FBI Disrupts "Aspirational" Plot To Bomb NYC Tunnels, Flood City

Damned feds monitoring our private mass-murder conspiracy internet conversations. Doesn't the First Amendment say something about the right to conspire not being infringed?

Authorities have disrupted foreign terrorists plotting to attack the transportation tunnels running beneath the Hudson River between New York and New Jersey, the FBI announced Friday. "For most of the year, we have been focusing on a group of al-Qaida followers who have targeted the Hudson River tubes," FBI Assistant Director Mark J. Mershon said Friday. "We believe we intercepted this group early in their plotting and, in fact, the plan has largely been disrupted."

Mershon confirmed that one suspect, Assem Hammoud, was in custody in Lebanon and facing criminal charges.

Lebanese authorities, working with U.S. law enforcement agencies, last month arrested Hammoud, a Beirut native and al-Qaida operative who admitted to plotting a terror attack in New York City, a senior Lebanese security official said Friday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

...

In the latest case, a federal official said FBI agents monitoring Internet chat rooms used by extremists learned of the plot in recent months and determined that tunnels were possibly being targeted after investigators pieced together code words from their conversations.

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One U.S. official called the plot "largely aspirational" and described the Internet conversations as mostly extremists discussing and conceptualizing the plot. The official said no money had been transferred, nor had other similar operational steps been taken.

The left will predictably either ignore this or deride the arrest as meaningless, just members of the Religion of Peace (TM) blowing off steam by light-heartedly plotting the deaths of thousands.

Because it's pretty unlikely jihadists would ever attack a transportation system.

Why, they haven't done anything like that in a full year.

Update: FBI says leak and publication of plot details has hurt the investigation, and may prevent the FBI from apprehending the rest of the plotters.

The MSM.

Strong. Tough.

And... Speculation that SWIFT disclosures compromised the investigation, too.

As Allah notes-- Gee, these terrorists "already knew" we were monitoring their internet chats. And yet they plotted on the internet anyway.

How can this be?

posted by Ace at 01:10 PM

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