Oct 8, 2009 8:13 pm US/Eastern
NYC Terror Plot: Did NYPD Hide Info From Public?
Reporting
Lou Young
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Federal agents get ready to search the apartment of Najibullah Zazi in Aurora, Colorado, Sept. 16.
AP
NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly faced tough questions Thursday night about the terror plot uncovered in New York City. The biggest question is whether the public was kept in the dark.
Sources tell CBS 2 News that Najibullah Zazi was firing off instructions to unknown accomplices on his now infamous cross-country ride from Colorado to New York last month.
Included in those instructions was the order to purchase additional bomb-making chemicals that have still not been located, despite numerous raids and a nationwide hunt for additional suspects.
So why wasn't the public warned more forcefully at the time? CBS 2's Lou Young asked Police Commissioner Kelly about that Thursday.
"I don't think it would necessarily be helpful to the public, in terms of protecting themselves," Commissioner Kelly said.
But not all New Yorkers are satisfied with that answer.
"I don't think they gave us enough information," Dix Hills resident Nick Diacamus said. "I think there's more to the story, but they try to hide stuff here and there."
To gauge how seriously the city took the threat, police sources have given CBS 2 News some startling numbers to take a look at. 100 additional detectives were assigned to the case in the days before Zazi was arrested, and that's in addition to the 127 detectives permanently assigned to the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force. The city's actions, they say, speak louder than anything the commissioner could have said.
Kelly said again Thursday that the Zazi plot has been thwarted, and he believes there is no more danger from it.
An expert in terrorism says not to expect much more than that.
"The public cannot do anything just by knowing that there is a grave danger, and it's not like the public can do anything in a proactive way," Professor Maki Haberfeld, of John Jay College, said. "It's really a very thin line that we walk here."
That's the world we live in – where truth is a closely held commodity.
Much of the public information on the Zazi plot has come from leaks of classified information. The police commissioner says that's something he simply won't do.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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