Holland Tunnel Targeted in Terror Plot

As London remembers the first anniversary of its deadly subway attacks, the Daily News reveals that jihadists were plotting to blow up the Holland Tunnel in order to flood lower Manhattan. The plot was apparently in the works months ago, with a "pledge" of support from Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, with hopes, as the News puts it, "to drown the Financial District as New Orleans was by Hurricane Katrina." Well, given government response to floods, it's not surprising that terrorists would want to emulate disasters from nature.

The FBI found the plotting through Internet chat rooms, and U.S. officials have arrested one of the plotters and are still looking to find the others. One counterterrorism source doubted if enough explosives could really blast the Holland Tunnel and would do enough damage to flood the Financial District. What can damage the Financial District: A hurricane.

Update: Senator Schumer and Congressman King confirm the terror plot, but now say the plotting was to bomb the Lincoln Tunnel. And flood Midtown?

Londonist is looking back at what happened.

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By Jen Chung in News on July 7, 2006 8:14 AM

Comments [rss]

Brightliner

I'm not so sure I would blame the errors on the Feds. It's possible, but also possible it's the newspaper writers, who aren't exactly Albert Einstein. Just look at the article: the tunnel is protected by "cast iron steel"? What the heck is that? It's either cast iron or steel. Or it could be they were just describing what the terrorists hoped would happen, even though it couldn't. I'm sure if anyone was determined enough and smart enough to put a huge shaped charge in a truck, they could put a decent-size hole in the top of the tunnel through the riverbed. Imagine the water pouring through a five or ten-foot hole. The tunnel would be flooded in no time and would be difficult to patch and pump out. Didn't Sylvester Stallone do a movie like that a few years ago?

don

Note that this is the same terror plot that John Updike came up with for his new novel "Terrorist." Hmmmm....do terrorists read middlebrow literary fiction?

drewo

This "plot" ranks alongside the one about the guy who was going to single handedly cut the cables on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Aspiring fantasy writers may find there are job openings in our Federal government.

Mike B.

So terrorists wanted to do something that, even were it possible, would not have had the intended effect? And they were caught because they openly discussed their plot on the internet?

Stop the presses.