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Home Front: WoT
It's Not 'Cause They're Stupid, It's 'Cause NYC Knows How To Catch Terrorist Plotters
2010-06-20
New York's police commissioner says it's a big mistake to write off failed attacks as the work of incompetents, and he's developed his own intelligence apparatus to make sure they don't succeed.

What rankles Raymond W. Kelly? Two things, he tells me as we sip lukewarm coffee in his conference room on the 14th floor of One Police Plaza, the dilapidated police headquarters overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge.

"It's dangerous to write people off just because they've been arrested," Mr. Kelly warns. "These cases are the result of intelligence information and excellent investigative work at all levels."
The first, New York's police commissioner tells me, is "incompetence," an inescapable fact-of-life, or so it would seem, in any large bureaucracy (he has 50,000 employees). A second is the media's tendency to downplay New York's hard-won victories against terrorism -- the failure or foiling of some 11 serious plots against the city since 2001 -- by describing the would-be perpetrators as incompetent or stupid.
Posted by:trailing wife

#5  That's a flaw that isn't restricted to the MSM.

True, Pappy. I have to plead guilty to numerous occasions. Posting this article was the beginning of fixing that.
Posted by: trailing wife   2010-06-20 22:27  

#4  "It's dangerous to write people off just because they've been arrested," Mr. Kelly warns. "These cases are the result of intelligence information and excellent investigative work at all levels."

...and a lot of Israeli advice.
Posted by: Goober Crealet3411   2010-06-20 22:12  

#3  dilapidated police headquaters.

somehow i doubt the police commisioner of NYC is sitting in dilapidated headquaters.
Posted by: chris   2010-06-20 19:20  

#2  The standard rule of thumb is that bombers are the hardest to catch, because they generally hold all the tactical cards. So unless they foul up with their opsec, they get away.

I knew some EOD whose favorite thought problem was how they could stop a modern city, on a budget. It was the flip side of their job--figuring out how to contend with a smart bomber.

NYCPD has been aware of this since the Mad Bomber, who kept it up for 16 years.
Posted by: Anonymoose   2010-06-20 15:59  

#1  describing the would-be perpetrators as incompetent or stupid

That's a flaw that isn't restricted to the MSM.
Posted by: Pappy   2010-06-20 15:30  

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