by I’ve finished reading the book Jihad in Brooklyn by Samuel M Katz. It is the true story of two Palestinian men living in Brooklyn, New York, who planned a suicide-bomb attack on a commuter-packed subway train on July 31, 1997. A third man, an Egyptian, who was a roommate of the two Palestinians, alerted the police just in time to avert the attack. And in the wee hours of the morning, the midnight crew of the NYPD’s Emergency Service Unit raided the dirty, cramped apartment in the heart of King’s County on 4th Avenue, between President and Carroll Streets. Bullets flew, fingers reached inches away from flipping the switch to their home-made bomb, and although Gazi Abu Mezer and Lafi Khalil, the two young men bent on terrorizing New Yorkers during Monday morning’s rush hour commute, were shot and arrested, they survived their bullet wounds and, the mastermind of the plot, Mezer, is now serving a life sentence, and his accomplice, Khalil, was sentenced only 36-months for possession of a counterfeit alien registration card. But hardly anyone would ever know about it.
This incident occurred 4 years after the car-bombing of the World Trade Center, and 4 years before 9/11, and yet I don’t recall ever reading about it in the newspapers, seeing it on the TV news, or hearing the guys at work discussing it at roll-call. However, this wasn’t the way the police chiefs, Mayor Giuliani, and Police Commissioner Safir wanted it. They wanted a huge press conference with all the major news media, and everybody would become semi-famous and get their picture taken, etc…the whole nine yards. But there was only one problem: the six police officers who risked their lives to make the arrests didn’t want their names, or faces, made public for fear of retaliation from any terrorist group who may, or may not, be happy the attack was thwarted. Also, the cops felt what they did was all in a day’s work, and didn’t want to brag. But the “Big Brass” didn’t care what the cops thought. They threatened them with cut-backs and removing their status as a rescue unit if they didn’t cooperate. So, the cops grudgingly agreed to the press conference at Police HQ.
Giuliani, Safir, and all the gold brass, plus the six police officers, paraded into the press room, and the Mayor and the PC got up on the podium and gave a long-winded speech. Cameras flashed, and the reporters yelled out to hear from the cops. Giuliani looked over at them and signaled to get up on the podium, but the cops wouldn’t budge, or say a word.
I wonder how red Giuliani’s face got?