Inside The NYPD's Anti-Terror Fight

No American city has done more to defend itself against a terrorist attack than New York. Its police department, 37,000 strong and larger than the standing armies of 84 countries, has transformed itself from a traditional crime-fighting organization into one that places a strong emphasis on fighting terrorism. A thousand cops have been assigned to work exclusively on a new "terrorism beat." And, in an unprecedented move, New York has even stationed its own cops overseas.

These changes are all based on New York's belief that having suffered two devastating attacks while the federal government provided for its protection, the city had to take more responsibility for its own security — and that from now on, New York's first line of defense is not the military, the CIA or the FBI: It's the NYPD.

Correspondent Ed Bradley reports.

One common sight in the city's fight against terror is a counter-terrorism operation called "a surge." About 100 police cars from all over the city swarm into an area like Times Square. These happen unannounced all over the city.

It begins with an officer briefing, not only on their specific assignments, but on a subject you might not expect — terrorist developments thousands of miles away.

In charge of this operation for the "new" NYPD is Chief Vincent Giordano.

Asked how often police conduct this operation, Giordano says, "Every day. Seven days a week. 365!"

A "surge" is a simultaneous deployment of about 200 cops to potential terrorist targets — and a visible demonstration to terrorists and New Yorkers of the widespread changes the NYPD has implemented since 9/11. Giordano says these swarms of police officers go to locations all over the city.

"That's an impressive show of force," Bradley remarked.

"If you want to use the term shock and awe — when they go to a location, if somebody's watching the location and they're doing type of surveillance, they're not going to miss this type of deployment," Giordano said.

They also won't miss teams of heavily armed cops who show up unannounced at train stations, office buildings and other potential targets throughout the city.

"New York has done an enormous amount, and if there's anything else we could do, we haven't thought of it yet," says Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Mayor Bloomberg says the purpose of it all is to intimidate. "You'll see surges of police officers all of a sudden, heavily armed, that appear in one — in a quiet, nice neighborhood. And you say, 'What are they doing here?' And then they disappear. Every once in a while, you'll see this stream of police cars go zipping down the street, lights and sirens. And you say, 'What's happening? What's happening?' Nothing! I hope."

The man with responsibility for keeping it that way is Ray Kelly, New York's Police Commissioner.

"I knew we had to do something different," says Kelly. "I knew we had to configure the department differently. We had to change our mindset."

Kelly became commissioner four months after 9/11. His mandate: to transform the NYPD. He created a Counter-Terrorism Bureau, dramatically expanded the Intelligence Division, and increased the number of cops working on terrorism with the FBI from 17 to 120.

He also ordered the NYPD's 37,000 officers to undergo training in how to handle chemical, biological and radiological attacks, and mandated that the Emergency Services Unit be prepared to respond to scenarios like an attack on the subway.

"The breadth and scope of their training has changed dramatically as a result of September 11," Kelly explains.

Another change is that detectives are taking courses, like one titled "Global Jihad," that covers subjects ranging from the history of Islam to the mind of a suicide bomber.

It's taught in the Counter-Terrorism Bureau, which was started four years ago and housed in a then-vacant warehouse in Brooklyn. Detectives in the warehouse work on keeping the city safe. They collect information on potential threats.

Civilian analysts do research on everything from radical Islam and militant terrorist organizations to detailed analysis of bomb making techniques and terrorist attacks.

"Has any other police department in this country, or anywhere in the world, taken the kind of steps that you have here in New York?" Bradley asked Kelly.

"I don't believe so, no," the commissioner replied.

Kelly says the NYPD still works closely with the feds, but he took those steps knowing he was stepping on the FBI and the CIA's traditional turf.

Kelly says he didn't discuss these changes with the FBI in the beginning. "No, we just did it on our own," he says.

He did it, in part, by hiring David Cohen and Michael Sheehan, two of the most experienced people in U.S. intelligence.

Before becoming the NYPD's intelligence chief, Cohen was America's spymaster — the Director of Operations at the CIA, where he served 35 years. He had been out of the intelligence business for two years when Kelly brought him back in.

"We show up every morning with that core assumption in our mind, that if they could, they'd like to come back. Can they? Our job is to raise the bar and make it more difficult, if not impossible," says Cohen.

"It would seem, at least to an outsider, that part of what you're trying to do is to take elements of what the CIA does and what the FBI does and put them within the New York Police Department," Bradley said.

"That's what we've certainly tried to do. I'd like to think that we've had some success," Cohen replied.

Asked how the FBI and his former colleagues at the CIA reacted to the NYPD's changes, Cohen says there was a lot of initial suspicion. "What does this NYPD Intelligence Division gonna be up to? If I were in their shoes, I'd be suspicious too. Especially of me," says Cohen, laughing.

They might also be suspicious about what Michael is up to. He has held key posts in intelligence and the military, and now heads the NYPD's Counter-Terrorism Bureau.

"What we do in the counter-terrorism bureau is try to define what the threat is," Sheehan explains. "And understanding the threat. That drives everything that we do."

Sheehan acknowledges the NYPD has its own informants working undercover in the city. "The key to counter-terrorism is intelligence," he says, "and the key to intelligence are informants".

