[Pink.]

T-shirt vendor who noticed smoke coming out of a tinted, dark green sport utility vehicle alerted police to what turned out to be a potential bomb placed in Times Square.

"We avoided what could have been a very deadly event," said Mayor Michael Bloomberg early Sunday morning. "It certainly could have exploded and had a pretty big fire and a decent amount of explosive impact."

President Obama, who was updated on the situation late Saturday night, said the federal government was prepared to provide support. The Department of Homeland Security also said it was monitoring developments.

Two federal officials said Sunday it was too early to tell whether the incident involved al Qaeda or another international terror group. The national threat level remained at "yellow," or elevated.

Officials said authorities are going through video from dozens of surveillance cameras in Times Square to determine who left the Nissan Pathfinder with its engine running and hazard lights flashing on a street shortly after 6 p.m. Saturday.

Inside the vehicle, police found three propane tanks, two filled five-gallon gas containers, two clocks with batteries, consumer-grade fireworks and a locked metal box that resembled a gun locker.

The wiring around the device "was nothing that looked amateurish," Bloomberg said.

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A robot from the city police department's bomb squad smashed through the back window of the SUV and retrieved the box after several hours. It was taken to a bomb squad facility in the Bronx.

The forensics on the bomb component will take time and are complex, a federal law enforcement official said. But, the official said, "the scientists can do wonders."

Officials did not immediately know how the bomb would have been detonated, nor did anyone claim responsibility.

"So far, we have no reports of anybody running away (from the car)," Bloomberg said. "That doesn't mean there won't be when we look at all the cameras."

Authorities may also appeal to the public to provide personal photos taken at the time, a federal law enforcement official said.

Following the incident, security in other burroughs was heightened, but nothing suspicious was reported anywhere else, the mayor said.

The vehicle's VIN number had been removed, but investigators said they remained hopeful that they will be able to locate a VIN somewhere in the vehicle; they are stamped in various places, the official said.

With that information, they can trace the history of the SUV to some degree.

The Pathfinder's license plate was taken from another truck, Bloomberg said. Authorities interviewed the truck owner who told them he took it to a junkyard. Detectives were trying to find the owner of the junkyard.

The mayor said authorities did not have reason to believe the truck owner "had anything to do with it or his story is false."

The shutdown began Saturday when the T-shirt vendor, a Vietnam veteran, saw smoke coming from a box inside a vehicle with Connecticut plates on 45th Street near 7th Avenue. The vendor notified a New York police officer on horseback, who smelled gunpowder from the vehicle.

Another street vendor Hamid Boubain said he saw smoke coming from the vehicle.

"I told my friend, 'Yo yo look at this!' I mean it looks like a fireworks inside," he said. "I don't know; it's hard to explain. After that, like 15 minutes later, the smoke came out. One of the officers came, and he started kicking everybody from the corner for safety."

The Marriott Marquis hotel did not allow anyone to enter or leave. A nearby TGIFriday's restaurant shut its doors and evacuated staff. Theater-goers found themselves unable to leave shows.

Pamela Hall was at a McDonald's when a police officer told her to pick up her food and leave.

"They told us to go straight to 47th street," Hall said. "Nobody was frightened. The cops weren't upset and the people were not noticeably upset. We were all just perplexed. We just went to 47th street and ended up taking pictures and watching."

Speaking to reporters, Bloomberg said: "You know we often say that when a terrorist is caught, he has a map of New York City in his pocket. ... And tonight is a further reminder of the dangers that we face."

Early Sunday morning, Gov. David Paterson issued a statement commending the police department.

"Tonight, we owe an incredible debt of gratitude to the heroic actions of the New York City Police Department and to a single vigilant New Yorker who identified a suspicious vehicle near Times Square in New York City," he said.

"Luckily, no one is hurt, and now the full attention of city, state and federal law enforcement will be turned to bringing the guilty party to justice in this act of terrorism."

[Cajun]

Good post Pink!

[Binyamine]

This failed attack has already been claimed by the TTP of pakistan.

Site:

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[Jonnieboi]

Meh, people

[redsin7]

Was just watching this on the news....I am actually surprised those assholes didn't try something like this sooner.

[souris]

another false-flag operation on the witless american public.

[Pink.]

claimed by Muslims?


doubtful.


Of course it was a fail.


There are lots of details.

I just returned home. I will post some more information soon.

[Gh007]

This is diversionary, a car bomb like this "Inside the vehicle, police found three propane tanks, two filled five-gallon gas containers, two clocks with batteries, consumer-grade fireworks and a locked metal box that resembled a gun locker." could have hurt, at the most, 50 people and taken out some windows, its extremely inexpensive, shit the vehicle was worth $10,000 a blast radius even from a van full of explosives like this wouldn't have done substantial damage to anything, asides from the point they made a bomb that would have cost in the neighborhood of $100.00 to blow up a (guess)2005 Jeep Grand Cherokee, I am with souris101111. This was planted in plain view to take a lot of attention from somewhere else.

