Terrorists still fixate on mass transit, and the trains and ferries thousands of New Yorkers ride each day offer enticing targets, a counterterror veteran warned Congress Wednesday.
“They are obsessed with the transportation sector of our infrastructure,” Bush homeland security adviser Fran Townsend told Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.), presiding over a House hearing on threats after Osama Bin Laden’s killing.
“Trains represent a real opportunity for them, by the way also ferries, and I mention that because the chairman knows ferries are very big in terms of transportation into Manhattan in the morning,” Townsend said.
Al Qaeda favors “soft” targets that can’t function under heavy security, and tends “to revert to things that they’ve done in the past,” Townsend said.
Al Qaeda and sympathizers have struck commuter trains and buses in London and Madrid, while in 2006 a Philippine affiliate bombed a ferry in Manila Bay, killing 116 people.
Townsend credited the NYPD with doing a “tremendous” job mounting unannounced patrols in the city’s subways to spook plotters. Proposed cuts in federal grants threaten those patrols, NYPD brass told King earlier this month.
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