Plot on N.Y. Tunnels Alleged

U.S. authorities, aided by Lebanon, have disrupted a plot by foreign terrorists to blow up commuter train tunnels beneath the Hudson River that connect Lower Manhattan and New Jersey, FBI officials said Friday.

The alleged plan, involving eight conspirators based in other countries, was “the real deal,” FBI Assistant Director Mark J. Mershon said at a news conference in Manhattan.

Mershon, head of the bureau’s New York field office, said that although no explosives had been purchased by the suspects, “the plotting of the attack had matured to the point where it appeared the individuals were about to move forward, attempt to surveil targets, establish a regimen of attack, and acquire resources” to carry it out.

Three co-conspirators are in custody overseas, Mershon said, including the suspected mastermind, 31-year-old Assem Hammoud of Beirut. Authorities have tentatively identified the other five, Mershon added, and manhunts for them are proceeding.

Lebanese authorities, working with the FBI, arrested Hammoud in April, and he confessed to orchestrating the planned attacks, which were to occur sometime in October or November, according to Mershon and Lebanon’s Interior Ministry.

Hammoud had taken an oath of allegiance, or bayat, to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and faces unspecified terrorism-related charges in Lebanon, Mershon said.

Mershon would not identify the other two suspects in custody or provide additional details of the alleged plot, saying he did not want to jeopardize an investigation that remained active on three continents.

A federal law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the tunnels allegedly were targeted not only to kill many commuters but to severely damage the surrounding area.

“It’s certainly possible that by bombing the train tunnels, the operatives could even have unleashed a severe flood on Lower Manhattan,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because of the case’s highly sensitive nature.

Mershon’s contention that the suspects were about to enter an operational phase of the plot is a matter of some dispute.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a televised interview that the alleged co-conspirators were just “talking to one another” when authorities intervened.

And New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, “There is not one shred of evidence that the plan continued beyond the planning stage. New Yorkers should feel safe.”

Two weeks ago, the FBI arrested seven men in the Miami area on terrorism-related charges. Those arrests have been criticized by some civil libertarians, who say there is little evidence that the men did anything more than discuss the possibility of attacking U.S. targets including Chicago’s Sears Tower.

Although the suspects in the New York tunnel case apparently had not conducted reconnaissance or acquired weapons, federal officials said authorities were convinced that the suspects were preparing to act and that they were far more of a threat than the Miami men.

“It was very serious,” said FBI Supervisory Special Agent Richard Kolko in Washington. “These guys were going to do this.”

The FBI began its investigation a year ago, based on intelligence it received from unspecified sources, Mershon said.

The hastily called news conference came hours after a story about the plot appeared in Friday editions of the New York Daily News, setting many area commuters on edge.

There are two railway tunnels between New Jersey and Lower Manhattan. About 215,000 passengers travel through the system, a subsidiary of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, on a typical workday.

One tunnel curves through the footprint of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

At the news conference, authorities said the historic Holland Tunnel was not the intended target, as the Daily News had reported. Instead, they said the plot focused on bombing the commuter PATH trains.

Friday marked the first anniversary of coordinated London terrorist bombings on three subway trains and a bus, an attack one of the suicide bombers described in a recently released “martyrdom” videotape as just the first planned in the West by Al Qaeda supporters.

The London bombings killed 56 people (including four suicide bombers) and injured about 700 others.

Authorities said Friday that there was no apparent connection between the London bombings and the current case, nor have direct links been established between the suspects in the alleged tunnel plot and Al Qaeda.

But they noted such similarities to the London attack as the targeting of mass transit systems by Islamic militants who either sympathize with or actively support bin Laden and Al Qaeda.

In the current case, Mershon and other authorities said the FBI and Lebanese authorities locked onto the suspects after they discussed the plot in an Internet chat room frequented by Islamic militants.

They attributed the disruption of the alleged plot to a “textbook” cooperative effort among counter-terrorism officials in the U.S., Lebanon and five other countries’ governments.

Hammoud, also known as Amir Andalousli, was arrested in Beirut by members of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces on April 27, the Lebanon Interior Ministry said in a statement Friday. It said Hammoud, a Lebanese national, was plotting “a big terrorist operation against rail tunnels in New York City under the Hudson River.”

“After questioning he confessed ... that he was planning to travel to Pakistan for four months’ training and that the date for the attack was decided to be late in 2006,” the statement said.

It also said Hammoud confessed that he had passed on maps of the target to an unknown number of “his accomplices,” and confessed to belonging to a “radical organization.”

“He was told not to show any religious inclinations while in Lebanon and to give the impression of a playboy, which he did perfectly,” the statement added.

U.S. authorities said the suspects communicated through chat rooms and e-mails in the belief that no one could track them or decipher their messages.

Mershon, flanked by Bloomberg and New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, said that authorities had not planned to disclose Hammoud’s arrest or other elements of the plot disruption, and that the unwanted publicity had “greatly complicated” efforts to catch the five remaining fugitives.

At least one lawmaker was also critical. Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) said in a televised interview that for months he had been receiving regular intelligence briefings on the alleged plot as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

King said, “It would have been better if this had not been disclosed” publicly, so as not to disrupt the investigation and intelligence-gathering effort.

Bloomberg said the case underscored that Al Qaeda and its supporters possessed a global reach and still considered New York City a prime target.

“Coming as it does on the first anniversary of terrorist bombings in London, this is one more reminder that in this world, our safety can be menaced from any corner of the globe,” Bloomberg said. But, he told New Yorkers, “if we retreat to our homes, the terrorists will have won without firing a shot.

“We can’t let that happen, and we won’t let that happen.”

By late Friday, there were some discrepancies about whether any of the alleged plotters had ever been to the United States. At the news conference, Mershon said the FBI believed that none of the principal players had visited the country.

But the Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. issued a report Friday saying Hammoud had traveled to New York and New Jersey on several occasions using a Canadian passport to survey possible targets.

The respected Beirut-based television station also said Hammoud was recruited into Al Qaeda in 1994 while he was in Canada.

Later, an FBI official confirmed that Hammoud had visited the United States at least once. But, the official added, “we have no reason to believe it had anything to do with this plot. So we don’t see any nexus between that visit from several years ago and his activities.”

The FBI official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, would not say whether Hammoud had entered the country on a Canadian passport. The official also would not say whether the ongoing investigation extended into Canada, which has long been considered a haven for terrorists bent on launching attacks on U.S. soil.

News of the alleged plot comes about a month after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced that New York’s annual share of federal anti-terrorism funding would be cut by almost 40% by 2007, whereas smaller cities like Charlotte, N.C., and Omaha would receive increased funding. New York’s political leaders reacted with outrage.

At Friday’s news conference, Bloomberg and Kelly reiterated their frustration.

“We said continually that when you catch a terrorist and find a map in his pocket, it’s always a map of New York, not a map of some other city,” Bloomberg said.

Meyer reported from Washington, Barry from New York. Times special correspondent Rania Abouzeid contributed to this report from Beirut.