Post-9/11 America fishes for answers
By Muhammad Cohen
HONG KONG - We live in a post-9/11 world, and my family got multiple reminders
of that when we visited the United States recently. New York featured those
annoying "If you see something, say something" signs that seem more appropriate
for Cuba or China than the world leader in freedom. Perhaps that crown has been
passed in the wake of the US Patriot Act.
We became adept at the airport shoe shuffle and belt bugaloo, to the point
where our four-year-old daughter got a tad cocky - or in post-9/11 terms, we
relaxed required vigilance - and lost her right shoe. I was cast as a post-9/11
Prince Charming, carrying Cinderella's pink velcro sneaker around the LaGuardia
Airport gate area in search of its mate. No evil stepsisters appeared; instead,
a friendly female executive frequent flyer found the footwear gone
astray and gave it to ground staff.
We almost caused an international incident when we left for home. During our
stay, my Indonesian wife renewed her love affair with bagels, while I indulged
my craving for pickled herring. Fortunately, good friends graciously let us
stay in the ground floor of their Upper West Side townhouse, within convenient
striking distance of these delights, plus Riverside Park's Hippo Playground for
our daughter.
When it came time to leave, we thought we'd bring at least a sampling of taste
treats home with us. (If we could have swung it, we would have included a few
gallons of mango, pineapple and peanut butter [!?!] Italian ices from the Lemon
Ice King of Corona.)
Greengrass and high flies
We bought an extra suitcase and double bagged four dozen bagels. That was the
easy part. While I appreciate the finer fish in life from the likes of Barney
Greengrass, Murray's Sturgeon, Russ and Daughters, and the place I used to
frequent with a Korean friend for pickled lox ends 30 years ago on lower Second
Avenue, I was more than content to pack a few jars of supermarket herring for
the trans-Pacific voyage. To up the odds of their safe arrival in our checked
luggage, we swathed them in paper towels and ziplock bags, and to keep them
cold until our baggage reached the stratosphere, put them in our friends'
downstairs freezer.
When we were halfway to our stop in Taipei, I realized I'd left those jars of
herring behind in the freezer. I was terrified, not merely at the prospect of
repaying their hospitality with a kitchen mess. Fortunately, we were able to
get a message to our hosts in time to avert the disaster that might have been
reported by post-9/11 media like this:
Manhattan townhouse blast linked to Muslim terror
By Condoleezza Chaney
An explosion that ripped through a townhouse on Manhattan's affluent Upper West
Side has links to radical Islam, according to national security experts. The
incident may reveal a wide-ranging conspiracy to stage attacks on key landmarks
and tourist attractions coast-to-coast centering on a native New Yorker convert
to Islam who once held top secret security clearance and is linked to early
terrorism on two continents, officials who spoke on condition of anonymity
said.
Police have in custody the townhouse owners, a pair of high-ranking executives
of global businesses heavily involved in the Muslim world whose names are being
withheld, on suspicion of aiding the alleged terrorists. The suspects, an
American and his Indonesian wife, are believed to have fled the country,
possibly to Indonesia, the nation with the world's largest Muslim population
and site of the Bali bombings, the most deadly terrorist attack since 9/11.
Fear on ice
Yesterday's explosion, overheard by neighbors who immediately called 911, are
the tip of a vast iceberg of hypothetical terror stretching across the globe,
according to investigators. They are also further evidence of the emerging
trend of terrorism groups using local citizens to attack their own countries.
Suspicions about the blast, which caused minor damage, grew when the owners of
the house claimed the cause was jars left in a freezer and tried to bar police
from entering the premises. "So we came back with the marines," a detective
said. The search uncovered a range of incriminating coincidences.
Government security officials have assembled the following scenario outlining a
possible terror plot on American soil, potentially the biggest attack ever on
the US homeland. At the center of the possible plot, a New York-born Jew who
served as a US Foreign Service Officer in Tanzania, where Islamic terrorist
bombers destroyed the US embassy in 1998. He currently lives in Hong Kong and
reportedly converted to Islam following 9/11. The suspected master bomber is
married to an Indonesian Muslim, and the couple traveled to the US with their
pre-school daughter for a five-week stay beginning last month.
Inviting targets
Airline records and other documents developed by investigators indicate the
trio arrived in San Francisco just over a month ago and traveled to nearly two
dozen popular tourist attractions that would be prime targets for terrorism.
Before coming to New York, one or more members of the cell visited the Golden
Gate Bridge, Muir Woods, Disneyland, Santa Monica Pier, Chicago's Field Museum
and Museum of Science Technology, Washington's Air and Space Museum, National
Building Museum, Smithsonian Institution, and National Art Gallery. They also
reportedly visited Portland, Maine, were a group of 9/11 hijackers originated
their travel that ended at the World Trade Center's north tower.
Investigations into their New York itinerary have found evidence that the
suspected bomb plotters toured the Bronx Zoo, Museum of Natural History,
Central Park Zoo, Children's Museum, Hall of Science, Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Children's Art Museum, Guggenheim, Museum of Modern Art, Times Square,
Saint Patrick's Cathedral, and Tom's Restaurant on West 112 Street and
Broadway, used as external view of Monk's Diner on comedy classic Seinfeld.
On previous visits without their daughter, the couple traveled to additional US
landmarks, including the Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Hoover Dam,
Yosemite National Park, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Lincoln Memorial, the
Yale University campus, the Jewish Museum, and baseball stadiums San
Francisco's AT&T Park, Dodger Stadium, Wrigley Field, Miami's Sun Life
Stadium, Oriole Park, and (the previous) Yankee Stadium.
Investigators do not yet have solid evidence of the alleged terrorism scheme,
but they are confident that the couple in custody will provide information to
detail the plot they believe has been thwarted. "This is a lot more than a
fishing expedition," a senior investigator assured reporters.
Former broadcast news producer Muhammad Cohen told America's story to the
world as a US diplomat and is author of
Hong Kong On Air,
a novel set during the 1997 handover about television news, love, betrayal,
financial crisis, and cheap lingerie. Follow
Muhammad Cohen's blog for more on the media and Asia, his adopted home.
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