Officials will give a 9/11 security briefing from the NYPD’s headquarters in lower Manhattan on Friday, a day before the city and nation mark the somber 20th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The NYPD will hold the 12:45 p.m. briefing with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mayor Bill de Blasio and law enforcement partners at 1 Police Plaza, where they’ll speak in depth about the security measures.
At his daily briefing on Wednesday, de Blasio said, “there is no specific and credible threat directed at New York City.”
At the briefing, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, John Miller, said that the department is still “treating this as an elevated threat environment” given the significance of the date and recent events.
“We’ve seen the call to action this year be louder and better organized from terrorist groups than we have seen in prior years,” Miller said. “That is probably because this 9/11 remembrance marks the 20th anniversary, but it also comes at the same time as the fall of a U.S.-supported government in Afghanistan, the return of the Taliban and other factors that are stirring those conversations.”
Miller also cited recent propaganda from Al-Qaida glorifying the 9/11 hijackers, as well as recent terrorist attacks, including at the Kabul airport in Afghanistan and at a supermarket in Auckland, New Zealand.
“We operate on the idea that there is a threat out there and that we have to continuously hunt for that before the event, during the event, after the event, and not just at the event, but around the city,” Miller said.
There will be extremely tight security as hundreds of people go to the 9/11 Memorial for a ceremony on Saturday.
(AP)