Port Authority cops who staff the agency’s bridges and tunnels were read harrowing details of a terrorist threat today advising them to be on the lookout for a fuel-filled tanker meant to explode prior to a secondary blast designed to decimate any first responders, The Post has learned.
The chilling warning was read at roll call for four police commands – cops assigned to the Holland and Lincoln Tunnel; the George Washington Bridge; and also the Staten Island command, which incorporates the Bayonne and Goethals Bridge and the Outerbridge Crossing, a source said.
The message, which was read by police brass, noted that as 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, “there is a threat to all crossings, as of this point, being treated as credible, that some type of tanker will explode causing us to respond.”
“At some point during the response, a second explosion [will occur] causing injury to all first responders to this incident,” the message noted.
The message cautioned that “no date or time has been given” for the potential terrorist strike, a topic that was first disclosed in an exclusive story in Wednesday’s editions of The Post.
A Port Authority police source insisted that the grim advisory stemmed from raw intelligence which originated with a prisoner captured in Afghanistan, who allegedly passed along a claim that a gasoline or propane-filled tanker might be arriving from Canada and the Lincoln Tunnel could be a potential target.
NYPD Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly yesterday insisted he was unaware of any specific terrorist threat that had been received by the department targeting the area’s bridges or tunnels – and a Port Authority official today also sought to downplay the significance of the department’s own dire warnings.
“It’s a totally unsubstantiated threat,” the official insisted, adding that the roll call message was read merely because a Port Authority police chief was “rallying the troops to be vigilant.”