THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 227, September 13, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
COUNTERTERRORISM: NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
AMERICA'S BEST COUNTERTERROR FORCE: THE NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT AS AN OUTSTANDING
COUNTERTERRORIST AGENCY -- THE NYPD AS AN AGENCY WHICH NAMES THE ENEMY, ACKNOWLEDGES THE
PREDOMINANT THREAT OF ISLAMIST VIOLENCE, & BUILT A ROBUST INTELLIGENCE OPERATION -- THE TERRORIST
INTERDICTION UNIT -- THE SPECIAL SERVICES UNIT -- THE DEMOGRAPHICS UNIT -- NYPD TACTICS THAT HAVE PROTECTED
NEW YORK FROM THIRTEEN FAILED OR THWARTED TERRORIST PLOTS -- TACTICS ENJOYING WIDE POLITICAL SUPPORT
FULL STORY:
U.S. law enforcement agencies have generally responded to 9/11 with a pretend counterterrorism policy. They still insist
that naming the enemy as Islamism causes terrorism, that Islamist violence poses no more threat than that of neo-Nazis,
racial supremacists, et al. -- and that counterterrorism primarily involves feel-good measures such as improving civil rights,
passing anti-discrimination laws, and displaying goodwill to Islamists.
And, then, there is the New York Police Department, an institution uniquely spurred by 9/11 to abandon its former laxity
and get serious. The force that had mishandled prior terrorist incidents (e.g., the assassination of Meir Kahane) quickly
transformed itself into an outstanding counterterrorist agency under the remarkable leadership of Raymond Kelly.
(Andrew McCarthy calls him a "godsend"). Unlike other law enforcement institutions, NYPD names the enemy,
acknowledges the predominant threat of Islamist violence, and built a robust intelligence operation.
The public saw first hints of these changes in 2006, in the course of the Shahawar Matin Siraj trial. The government
convicted Siraj, an illegal Pakistani immigrant planning to blow up a subway station, on the basis of information from two
NYPD Muslim spies: a paid police informant, Osama Eldawoody, and a pseudonymous undercover detective, "Kamil
Pasha." The latter testified about his serving as a "walking camera" among Muslims living in Brooklyn, to "observe, be
the ears and eyes" for the NYPD.
Christopher Dickey provided the fullest picture of the Department's achievements in a 2009 book, Securing the City:
Inside America's Best Counterterror Force -- The NYPD. Now, just in time for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the
Associated Press published a series of breathless investigations by Adam Goldman on the Department's methods,
focusing on NYPD cooperation with the Central Intelligence Agency, thereby bringing the Department under intense
political scrutiny.
Goldman reports that the Department dispatched officers to Pakistani neighborhoods and "instructed them to look for
reasons to stop cars: speeding, broken tail lights, running stop signs, whatever. The traffic stop gave police an
opportunity to search for outstanding warrants or look for suspicious behavior. An arrest could be the leverage the police
needed to persuade someone to become an informant." NYPD established the Terrorist Interdiction Unit to handle these
informants, including "mosque crawlers," "café crawlers," shopkeepers, and nosy neighbors.
It established the Special Services Unit to handle operations outside of New York City, where NYPD lacks jurisdiction,
including several American states and eleven foreign countries. The effort has its share of successes; for example, a
Muslim NYPD officer working undercover in New Jersey had a major role in Operation Arabian Knight, the June, 2010,
arrest of two New Jersey Muslims who pleaded guilty of planning to join the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab and then
kill American troops.
It also established the Demographics Unit to "map ethnic residential communities within the Tri-State area [New Jersey,
Connecticut, and New York State]" and to send undercover police officers, or rakers, to monitor Muslims. Made up of 16
officers speaking among them Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Punjabi and Urdu, the unit lists 29 "ancestries of interest," all of
them predominantly Muslim, including one described as "American Black Muslim." In all, NYPD identified 263 of what it
calls "ethnic hot spots" in the city, plus 53 "mosques of concern."
Rakers filed daily reports on life in New York's Muslim neighborhoods. Goldman and co-author Matt Apuzzo note that
they "visited Islamic bookstores and cafes, businesses and clubs. Police looked for businesses that attracted certain
minorities, such as taxi companies hiring Pakistanis." They got personal, Goldman goes on: "If a raker noticed a customer
[in an ethnic bookstore] looking at radical literature, he might chat up the store owner and see what he could learn. The
bookstore, or even the customer, might get further scrutiny."
Goldman and the Associated Press clearly disdain NYPD tactics and hope to neuter them. But those tactics have
protected New York from thirteen failed or thwarted terrorist plots, Commissioner Kelly stands by them, and they garner
wide political support. New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the NYPD for a "very good job" and John
Brennan, Barack Obama's counterterrorism adviser, lauded its "heroic job." U.S. Representative Peter King (Republican
of New York) commended its methods as a model for the federal government.
King is right: every other Western law enforcement agency should adopt the approach of "America's best counterterror
force."
© 2011 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved.
Originally Published in National Review Online, Sep 13, 2011
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, Sep 13, 2011
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/10145/new-york-police-counterterrorism
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Islamist Fifth Column -- America's Internal Enemies:
Disloyalty, Subversion, Sedition, & Treason
Terrorism & U.S. Homeland Security
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and President of the Middle East Forum,
Publisher of Middle East Quarterly,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for National Review Online, Front Page
Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and
developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington
Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network
television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the
U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately
twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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