Intensive investigations into the attempted bombing of New Yorks’s Times Square continue — and the latest is that the administration is eying a possible international plot. In fact, the “person of interest” reportedly traveled to Pakistan — an American ally that has in recent years become a hotbed of terrorist activity.
The investigation into the Times Square car bomb has started to reveal information that suggests the failed attack was the work of an international plot, a senior administration official told Fox News.
The investigation into the Times Square car bomb has started to reveal information that suggests the failed attack was the work of an international plot, a senior administration official told Fox News.The official could not definitively say whether a foreign conspiracy was behind the incident, but that the body of evidence was moving in that direction.
And there’s this, Fox’s report notes:
The Washington Post first reported that officials were eyeing an international connection. One official told the Post that “some tell-tale signs” have led investigators to look at a “foreign nexus.”
Police, meanwhile, have interviewed the registered owner of the bomb-laden sports-utility vehicle but say he is not a suspect. CBS News reports that the man told investigators he recently sold the vehicle on Craigslist for $1,300 to someone who looked “Middle Eastern” or “Hispanic.” The buyer reportedly paid in $100 bills.
Sources told Fox News that investigators are focusing on the similarities between the failed attack in New York City and both the 2007 attack on Glasgow’s airport in Scotland and the attempted bombing of a London nightclub the same year. Propane gas and gasoline were used in all three incidents.
Here’s a TV report giving an account of a high school student who witnessed the bomb scare incident:
In NYC, Broadway took a hit — a financial hit — last week and some think the bomb scare had something to do with it, the New York Times reports:
Almost all Broadway plays and musicals lost money at the box office last week, with some of the biggest declines occurring at theaters near a car that was found to contain a bomb on Saturday evening. The ensuing evacuation of Times Square could have been a factor in some of the declines, theater industry executives acknowledged, but they said they had no data to confirm such a correlation. The car with the bomb was found on West 45th Street, just west of Seventh Avenue and right outside the Minskoff Theater, where “The Lion King” is playing. Last week “The Lion King” had one of the biggest declines, of $113,440, although the hit show still grossed $1.3 million, third behind “Wicked” and “The Addams Family.” The largest week-to-week decline was for “Mary Poppins” at the New Amsterdam Theater on West 42nd Street, close to Seventh Avenue and some of the most heavily trafficked subway stops in Times Square; some theatergoers said they did not reach their shows on Saturday night because of subway delays and were exchanging their tickets.
Meanwhile, in the past the Obama White House has been blasted for not referring to incidents as terrorists attacks — but there was no hesitation in this case:
The attempted car bombing in New York’s Times Square over the weekend should be categorized as a terrorist attack, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Monday.
“I think anybody that has the type of material that they had in a car in Times Square, I would say that that was intended to terrorize, absolutely,” Gibbs told a White House briefing. “And I would say that whoever did that would be categorized as a terrorists, yes.”
And what if the bomb had gone off? ABC News:
These bombs were left in a location that reveals a harrowing opportunity.
“Fragmentation would’ve gone out in all directions,” Barry said. “A fire wall would’ve encompassed most of this intersection and people would’ve been knocked down and hit with fragmentation. It would’ve been like someone opened up with an AK-47 or several automatic weapons and just started spraying bullets.”
Based on the amount of bomb material, if everything had worked as planned, as many as 500 people could have been killed or injured, according to Barry, who said the bombs were designed as a one-two punch: the fertilizer was held in a metal locker designed to create explosive pressure once detonated. When it burst, fiery fragments of the locker and the car would rocket out the back window at speeds approaching 12,000 miles an hour.
Adding to all this was the second device, holding three propane tanks.
“The use of propane is to enhance the blast effect,” Barry said.
The car was positioned between two sheer stone-faced buildings. That would have actually magnified the effect, ricocheting the blast up the buildings.
Adding to all this was the second device, holding three propane tanks.
“The use of propane is to enhance the blast effect,” Barry said.
The car was positioned between two sheer stone-faced buildings. That would have actually magnified the effect, ricocheting the blast up the buildings.
Meanwhile, he said, “parts of the vehicle would’ve been launched. Past explosions in the city in vehicles we found parts of the vehicle 20 stories up on the roof.”
The blast range would span 2,000 feet in an instant. Then, there would have been a second wave of disaster as all the energy pushed out and then got sucked back in, using the glass and stone peaks of the surrounding buildlngs to horrible effect, sucking the shards back down on top of the helpless masses stranded below, Barry said.
It would have been a sadistically spectacular event with many dead and injured bodies, “high concept” visuals for television that would be beamed worldwide and a high statistical body count.
So this time a major city dodged a car bomb. And next time?
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.