Terror plot against NYC transportation system thwarted

[pinky]

http://www.comcast.net/news/national...vqh=itn_tunnel

FBI Disrupts New York City Tunnel Plot
By PAT MILTON, Associated Press Writer
58 minutes ago

NEW YORK - Authorities have disrupted planning by foreign terrorists who wanted to attack the New York City transportation network, the federal government announced Friday.

It did not appear that the city's tunnels were ever at serious risk.

"We have disrupted a terrorist network that was in the planning stages of an attack," a statement released by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security said. The agencies said the FBI had been monitoring Internet chat rooms and cited the arrest of a key suspect by Lebanese authorities as a significant break in the investigation...

In the current case, a federal official said FBI agents monitoring Internet chat rooms used by extremists learned in recent months of the plot, and that they determined tunnels were possibly being targeted after investigators pieced together code words from their conversations...

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said, "This is one instance where intelligence was on top of its game and discovered the plot when it was just in the talking phase."

..."At this time we have no indication of any imminent threat to the New York transportation system, or anywhere else in the U.S.," Richard Kolko, Washington-based FBI special agent, said in a statement to Associated Press Radio.

Another U.S. official called the plot "largely aspirational" and described the Internet conversations as mostly extremists discussing and conceptualizing the plot. The official said no money had been transferred, nor had other similar operational steps been taken...

Note that they were not discovered through warrantless phone taps or examination of financial records, but merely through internet chat rooms.