NYPD's Spooks Didn't Find Two of the Most Significant Terrorists to Attempt Attacks on NYC

"For [retired CIA officer David] Cohen [who pioneered this program], there was only one way to measure success: "They haven't attacked us," he said in a 2005 deposition. He said anything that was bad for terrorists was good for NYPD. Granted, Cohen made that statement in 2005. But, first of all, it's no longer true that "they haven't attacked us." The Faisal Shahzad attempt last year may have been unsuccessful, but it is an example of an attack launched with international support."

"Yet neither the NYPD (nor, for that matter, the FBI) had any clue about Shahzad before he attacked. That may be perfectly understandable for the NYPD. After all, Shahzad lived in Connecticut. He used a hawala (the guy who ran it just signed a plea deal), but that was in Long Island, not the City. So the few hints that Shahzad might attack were outside of NYPD's jurisdiction. The AP article notes the NYPD's spooks operate far outside of the city, but"

The NYPD created an intelligence service focused on Muslim communities that adopted community-mapping techniques modeled on Israeli methods used in the West Bank. The program used informants inside mosques without predication, sought potential recruits such as Pakistani taxi drivers with fraudulent licenses, and shredded documents to preserve secrecy. The unit shared intelligence with the CIA through unofficial channels and had a CIA operative embedded while remaining on the CIA payroll. Program success was measured by the absence of attacks, but the Faisal Shahzad attempt and jurisdictional limits exposed intelligence and coverage failures.

Read at Emptywheel