http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/html/pr/pr_2012_03_03_remarks_to_fordham_law_school_alumni.shtml
Thank you, Judge Heitler. It’s a pleasure to be here with this distinguished group of alumni. I want to start by thanking Fordham Law School for educating generations of public-service-minded attorneys. The school is an incredible resource for this city, whether it’s the 150,000 hours of volunteer service completed by the graduating class of 2011 or the thousands of professionals who’ve gone on to do outstanding legal work, including in the ranks of the Police Department.
In recent years, as the NYPD has taken on the mission of counterterrorism, the legal questions we face have grown in complexity. We’re constantly looking at how to safeguard civil liberties and defend society from acts of terrorism. In some ways, these are issues we could have and should have addressed years earlier.
Nineteen years ago, on February 26th 1993, I was New York City Police Commissioner. It was a Friday afternoon, and I was in my office on the 14th floor of Police Headquarters when a massive explosion rocked the World Trade Center. The blast tore a hole in the building seven stories deep. I remember seeing the smoke rise and the mass of emergency vehicles at the scene when I got there just ten minutes later. The bomb, which was detonated in an underground garage, killed six people and wounded more than 1,000. At the time it was said to be a miracle there weren’t more fatalities.
That attack should have been a wake-up call for the nation and the city. It was not. The suspects—the first of whom was found when he tried to reclaim the deposit on the rental van used in the attack—were dismissed as incompetent.
In fact, their associates were already plotting another attack. The investigation of the World Trade Center bombing focused the attention of authorities on Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, an extremist cleric affiliated with a mosque in Brooklyn. He told worshipers it was their religious duty to fight enemies of god. Rahman, also known as the Blind Sheikh, was at the heart of a plan to attack the U.N., the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and the FBI’s New York office. That plot was thwarted by an informant who infiltrated the group.