JFK TERROR PLOT: NYPD focuses on weak spots

As New York City police refocused security measures around vulnerable infrastructure after the break-up of the alleged plot to blow up the fuel system serving Kennedy Airport, a member of the House Homeland Security Committee said that the suspected plotters even considered crashing an aircraft into airport facilities.

"The tanks were one possibility. The terminals were another," said Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford), who added that he learned of the suspected plotters' brainstorming through his homeland security briefings and from law enforcement authorities. "It was really loosely defined. They just wanted to crash a plane into Kennedy Airport."

According to two police sources, the New York Police Department will refocus security on critical facilities such as subway stations and the Con Edison power plant in Astoria.

In response to the thwarted plot, the department also will brief members of Operation Shield, a collaborative initiative with the business community intended to safeguard against terror attacks, the sources said.

Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority, said the agency increased patrols at Kennedy Airport and other properties it maintains.

However, the federal Transportation Security Administration made "no adjustment to security protocols," spokeswoman Carrie Harmon said.

Meanwhile, authorities continued to look overseas for the fourth man said to be involved in the plot. Three of the four, including a former cargo worker at the airport, were arrested during the weekend.

Authorities labeled the plot, under investigation for about 18 months, credible but said there was no imminent danger because the group lacked explosives and financing. Still, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said that they had a surplus of determination fueled by extreme hatred of the United States.

"Investigators took this case down at the appropriate time," Kelly said yesterday on CBS' "Face The Nation." "We don't want them to get close to money or close to explosives."

King said the investigation also gave law enforcement agencies the opportunity to gather intelligence on potential terrorist threats from the Caribbean. Court documents said two of the defendants had ties to Jamaat al Muslimeen, an Afro-Caribbean Sunni Muslim group that tried to set up an Islamist government in Trinidad and Tobago during a failed 1990 coup.

"From talking to Ray Kelly, he does see this as a wake-up call, a pretty clear message that we have to become more involved in focusing on the Caribbean," King said.

The man police say masterminded the Kennedy bombing plot, Russell Defreitas, 63, of Brooklyn, is to appear in federal court in Brooklyn Wednesday for a bail hearing. Defreitas, an ex-cargo handler, conspired to detonate the airport's massive fuel tanks and pipelines for more than a year, police said.

Arrested in Trinidad were Abdul Kadir, a Guyana citizen, and Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad. They await extradition. Still at large yesterday was Abdel Nur, a Guyana citizen.

In Guyana, an official and acquaintances of Nur said he had been deported from the United States in the late 1980s after a drug violation and called Americans "oppressors," The Associated Press reported. Nur was detained Feb. 13 by Guyanese detectives at the request of the FBI, fingerprinted and released, according to a police commander in Guyana.

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