[Pink.]

A Pakistan-born U.S. citizen accused of driving
a bomb-laden SUV into Times Square and parking it on a street lined
with restaurants and Broadway theaters was to appear in court
Tuesday to face charges that he tried to set off a massive fireball
and kill Americans, federal authorities said.

The suspect, Faisal Shahzad, was taken into custody late Monday
by FBI agents and New York Police Department detectives at Kennedy
Airport while trying to board a flight to Dubai, according to U.S.
Attorney General Eric Holder and other officials. He was identified
by customs agents and stopped before boarding, Holder said early
Tuesday in Washington.

U.S. authorities "will not rest until we have brought everyone
responsible to justice," Holder said, suggesting additional
suspects are being sought.

Shahzad, 30, is a naturalized U.S. citizen and had recently
returned from a five-month trip to Pakistan, where he had a wife,
according to law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated
Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the
investigation into the failed car bombing.

The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan was handling the case
and said Shahzad would appear in court Tuesday, but the charges
were not made public. FBI agents searched the home at a known
address for Shahzad in Bridgeport, Conn., early Tuesday, said agent
Kimberly Mertz, who wouldn't answer questions about the search.

Authorities removed filled plastic bags from the house overnight
in a mixed-race, working-class neighborhood of multi-family homes
in Connecticut's largest city. A bomb squad came and went without
entering as local police and FBI agents gathered in the
cordoned-off street.

Shahzad was being held in New York overnight and couldn't be
contacted. A phone number at a listed address for Shahzad in
Shelton, Conn., wasn't in service.

He used to live in a two-story grayish-brown Colonial with a
sloping yard in a working-class neighborhood in Shelton. On Tuesday
morning, the home looked as if it had been unoccupied for a while,
with grass growing in the driveway and bags of garbage lying about.

Brenda Thurman, 37, a neighbor, said he lived there with his
wife and two small children until last year. Shahzad had told
Thurman's husband that he worked on Wall Street, she said.

"He was a little bit strange," she said. "He didn't like to
come out during the day."

Law enforcement officials say Shahzad bought the SUV, a 1993
Nissan Pathfinder, from a Connecticut man about three weeks ago and
paid cash. The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity
because of the sensitive nature of the case.

The vehicle identification number had been removed from the
Pathfinder's dashboard, but it was stamped on the engine, and
investigators used it to find the owner of record, who told them he
had sold the vehicle to a stranger. As the SUV buyer came into
focus, investigators backed off other leads.

The SUV was parked on Saturday night on a busy midtown Manhattan
street near a theater showing "The Lion King." The explosive
device inside it had cheap-looking alarm clocks connected to a
16-ounce can filled with fireworks, which were apparently intended
to detonate gas cans and set propane tanks afire in a chain
reaction "to cause mayhem, to create casualties," police
Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

A metal rifle cabinet placed in the SUV's cargo area was packed
with fertilizer, but NYPD bomb experts believe it was not a type
volatile enough to explode like the ammonium nitrate grade
fertilizer used in previous terrorist bombings.

Police said the SUV bomb could have produced "a significant
fireball" and sprayed shrapnel with enough force to kill
pedestrians and knock out windows.

A vendor alerted a police officer to the parked SUV, which was
smoking. Times Square, clogged with tourists on a warm evening, was
shut down for 10 hours. A bomb squad dismantled the explosive
device, and no one was hurt.

But Holder said Americans should remain vigilant.

"It's clear," he said, "that the intent behind this terrorist
act was to kill Americans."

Authorities did not address Shahzad's plans in Dubai. The
airport there is the Middle East's busiest and is a major transit
point for passengers traveling between the West and much of Asia,
particularly India.

President Barack Obama was told of the arrest shortly after
midnight, according to press secretary Robert Gibbs.

In Pakistan, Interior Minister Rehman Malik said authorities had
not been formally asked for help in the probe.

"When the request comes, we will cooperate with the U.S.
government," he told the AP.

The Pakistani Taliban appeared to claim responsibility in videos
that surfaced after the weekend scare, monitoring groups said, but
police had no evidence to support the claims.

More than a dozen people with American citizenship or residency,
like Shahzad, have been accused in the past two years of supporting
or carrying out terrorism attempts on U.S. soil, cases that
illustrate the threat of violent extremism from within the U.S.

Among them are Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, a U.S.-born Army
psychiatrist of Palestinian descent, charged with fatally shooting
13 people last year at Fort Hood, Texas; Najibullah Zazi, a
Denver-area airport shuttle driver who pleaded guilty in February
in a plot to bomb New York subways; and a Pennsylvania woman who
authorities say became radicalized online as "Jihad Jane" and
plotted to kill a Swedish artist whose work offended Muslims.