Penn Station partially closed
BY THE ASSCOCIATED PRESS AND NEWSDAY STAFF
STAFF WRITERS
October 7, 2005, 10:13 AM EDT
As the city coped with news of a terrorist threat, a section of Penn Station was shut down Friday morning due to an unspecified problem, with police dogs and National Guard members patrolling the transportation hub beneath Madison Square Garden.
"We do have a police situation at Penn Station," said Amtrak spokeswoman Marice Golgoski, who declined to elaborate. "The Amtrak police and the NYPD are involved."
The entrance at West 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue was closed off with yellow crime scene tape and a portion of the concourse above the tracks was also sealed to the public.
Members of the National Guard were on the scene, along with city police and dogs.
Commuters heading west out of the station were forced to use the exit on 31st Street.
According to Golgoski, Amtrak was still boarding some trains and operating some ticket windows despite the problems. New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road also operate in and out of the midtown Manhattan facility.
The incident came the morning after Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced increased security on the city's subway system due to reports of a possible terrorist threat.
Police flooded the city's subways Thursday night amid disputed intelligence reports that terrorists with links to Iraq had planned to possibly bomb the system with baby strollers fitted with explosives -- a threat the mayor called the most specific yet against the nation's largest mass transit network.
Buses, ferries, the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North and NJ Transit also teemed with patrols, as police stepped up random searches of passenger belongings to a level not seen since the days following the July bombings of the London underground.
Commuters were asked to limit taking belongings on board trains, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg specifically asking riders to curtail large strollers and bulky bags or packages. He gave no timetable for the heightened alert.
A law enforcement source later said would-be terrorists had looked into using strollers to ferry explosives.
Speaking at an evening news conference, the mayor gave few details about the threat or how officials learned of it.
"Suffice it to say that its importance was enhanced above the normal level by the detail that was available to us," he said.
On condition of anonymity, city and federal officials gave varying accounts of the threat's origins. A city official said an informant tipped them off to the alleged plot, while a federal source said the information came after a raid in Iraq.
By Thursday, two of the three operatives whose names had been provided were arrested in Iraq, according to a city official with knowledge of the case. A federal source said up to 19 people could be involved.
But other federal officials downplayed the threat altogether. The Department of Homeland Security said the intelligence community believes the information is of "doubtful" credibility.
Still, the department shared the information with New York officials as a precaution and to allow them take whatever security steps they desired. But Homeland Security said it has no plans to alter the national threat level or that in New York, which already operates at a high level of security.
The beefed-up measures came as both Bloomberg and President George W. Bush coped with their own political battles. Bloomberg, who is facing re-election, had been invited to appear at a mayoral debate Thursday evening, but declined -- a decision that has brought him considerable criticism.
And only hours before the announcement, Bush, facing saggin poll numbers, delivered a speech insisting the battle against terrorism must be waged through fighting insurgents in Iraq.
Police and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials waited to release the information until Thursday evening, leaving even NYC Transit unaware of the threat until word leaked out and prompting some to complain the public should have known earlier.
As to why riders were not previously alerted, Mark J. Mershon, assistant director in charge of the city's FBI office, said: "We were confident the public was not at risk during that time frame."
He added that "classified operations have in fact partially disrupted this threat."
While some riders said they were nervous, Frank Broomes, a loan closer for a hedge fund from Park Slope interviewed at Grand Central, said he would not alter his riding. "You're not going to find out about it before it happens," Broomes said. "You take risks in life everyday."
At the Huntington LIRR station, Flushing resident Greg Lee, 29, said that police had asked to look his small duffel bag. "They never do that," said Lee, visiting relatives.
The subway, used by 4.5 million people daily, has long been seen as an inviting target for terrorists. In August 2004, days before the beginning of the Republican National Convention, two men were arrested on charges of plotting to bomb the Herald Squarestation.
But Bloomberg said this was the first time that agents received detailed intelligence indicating terrorists were zeroing in on the subway system.
"Some of the sources had more information that would lead one to believe that it was not the kind of thing that appears in the intelligence community every day
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