning bombings of some type against targets easily within their reach. We have no information to support such speculation, but given the totality of the circumstances and considering the intelligence-sharing between local, federal and foreign law enforcement agencies, it is a plausible theory.
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