New York Takes Steps to Thwart Paris-Like At acks
trike their police, security and intelligence
members, as well as their treacherous agents.” That chilling threat to
attack law enforcement of icers, posted online by Islamic extremists after the deadly Paris attacks, has put New York City police on high alert.
An internal police memo
on the threat warned of icers to “remain alert and consider tactics at all times while on patrol.”
The NYPD has been
waging a quiet, grim battle to thwart further terror ever since the ISIS threat emerged. For the world’s largest police
force, that means adjusting to random assaults by rogue operators targeting soft targets, such as schools, tourists, and shopping malls. The bloody attacks in Sydney, Paris, and Belgium vividly
references to the global war on terror “suggested that he remains uninter- ested in correcting his mistakes.” Rather than change course the ad-
ministration doubled down, facilitat- ing the release of suspected Yemeni terrorist Ali al-Marri, who received a hero’s welcome upon returning to his native Qatar. Prosecutors had evidence linking
al-Marri with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, and a plot to lace U.S. municipal water supplies with cyanide. But his status as a Bush-era enemy combatant made him an em- barrassment to the Obama admin- istration. So al-Marri was allowed to walk, based on a judge’s order. The news of al-Marri’s release
led Andrew McCarthy, the National Review online author who success- fully prosecuted the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, to remark: “He’s back in Qatar, with plenty of jihad left in him.”
Al-Marri’s repatriation to Yemen
brought to mind the 2009 release of another obscure Islamic extrem- ist, this one from a U.S. detention camp in Iraq. Offi cials did not see the man, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as a
52 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2015
demonstrated just how deadly such attacks can be. Twice in the past nine
months, a well-placed law enforcement source tells Newsmax, the NYPD has thwarted “lone-wolf” plots.
serious threat. But within fi ve years, he would rise to become the leader of ISIS, the group now generally consid- ered a bigger threat than al-Qaida. As al-Baghdadi left his prison cell, he of- fered some words to the U.S. soldiers, most of whom were New Yorkers from Long Island. “I’ll see you in New York,” he said cryptically. That message was not unlike the
one ISIS left in January after hacking into the social media accounts of U.S. Central Command. “AMERICAN SOLDIERS,” it stated in all caps. “WE ARE COMING.”
¿ ¿ ¿ To understand why America’s
counterterrorism eff ort seems to sud- denly be on the ropes, one must crack open a couple of books written by two men who were in the room when the critical decisions were made: former secretaries of defense Leon Panetta and Robert Gates. In an administration so allergic to
transparency that it has tapped jour- nalists’ phones, the memoirs by Gates and Panetta are brutally candid. Both portray a visceral divide within the
Both centered on New York City synagogues, and both were neutralized “well before execution phase,” according to that source, who added the attacks “were from unaf iliated lone wolves who were determined to inflict as much damage as possible.” New York City Police
Commissioner Bill Bratton declined to comment on the unreported attacks. But he recently told
NBC News that New York is entering “one of the most significantly dangerous periods ever seen since 9/11, 13 years ago.” In response, of icials in the Big Apple are on high alert. According to the Newsmax
administration between West Wing operatives more focused on political optics, and a national-security appa- ratus bent on defending the bureau- cracy, winning the wars, and inter- dicting terror. “All too early in the administra-
tion,” wrote Gates, “suspicion and distrust of senior military offi cers by senior White House offi cials — in- cluding the president and vice presi- dent — became a big problem for me as I tried to manage the relationship between the commander in chief and his military leaders.” This political ambivalence was
perhaps best refl ected in President Obama’s announcement of a with- drawal date from Afghanistan while unveiling the surge. This helped lead Gates to conclude by early 2010 that the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.” Whether this controversial char-
acterization from a Bush adminis- tration holdover was fair may be less telling than the fact that Gates, the consummate team player and Belt- way insider, apparently believed it.
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