FBI foils plot to blow up Holland Tunnel

POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Wednesday, July 12, 2006 23:46
VIEWED: 3397
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AURAPTOR

Friday, July 7, 2006 2:05 PM

And the objective would have never worked, even had they gotten the final stage.

Good plan, experts say, except it wouldn't work

BY ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Any plot to flood lower Manhattan by blowing up the Holland Tunnel is doomed to fail, experts say - because it would have to defy the laws of physics.

If the Hudson River surged into a ruptured tunnel, experts told the Daily News, the water would only rise to its own level - and might not even reach street level in the city.

"It might flood the Holland Tunnel, but that's all it's going to flood," said Allan McDuffie, an Army Corps of Engineers expert on New York flood patterns. "It's not going to get any higher than the level of the surrounding water."

The sidewalk at the entrance to the Jersey-bound Holland Tunnel is exactly 10 feet above sea level, federal maps show.

The lowest points in the surrounding Tribeca neighborhood are the same height - along Canal St. from the West Side Highway to Wooster St., and in a nest of streets surrounding the Soho Grand hotel.

But even though Canal St. runs the route of an old canal, flooding experts say it's only vulnerable to flooding from heavy rains or coastal storms - not from the river.

"There are ways that the city could get flooded, especially lower Manhattan, but I don't think this is one of them," said Irwin Redlener, head of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and author of the forthcoming "Americans at Risk."

"It seems a little far-fetched. It's not like the water is above the island," Redlener said of the plot. "It doesn't quite make sense."

The city's Office of Emergency Management agrees.

"There's nothing in lower Manhattan that's below sea level - and that's what would make it susceptible," said OEM spokesman Jarrod Bernstein. "It would flood the Holland Tunnel, and that's it."

Originally published on July 7, 2006

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy. - Joss

" They don't like it when you shoot at 'em. I worked that out myself. "

HERO

Friday, July 7, 2006 4:03 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
And the objective would have never worked, even had they gotten the final stage.

If the bad guys had any real brains, we'd be in real trouble. Imagine if we could have secretly tapped their phones or tracked their bank money...we might have learned something.

And were are all the liberals to say "Gotta hand it to Bush, he's doing a great job keeping people from blowing up parts of New York." Never mind, they're too busy imagining a way to claim this plot was phoney.

H

ERIC

Friday, July 7, 2006 4:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:

Imagine if we could have secretly tapped their phones or tracked their bank money...we might have learned something.

Both of those things can be done just as effectively with a warrant as without.

Quote:

And were (sic) are all the liberals to say "Gotta hand it to Bush, he's doing a great job keeping people from blowing up parts of New York." Never mind, they're too busy imagining a way to claim this plot was phoney.

Shrub's an FBI agent now? Got sick of playing in his flight suit?

HERO

Friday, July 7, 2006 6:20 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Eric:
Both of those things can be done just as effectively with a warrant as without.

I don't doubt it, in fact the bank tracking was with a warrant. Shame the programs arent "secret", which was the operative word in my comment. The liberals are big on making sure the enemy knows exactly what we are capable of...in the interests of protecting us from imagined infringment on our liberty they risk not so imagined loss of life.

H

RUE

Friday, July 7, 2006 6:45 PM

Ho hum. People got wise to the peach merging on melon shade of alert. So now Bush is manipulating news releases of all the things he's 'saved' the US from. But people are mostly burned out and just ... don't ... care ...

CITIZEN

Friday, July 7, 2006 7:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Quote:
Originally posted by Eric:
Both of those things can be done just as effectively with a warrant as without.

I don't doubt it, in fact the bank tracking was with a warrant. Shame the programs arent "secret", which was the operative word in my comment. The liberals are big on making sure the enemy knows exactly what we are capable of...in the interests of protecting us from imagined infringment on our liberty they risk not so imagined loss of life.

H

Hero, advocating creating an American KGB, but it's okay, only baddies will be taken to the 'gulags' and by that I mean people in Gulags are automatically bad...

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

RUE

Friday, July 7, 2006 8:01 PM

Zero,

Why are you so lame? Don't you know that the FISA court issuing these warrants IS secret?

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
Quote:
Originally posted by Eric:
Both of those things can be done just as effectively with a warrant as without.

I don't doubt it, in fact the bank tracking was with a warrant. Shame the programs arent "secret", which was the operative word in my comment. The liberals are big on making sure the enemy knows exactly what we are capable of...in the interests of protecting us from imagined infringment on our liberty they risk not so imagined loss of life.

H

ERIC

Saturday, July 8, 2006 12:13 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Hero:
I don't doubt it, in fact the bank tracking was with a warrant. Shame the programs arent "secret", which was the operative word in my comment.

