Homeland Security Probes Possible Terror Threat Leak
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Homeland Security Department has launched an internal investigation into whether department officials privately tipped off relatives or friends about last week’s subway terrorism threat before the public learned of the news, officials said yesterday.
The probe was announced just as Governor Pataki and the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, raised concerns about the possible leak, first reported in the Daily News.
“Obviously it’s disturbing; it’s just not right,” Governor Pataki said at a Midtown Manhattan news conference. “The public should know at the same time.”
Mr. Kelly confirmed a report in yesterday’s editions of the Daily News that police had obtained copies of personal e-mails that alluded to an alleged Al Qaeda plot, and had forwarded them to federal officials. A Homeland Security spokesman, Russ Knocke, said that an internal investigation was under way.
When FBI and police officials went public with the threat on October 6, Homeland Security downplayed it, saying it was “of doubtful credibility.” After four days of high alert, local officials announced Monday there was no clear evidence an attack would be carried out and scaled back the protection.
“It’s ironic that on the one hand the department is saying this is not a credible threat and then, if these e-mails are true, people within the department with access to classified information felt it was worth contacting their own families,” Rep. Peter King, a Republican of New York, and chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said.
The e-mails began circulating on October 3 – three days before Mr. Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg announced they were putting thousands of extra police officers on patrol in the subways in response to the possible plot to bomb the subway using briefcases or baby strollers packed with explosives.
The Daily News story quotes one e-mail – purportedly penned by the unnamed son of a high-ranking Homeland Security official – in which he warns the recipients, “The only information I can pass on to you is that everyone should at all costs not ride the subway for the next two weeks in major areas of NYC.”
