Mr. Sternberg, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York, works on security issues related to New York State. The data in the above table will appear in the Journal of Applied Security Research. He is a member of the Board of Directors of SPME, Coordinator of the SPME-UB Chapter and Chair of SPME’s Strategic Planning Committee. For a full copy of this article with accompanying tables in a PDF form, write to Prof. Sternberg at ezs@ap.buffalo.edu

URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/49028

Since the high-rise slaughter of New Yorkers in 2001, no American planes have been commandeered by terrorists, no buildings have been bombed, no subways gassed, no bridges destroyed. Maybe September 11 was just a one-off event. Maybe the terrorist threat is overblown, a mass distraction, manipulated by President Bush and cronies to make Americans feel threatened and cheat them into war.

Except that the record shows otherwise. Since the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, when the contemporary terrorist era began, plots against America have kept up a brisk pace, abated not by flagging terrorist intent but by pre-emption, disruption, arrest, and conviction. As the record shows, the favored victims, the ones over whom terrorists drool, have been New Yorkers.

Publicly known terrorist plots against New York since 1993 total 15, excluding run-of-the-mill sabotage, such as that by animal rights and environmental extremists. The 15 shown on the table include plots for which conspirators have been convicted, plots reliably reported or announced, and alleged plots currently under investigation or trial, as well as five actual attacks. That’s an average of just over one a year.

The landmark plot by the “blind sheik” and his co-conspirators sought to bomb the United Nations, tunnels, bridges, and the FBI office in New York, reportedly on July 4 in 1994. Don’t confuse that with the financial buildings plot of 2004, targeting the Stock Exchange and Citicorp in Manhattan and the Prudential Building in Newark – the suspects in that plot are under indictment, and one already has been convicted in Britain. Nor with the 2006 Hudson River plot meant to detonate bombs in Manhattan-New Jersey tunnels, incidentally killing commuters, while, with some terrorist luck, inundating Lower Manhattan.

Let’s keep the subway plots straight. Now barely remembered, a 1997 scheme sought to detonate pipe bombs in the subway. Don’t confuse this with the reported 2003 Al Qaeda plot to attack subways with cyanide gas containers, nor with the October 2005 alert, based on intelligence, later disputed, of still another subway attack. And there is the 2004 plot to attack the Herald Square subway station, for which the plotter was just last month sentenced at Brooklyn District Court to 30 years.

The airliner plot of 2003, revealed by the White House in 2005, would have hijacked civilian planes to attack East Coast cities. That’s distinct from the 2006 trans-Atlantic aircraft plot in which the suspected conspirators, now being held in Britain, would allegedly have put together a potion of liquid explosives on flights from Britain to this country, including to New York City and Newark airports. Lest we forget, terrorists also shot at yeshiva students on the Brooklyn Bridge and at tourists on the Empire State Building observation deck, killing one each. Another plotter cased the Brooklyn Bridge, hoping to bring it down by cutting the cables.

What’s clear is that New York City has been targeted far more than any other place in America. Why New York? Of course New York’s landmarks represent American freedom, diversity, and enterprise, so that destruction perpetrated here endows a mere war crime with anti-Western, anti-infidel, and anti-capitalist pizzazz.

New York has tall buildings and gracefully suspended bridges, where well-placed bombs can turn the collapsing structure itself into a weapon of mass death. New York has high-occupancy enclosed places, in which germs or chemicals can do concentrated harm before dispersing.

New York supplies a haven of anonymity for the plotters. New York has Jews, whom the terrorists hate. And the subways, airports, buildings, stadiums, and streets are crowded, supplying bountiful opportunities for mass murder.

What’s also clear is that New Yorkers have not been placidly led to slaughter. Through New York and America’s painstaking work of defense, law enforcement, and counterterrorism, most of the plots against the city have failed. Those who would attack us are still plotting, but we have shown that we are vigilant. We have shown that we have the will to persevere while maintaining our way of life and to fight back while preserving our liberties.