I agree, it should have been kept secret. If it hadn't been in flagrant violation of the Constitution, it probably would have been kept secret because someone wouldn't have felt the need to blow the whistle.

Quote:

The liberals are big on making sure the enemy knows exactly what we are capable of...in the interests of protecting us from imagined infringment on our liberty they risk not so imagined loss of life.

Well you would have to include flaming liberals Arlen Specter, Anthony Kennedy and Mike DeWine. The infringement isn't imagined. Bush has verifiably committed abuse of power.

PIRATENEWS

Saturday, July 8, 2006 3:18 AM

those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it...

Quote:

Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast

By Ralph Blumenthal
THE NEW YORK TIMES
October 28, 1993 Page A1

Law-enforcement officials were told that terrorists were building a bomb that was eventually used to blow up the World Trade Center, and they planned to thwart the plotters by secretly substituting harmless powder for the explosives, an informer said after the blast.

Quote:

FBI Informant Edam Salem: "...we was start already building the bomb which is went off in the World Trade Center. It was built by supervising supervision from the Bureau and the DA and we was all informed about it and we know that the bomb start to be built. By who? By your confidential informant. What a wonderful great case!"

AUDIO DOWNLOADS:
http://nwo.media.xs2.net/tape/emad%20salem.mp3
http://pdr.autono.net/WhoBombedWTC.html

The informer was to have helped the plotters build the bomb and supply the fake powder, but the plan was called off by an F.B.I. supervisor who had other ideas about how the informer, Emad Salem, should be used, the informer said.

The account, which is given in the transcript of hundreds of hours of tape recordings that Mr. Salem secretly made of his talks with law- enforcement agents, portrays the authorities as being in a far better position than previously known to foil the February 26th bombing of New York City's tallest towers.

The explosion left six people dead, more than a thousand people injured, and damages in excess of half-a-billion dollars. Four men are now on trial in Manhattan Federal Court (on charges of involvement) in that attack.

Mr. Salem, a 43-year-old former Egyptian Army officer, was used by the Government (of the United States) to penetrate a circle of Muslim extremists who are now charged in two bombing cases: the World Trade Center attack, and a foiled plot to destroy the United Nations, the Hudson River tunnels, and other New York City landmarks. He is the crucial witness in the
second bombing case, but his work for the Government was erratic, and for months before the World Trade Center blast, he was feuding with th F.B.I.

Supervisor `Messed It Up'

After the bombing, he resumed his undercover work. In an undated transcript of a conversation from that period, Mr. Salem recounts a talk he had had earlier with an agent about an unnamed F.B.I. supervisor who, he said, "came and messed it up." "He requested to meet me in the hotel,"
Mr. Salem says of the supervisor.

"He requested to make me to testify, and if he didn't push for that, we'll be going building the bomb with a phony powder, and grabbing the people who was involved in it. But since you, we didn't do that."

The transcript quotes Mr. Salem as saying that he wanted to complain to F.B.I. Headquarters in Washington about the Bureau's failure to stop the bombing, but was dissuaded by an agent identified as John Anticev.

Mr. Salem said Mr. Anticev had told him,

"He said, I don't think that the New York people would like the things out of the New York Office to go to Washington, D.C."

Another agent, identified as Nancy Floyd, does not dispute Mr. Salem's account, but rather, appears to agree with it, saying of the `New York people':

"Well, of course not, because they don't want to
get their butts chewed."

Quote:

FBI: But ah basically nothing has changed. I'm just telling you for my own sake that nothing, that this isn't a salary but you got paid regularly for good information. I mean the expenses were a little bit out of the ordinary and it was really questioned. Don't tell Nancy I told you this. (Nancy Floyd is another FBI agent who worked with Salem in his informant capacity. The second tape obtained by the SHADOW is of a telephone conversation between Salem and Floyd -Ed.)

SALEM: Well, I have to tell her of course.

FBI: Well then, if you have to, you have to.

SALEM: Yeah, I mean because the lady was being honest and I was being honest and everything was subm

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CAUSAL

Saturday, July 8, 2006 3:27 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
So now Bush is manipulating news releases of all the things he's 'saved' the US from. But people are mostly burned out and just ... don't ... care ...

I just don't see why we can't say, "Hooray, the FBI is doing its job!" I'm no great fan of the administration, but to read some of the posts around these boards you'd think that Bush was pure evil, and that nothing positive whatsoever could possibly happen during his administration (unless it was clearly not government-connected). Forgive me, Rue, if it was not your intent, but to look for the bad side of everything in order to blame it on the Bush administration is no better than when the Republicans claim that Bush can do no wrong. Reality is just way more complicated than this.

________________________________________________________________________
I wish I had a magical wish-granting plank.

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