City puzzles over lack of notification on possible subway threat

Friday, Feb. 20, 1998 | 2:57 a.m.

With more than 3 million people riding city subways each day, it's a question that resonates with New Yorkers, including Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who has been awaiting an explanation from the FBI.

After the arrest of two men in Nevada on Thursday for possessing what was believed to be the deadly toxin anthrax, a criminal complaint disclosed that one of them had talked of plans last summer to carry out a biological attack on a subway station that would kill "hundreds of thousands" of New Yorkers.

It wasn't clear from the documents when the FBI first learned of the alleged threat, to whom it was made or if it was ever considered credible.

"Certainly, whenever there is any information which relates to New York City, a potential threat to New York City, we want to know as soon as possible," police Commissioner Howard Safir said Friday. "The reason that we were not notified is something that really, the FBI is going to have to explain."

The FBI - which since 1980 has worked with the NYPD in a joint terrorism task force - did not respond to requests for comment.

Robert Louden, director of the criminal justice center at John Jay College in Manhattan, said the FBI and the police department have enjoyed a strong relationship since the late 1970s.

"The most probable scenario is that the intelligence was not collected and analyzed to a point that it was useful enough. You cannot yell, 'The sky is falling,"' he said. "I would be far stretched to find a scenario as to why, if solid credible information had been developed, that it hadn't been shared."

The arrest of Larry Wayne Harris and William Job Leavitt Jr. in Nevada had no direct connection to New York City, but the reference to a possible plan against subways focused fresh attention on the vulnerability of the nation's largest city to attack from extremists.

Five years ago, Islamic militants bombed the World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring 1,000. Militants were later convicted of planning further bombings at bridges, tunnels and other high-profile targets.

Another chilling reminder came in 1995 from, where 12 people were killed when a doomsday cult loosed nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system.

In fact, officials have been concerned with biological or chemical attacks on transit hubs for decades.

As far back as the 1960s, the military secretly conducted a test in the New York subway to assess the danger of a chemical attack. At that time, Army researchers set off a cloud of harmless bacteria in an Eighth Avenue station, which was rapidly dispersed by passing trains to other parts of the city. The experiments, disclosed during a 1977 congressional investigation, also included spraying bacteria at National Airport in Washington.

Just a few months ago, New York City staged a mock disaster simulating an attack by terrorists with nerve gas. Giuliani - a former top Justice Department official - acknowledges the danger can never be ruled out, no matter what the city does to prepare.

"New York City has done everything you could conceivably do to be prepared," Giuliani told reporters. But he added, "There is no city, no state and no nation that can offer people perfect protection. It doesn't exist."

At the same time, the mayor strongly defended the work of the joint task force and said he was willing to wait for an explanation.

"I always prefer to be informed," he said, but added, "There's plenty of time for figuring out, was there notification, why didn't it happen."

U.S. Rep. Charles Schumer, a Brooklyn Democrat running for the Senate, said New York and other cities aren't nearly prepared enough for chemical or biological terrorism. He called for millions of dollars in grants to help cities train and equip law enforcers to respond to the danger.

"The reality is that for extremist hate groups, terrorism is becoming the weapon of choice," he said.