New York – A reported plot to bomb city subways with remote-controlled explosives has not been corroborated after days of investigation, law-enforcement officials said Sunday as concerns began to ease.
Interrogations of suspects captured in Iraq last week after an informant’s tip about bomb-laden suitcases and baby carriages have yet to yield evidence that the plot was real, officials said.
“The intelligence community has been able to determine that there are very serious doubts about the credibility of this specific threat,” Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said.
Homeland Security officials have been skeptical about the threat since it was publicly announced Thursday, but New York officials who were more assertive about the potential danger last week also appeared to be softening their assessment.
“I believe, in the short term, we’ll have a much better sense of whether or not this has, you know, real substance to it,” Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said on CNN’s “Late Edition.”
A Homeland Security memo said the plot might be set in motion on or around Sunday.
The city has no immediate plans to pull extra officers out of the subway system or reduce the number of bag searches, according to Kelly and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Police doubled the number of daily bag checks and sent thousands of extra officers into the transit system.
Bloomberg said he had no regrets.
“We’ve got to take every threat seriously, and that is what we are going to do,” he said.
The informant who prompted the plot investigation has provided a mix of true and false information in past investigations, Kelly told CNN. But “this threat was very, very specific. It had specific time, specific object and modality. So, you know, we had to do what we did,” he said.
The informant told U.S. authorities that a group of men were plotting to attack New York’s subways with timed bombs. U.S. forces in Iraq arrested two plotters Thursday, and a third suspect was arrested Friday.