Every morning, Commissioner Kelly gets an intelligence briefing. The day 60 Minutes sat in, for part of it, Kelly listened to details of a botched suicide bombing in Israel.

"The bomber goes to the back of the restaurant, which was unusual, and he's leaning over taking a drink of water from the sink. He's wearing a suicide belt and it partially explodes. It cuts the bomber's body in half, but you don't have the typical head blowing off," Cohen explained.

"Is that because it was positioned differently, or just because he was leaning over?" Kelly asked.

"It was the way that he was leaning over. That's right," Cohen replied.

The source of all those details is Mordecai Dzikansky, a New York City Detective based in Israel — one of 10 New York cops stationed overseas. The NYPD calls them its "early warning system."

Asked why the NYPD needs officers overseas, Kelly says, "To ask the New York question. And the New York question is, 'Is there anything, any piece of information that's going to help us better protect this city?'"

When bombs went off on in Madrid two years ago, killing nearly 200 people, the NYPD's man in Israel flew there immediately, met with Spanish police and sent detailed information back to the Big Apple.

"We found out that the terrorist had parked the van a couple blocks away from the station when they were moving their bags from the van into the train station," says Sheehan. "So what we did was we expanded our coverage of stations out a few blocks, and we made adjustments to how we talked to merchants and security people around the systems to tell them what to look for."

The program that tells merchants what to look for is called "Operation Nexus." Teams of cops visit businesses that sell products that could be used by terrorists.

"For example, as a result of the July 7 attacks in London: One of the key ingredients was hydrogen peroxide. Operation Nexus determined who produces the stuff and who they deliver it to," Cohen explains. "We put in place a program to contact each level to tell them what anomalies they should be watching for, and it trickles all the way down to the local hairdresser shop."

"So, you think if you learn enough about what happens elsewhere, you can prevent it from happening here?" Bradley asked.

"Absolutely," Cohen replied.

"But things like that, wouldn't that be information that eventually the FBI, the CIA, would have shared with you?" Bradley asked Kelly.

"The key word is 'eventually,'" Kelly replied, laughing. "So we can't wait."

"I mean, there's an implied criticism here that New York needs this information and needs it in a hurry — and we can't wait for you to get it to us," Bradley asked the commissioner.

"That's our position," Kelly replied. "We need the information. We're a city, the only U.S. City, of course, that's been attacked, twice successfully, by terrorists."

Asked if the creation of the counter-terror until was in any way a reaction to frustration with the federal government, Kelly says, "We can't rely solely on other agencies to protect us here. So there's nothing like self help, and that's what we're doing."

So far, the price tag for all that "self-help" has been nearly $1 billion, most of it New York own money. That money has paid for the tightest security blanket in the city's history.

Security checks and bag searches on the city's subways and trains are routine.

Every day, the Harbor Unit patrols landmarks from the Statue of Liberty to the Staten Island Ferry. Every day, police divers check the base of the Brooklyn Bridge for explosives.

And every day, helicopters with high-tech cameras monitor the city, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

While there's a lot of what the NYPD's doing that 60 Minutes can show, there's more that it can't — like the activities of the 600 Intelligence Division cops who operate from an undisclosed location, behind an unmarked door.

The main vehicle extremists and terrorists use to communicate, recruit, raise money, and disseminate propaganda is the Internet. The Intelligence Division has a cyber unit that tries to penetrate it.

"There's eight of us. I myself speak two languages," one member of the unit explained.

The cyber unit is drawn from the police department's own resources — NYPD cops from Middle Eastern and South Asian backgrounds. 60 Minutes was allowed to discuss their work, if we didn't identify them.

Asked what they look for in these chat rooms, a member of the unit says, "Information that will relate to New York City. The ultimate goal for us is not to allow anything else like September 11 to ever happen again."

"These people in the chat rooms have no idea they're talking to an NYPD cop?" Bradley asked.

"Sure hope not," a unit member replied, laughing.

The value of the information they find, says one member, is priceless. "You cannot put a price tag on intelligence."

Just how priceless, the police say, has been shown twice a year and a half ago when a tip from an NYPD informant uncovered a plot to bomb the subway station outside Macy's Department store, and once before in 2003, when a plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge by al Qaeda operative Iyman Farris was uncovered.

Cohen is confident that these plots would not have been uncovered without the changes the commissioner wanted.

"Absolutely not. There is no question in my mind. They would have been moving forward," Cohen says.

How close did New York come in those cases to another disaster?

"I don't know the answer to that, because all we really know is that we scared them off or stopped them," says Mayor Bloomberg. "For all I know we've deterred lots of attacks. And we'll never know."

Commissioner Kelly says he does know it's inevitable that terrorists will try to attack New York again. What's not inevitable, he says, is that they will succeed.

"When you look at the fact that there hasn't been a successful attack against New York since 9/11, do you attribute that to luck or to the changes you've put in place in New York City?" Bradley asked Kelly.

"I don't know," the commissioner replied. "We're doing what we think we have to do to protect the city. We could just be lucky. But we'll take that."
Produced By Harry Radliffe