Official Says Madrid Bomb Suspect Had N.Y. Sketch

A crude sketch of Grand Central Terminal was found at the home of a suspect in the Madrid train bombings, but was not considered cause for great concern, New York City’s police commissioner said Wednesday.

The sketch “was a very basic schematic,” Commissioner Raymond Kelly said. “It’s not an operational plan. It’s not something that would indicate an immediate threat.”

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported that the drawing and other data were on a computer disk seized about two weeks after the train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people March 11. Spanish police turned the disk over to the FBI and CIA in December.

Kelly said the data -- found on the disk of a laptop computer -- was also shared with the New York Police Department’s counter-terrorism division and city transit officials, who concluded the sketch depicted Grand Central.

The material also included photographs and a drawing of a private building in the city, which Kelly refused to identify. But an analysis found no indication of a terrorism plot, he said.

“We didn’t see it as a threatening piece of information,” he said.

On Wednesday at Grand Central, security appeared to be at a high level as usual, with National Guardsmen, law enforcement officers carrying machine guns, and bomb-sniffing dogs.

“I’m used to this,” said Elaine Weaver, a tourist from England who was passing through the station. “We’re used to bomb scares everywhere. So you’re careful, but it doesn’t deter me.”

The NYPD’s intelligence division studied the bombings in Madrid as a possible template for a New York attack.

The department responded by tightening security in the subways and at train stations. Those measures were in place long before the city received word of the sketch.