Between 2002 and 2003, the NYPD and FBI arrested and deported six Iranian diplomats in New York for photographing infrastructure and rail lines. The busts set off an alarming scenario for the NYPD’s intelligence division — that Iran could aid terrorist groups like Hizbollah in an attack on the Big Apple.
To investigate, detectives had to go beyond the five boroughs. They flew to Buenos Aires to meet with Argentine authorities and learn from the 1992 and 1994 Hizbollah attacks on Jewish and Israeli facilities there.
Those deadly bombings were retaliation for the death of Hizbollah leaders in the Middle East. The quickly executed strikes led intelligence officials to believe plans had been in the bag for a while and that reconnaissance on the targets and materials were provided by Iranian officials stationed in South America.
NYPD detectives walked away from the trip with key intelligence on how terror operations can be disrupted.
But the south of the border flight was just one of many overseas trips made by New York’s Finest in the past decade.
In the years since 9/11, the nearly 38,000-strong police force has recalibrated its mission, thinking globally to act locally. In an ambitious plan, it has set up permanent posts in 11 international cities and dispatched intelligence detectives to every continent except Antarctica in order to network with local law enforcement, gather intelligence and learn terrorist techniques after attacks.
The NYPD has swooped into India after the November 2008 massacre in Mumbai to learn the terrorists’ weapons and explosives of choice, reviewed Saudi Arabia’s de-radicalization program and profiled rising Islamic extremist elements in the Balkans.
The purpose of the assignments is simple: Use that knowledge to prevent another Big Apple tragedy.
“The NYPD has a very clear focus when it comes to fighting terrorism,” said Christopher Dickey, the author of “Securing The City: Inside America’s Best Counterterror Force — The NYPD.” “It’s not fighting ideologically. It’s fighting in very practical and narrow terms based on the belief that New York City is the number one terror target in the world. Its entire mission is to stop terrorist attacks from taking place there.” NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly returned to New York as the top cop in January 2002, to a city still reeling from the horrific events a few months earlier. And in the time since 1994, when he left the commissioner’s office, he had worked in Haiti, for Interpol and for the federal government, gaining international experience.
“The commissioner was really affected to the core by the events of 9/11 and made a personal commitment to vow that would never happen again,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College. “He decided to scrap the existing playbook and take it to a new level.” Kelly got to work immediately, assembling an elite team from the intelligence community. The hires included David Cohen, a former CIA deputy director who became NYPD’s counter-terror czar.
He and Kelly agreed they needed permanent eyes and ears in hotspots around the world, building connections with local authorities, rather than relying on information sharing from federal agencies.
“Law enforcement is very insular,” O’Donnell said. “Having a person on the ground with the opportunity to make a personal relationship and build a trusting relationship in both directions, that’s a powerful plus.” The international program started in the fall 2002, with a detective from the NYPD intelligence division sent to live in Toronto and work with the city’s police department. It quickly expanded to London, partnering with Scotland Yard, and Lyons, France, working with Interpol, the international police agency.
Most of the funding comes from the New York City Police Foundation, a decades-old nonprofit that raises donations to subsidize police-related programs. Kelly has used it mainly to avoid using taxpayer money and circumventing political approval. The foundation provided $1 million in fiscal year 2009, according to tax filings.
Aside from the permanent posts, the NYPD has also sent intelligence detectives to at least 17 other international locations since 2002 to either assess the tactics used in terror attacks or share notes with authorities.
These actions have led to occasional turf battles with federal agencies. And critics have questioned whether his international gameplan is necessary.
“Does it take 11 people stationed abroad?” asked Dickey. “Is that more people than is necessary or less people? I think you can argue it either way.” He added that it’s easy to justify the use of police resources abroad when crime is at an all-time low. Public sentiment could change if the city returns to its darker days in the 1980s and ’90s, Dickey said.
“If New Yorkers feel they are going to get mugged, then they aren’t really going to care about what’s necessary to guard against to what now seems like a more theoretical attack.”