Bomb tunnel, flood city. Many moons ago (circa 1995) I used to commute into NYC every day from Jersey. Like the rest of the lumpenproles taking the bus in the freezing predawn twilight, I would silently muse to myself the catastrophe that would be wrought if there ever was a tunnel collapse. Stallone made a movie in that vein and Stephen King had a character fighting through the darkened tunnel in a post-apocalyptic New York. I never liked when we stopped dead or even inched slowly through and not just because of the fumes that would be enough to give you a hell of a headache. I used to imagine the deluge of water that would submerge large sections of Manhattan's west side. If you look at the link, you can see what the likely path of the water would be. What the map doesn't tell you is that the 34th street station is a very large complex and massive amounts of water would flood the A,C,E and B,D lines immediately and severely. That water would follow the lines downtown and flood every station from 34th to the Staten Island Ferry. (In my day that would have ended at the WTC complex and ultimately Battery Park City.)

My point is not that I'm some great pontificator, rather that if I thought of it, it's very likely that people much smarter than me who's job is to worry about these things, thought about it too.

As a typical New York born Irish kid, I have numerous family members in the NYPD. One of them is on the ESU and a part of the "Hercules Teams" mentioned in the link is an interesting guy and gives me drips and drabs of info from time to time. One thing that garnered my interest was the "ghost squad" as they are known by other NYPD bretheren. I believe the author of the article is incorrect and the Intelligence bureau existed long before the 9/11 attacks. They've been around for decades. It was only after 9/11 that the CT portfolio was given its own command. In the 70's and 80's they were more focused on espionage and worked closely with the FBI to keep tabs on them. After the first WTC attack they game changed. New York realized very quickly they had a problem and reoriented to face the threat. The problem they couldn't solve was across the river. Jersey City (the other end of the tunnels) is a hotbed of Salafist mosques and has been for some time. The 1993 bombers were based in Jersey City. The lack of cooperation between Jersey City PD and NYPD is often cited as a major reason the attacks were able to be carried out in the first place. Throw in the Port Authority's control over the tunnels themselves and you have people stepping all over each other. The revamped Intel unit at NYPD was the answer. It is like a combined command over Port Authority, NYPD and in some respects, JCPD.

Intel does not have formal authority over JCPD as that would be well, extralegal, but they were given a directive from the Governor Corzine that they answer to Intel on matters of intelligence and they share everything they get with Intel (but that is by no mean reciprocal). My brother lives in JC and frequently tells me about the effectiveness of the CT programs. The mayor of JC (under the strong suggestion of Intel) set up a tipline for people to report suspicious activity. The program has yielded huge returns for very little money. In the past, JCPD would be hamstrung by community concerns when investigating suspicious businesses for fear of bias claims. The tipline allows them to circumvent this. Any tips they receive are routed to NYPD Intel which then takes the heat for any busts or investigations that are politically problematic. I've personally seen the changes firsthand.

Example: There was a deli near the PATH station that was never open. Never. Not during lunch nor during dinner rush yet always had a "Help Wanted" sign in the window. After a call to the hot line (not by me) they found the owners were sponsoring people of questionable backgrounds for work as "ethnic chefs".

Another was a car repair shop that was perpetually silent. My brother pointed this out to me. We walked past it and there were a number of men sitting around cars with the hoods up drinking tea or coffee. There was not one sound of auto repair from inside. My brother told me that not only was this always the case, the same cars were there day after day. They were closed one day after a call to the hot line. This time it wasn't terror related, it was mob related. The shop was a front for gambling and possibly drug dealing.

Despite our national lack of will, the fight against terrorism is ongoing and in some cases, aggressively. The people closest to the fight know the stakes and how dangerous it is to give up or tone it down.

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