Slashdot Mirror
FBI Foils Attack by Monitoring Chat Rooms
An anonymous reader writes "A planned terrorist attack on New York City was reportedly foiled by FBI agents who monitored chat rooms frequented by extremists. Lebanese authorities captured an Al Qaeda member who confessed to the plot, and stated that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had pledged financial and other support for the operation. Although the planning for the operation was not far along, according to U.S. officials, they had already been monitoring the plot for a year." From the article: "A government official with knowledge of the investigation said the alleged plot did focus on New York's transport system, but did not target the Holland Tunnel. New York senator Charles Schumer said: 'This is one instance where intelligence was on top of its game and discovered the plot when it was just in the talking phase.' The Holland Tunnel is protected not just by bedrock, but also by concrete and cast-iron steel. One counter-terrorism source told the Daily News it was doubtful a plot to blow it up would be feasible, saying huge amounts of explosives and a detailed knowledge of blast effect would be necessary."
First the easy part: McVeigh was Oklahoma City, not Kansas City.
Now for the real issue: Do you have any idea how hard it is to dig tunnels through rock with explosives? You dig holes into the rock. You put explosives into the holes. You carefully tamp each of the charges. You set off the explosives in their neat little holes in the rock. And what do you get?
A few feet. That's all.
Yeah, the terrorists would set off a bigger explosion. But it wouldn't be tamped - the force of the blast would escape both directions along the tunnel. For "gravity" to work for you, you'd first have to crack the rock enough that it's no longer structural. (It's not just the concrete and steel that holds all that rock up. The rock holds itself up.)
And if a tamped explosion only breaks a few feet of rock, a bigger but untamped one isn't going to do much more...