The alleged terrorists are incarcerated at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, awaiting imminent decisions – trial verdicts, appeal rulings, extradition judgments – that could rouse their followers to vengeful fury. The VIPs will travel in a midtown orbit from the United Nations (which celebrates its 50th anniversary at the end of next month) to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (where President Clinton will host a dinner for more than 100 world leaders) to Central Park (where the pope will celebrate mass in early October). More than 3,000 federal agents and 5,000 city police will be deployed to protect all the dignitaries – “the biggest security undertaking in history,” says a Secret Service spokesman. The Secret Service, which protects visiting heads of state, has borrowed hundreds of personnel from other agencies, giving them two-week crash courses in how to be bodyguards. Their efforts will produce gridlock for Manhattanites and tedious delays at local airports.
The authorities have been on edge since last month, when New York’s airports were mysteriously placed on the highest security alert since the Persian Gulf War. According to an FBI official, Washington had received “pretty specific” intelligence about a plot against John E Kennedy International Airport by Hamas or the Iranian-backed group Hizbullah. Security experts said there was talk of a possible “suicide massacre,” presumably in retaliation for Marzook’s arrest at JFK on July 25. Israel has requested his extradition, and Hamas followers have threatened to attack Americans in reprisal.
Jim Kallstrom, the head of the FBI’s New York office, says analysts already are sifting through a “torrent” of information on potential threats. Some could be inspired by a verdict in the eight-month-long conspiracy trial of Sheik Omar and nine co-defendants, which went to the jury last weekend. The defendants are accused of planning a wave of terror in New York after the 1995 bombing of the World Trade Center. They deny it, and the chief witness against them, Egyptian informant Emad Salem, is an admitted liar and double agent who was paid more than $1 million by the FBI for his services. Such cases “have an impact,” says Kallstrom. “They polarize people, and we hear their rhetoric spilling out.” His job is to make sure angry talk doesn’t lead to bloody action.
