It's the Intelligence, Stupid: MIPT Commentary Regarding NY Airport Terror Plot

June 15, 2007

In a textbook case of terrorism prevention, the NY Police Department and the FBI arrested three conspirators planning an attack on the pipeline supplying jet fuel to Kennedy Airport. A fourth is on the run. This case will no doubt be added to the curriculum of the FBI training academy at Quantico, Virginia, and it should be taught at Berkeley too.

The men, all self-radicalized Muslims, would plant explosives on the pipeline, detonating the massive fuel tanks they feed, sending rivers of flame beneath the passenger terminals.

Russell DeFreitas, a former Kennedy employee, used his knowledge of the airport, supplemented by Internet satellite photographs, to select the target locations. Abdul Kadir, an engineer by training, would develop the explosives and chose the most vulnerable location on the pipeline for detonation. The group had contact with Jihadists in South America and the Caribbean, and an informant in the group helped break the case.

Rewind: a plan to attack a critical and vulnerable asset causing mayhem and death, and one that, because of its sheer size, cannot be guarded. Targets were surveilled by the terrorists in real time; should we encourage every person in command of his faculties to look for anomalous behavior (See something? Say something)? Targets were surveilled on the net; should we monitor Internet activity on sensitive web sites? Fellow Jihadists abroad were consulted; do we need the NSA “domestic spying” program? And an informant, one of the most powerful and controversial tools for intelligence gathering, broke the case.

The number of soft targets like the Buckeye Pipeline are too numerous to count or to protect with guards and fences. Only by using intelligence will we continue to prevent the next and the next 9/11.

Let me repeat-rivers of flame under eight of the busiest air passenger terminals in the world. That’s why it’s the intelligence, stupid.

- Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism

Contingency Planning