A thousand NYPD cops have been assigned to work exclusively on a new "terrorism beat." And, in an unprecedented move, New York has even stationed its own cops overseas... One common sight in the city's fight against terror is a counter-terrorism operation called "a surge." About 100 police cars from all over the city swarm into an area like Times Square. These happen unannounced all over the city... "If you want to use the term shock and awe - when they go to a location, if somebody's watching the location and they're doing type of surveillance, they're not going to miss this type of deployment," Giordano said... Mayor Bloomberg says the purpose of it all is to intimidate... Ray Kelly became commissioner four months after 9/11. His mandate: to transform the NYPD. He created a Counter-Terrorism Bureau, dramatically expanded the Intellig Ence Division, and increased the number of cops working on terrorism with the FBI from 17 to 120... He did it, in part, by hiring [David Cohen] and [Michael Sheehan], two of the most experienced people in U.S. intelligence. Before becoming the NYPD's intelligence chief, Cohen was America's spymaster - the Director of Operations at the CIA, where he served 35 years. He had been out of the intelligence business for two years when Kelly brought him back in. "We show up every morning with that core assumption in our mind, that if they could, they'd like to come back. Can they? Our job is to raise the bar and make it more difficult, if not impossible," says Cohen... The source of all those details is Mordecai Dzikansky, a New York City Detective based in Israel - one of 10 New York cops stationed overseas. The NYPD calls them its "early warning system." Asked why the NYPD needs officers overseas, Kelly says, "To ask the New York question. And the New York question is, 'Is there anything, any piece of information that's going to help us better protect this city?'".."For example, as a result of the July 7 attacks in LonDon: One of the key ingredients was hydrogen peroxide. Operation Nexus determined who produces the stuff and who they deliver it to," Cohen explains. "We put in place a program to contact each level to tell them what anomalies they should be watching for, and it trickles all the way down to the local hairdresser shop."... So far, the price tag for all that "self-help" has been nearly $1 billion, most of it New York own money... Just how priceless, the police say, has been shown twice a year and a half ago when a tip from an NYPD informant uncovered a plot to bomb the (Herald Square) SubWay station outside Macy's Department store, and once before in 2003, when a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge by AlQaeda operative [Iyman Farris] was uncovered. Cohen is confident that these plots would not have been uncovered without the changes the commissioner wanted. (Dealing With Terrorism)

Official page on [Counter Terrorism] units.

User Options Recent Changes Help Page