NEW YORK — One year after a militant from Connecticut spread panic by driving a bomb-laden SUV into Times Square, New Yorkers, tourists and even the street vendor who alerted police to the smoking vehicle still descend on “The Crossroads of the World” as if it never happened.
Behind the scenes, the New York Police Department and other law enforcement agencies watch for and worry about the next terrorist plot against the city, something they say is certain to come.
Experts say that although al-Qaeda remains a threat, the admitted would-be bomber in the Times Square case represented a modern breed of homegrown terrorist. He had perhaps less formal training and fewer resources than the Sept. 11 attackers, but equal audacity and a willingness to stage a smaller strike that has the power to paralyze a city.
“The old al-Qaeda that we were familiar with after 9/11 was very centrally controlled,” said Randall Larsen, head of the nonprofit Institute for Homeland Security. “Part of the new al-Qaeda is providing training and motivation, and in some cases some money and equipment, to these splinter groups that are around the world.”
Since the May 1, 2010, bombing attempt by Faisal Shahzad of Bridgeport, Conn., a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Pakistan, the NYPD has continued to fine-tune trip wires it hopes will stop other would-be terrorists.
Police have expanded programs to monitor the stockpiles and sales of fertilizer, household chemicals and other potential homemade bomb ingredients; to patrol the subways with bomb-sniffing dogs and heavy arms; and to use license-plate readers, closed-circuit cameras and radiation detectors to harden Wall Street and midtown targets against dirty bomb and other attacks.
The next attacker is more likely to be a less-sophisticated, “self- radicalized” terrorist, like Shahzad. Such a person would see himself more a follower of an extremist social movement rather than a sworn member of a terrorism network, said Peter Romaniuk, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice who specializes in international security and counterterrorism.
The Shahzad case “is part of the evolution of the terror threat,” Romaniuk said.
As for Sept. 11, he added, “that expeditionary-style of terrorism is less likely to occur these days.”
