Ten plots foiled: another one looming

Ten attacks on cities across the world were disclosed as having been disrupted since September 11, 2001, just as the New York mayor was declaring a heightened level of security amid the most specific, yet least likely, threat to the most famous city in America yesterday. As President Bush was proclaiming the successes of breaking up plots by terrorist groups to recreate the events of 9/11, Michael Bloomberg was assuring New York citizens to go about their everyday lives, fogging off the threats revealed by a recently-captured insurgent in Iraq as highly unlikely.

The ten putsches that have been released to the press are chilling in their bluntness: amongst the plots were two attacks in two years in an attempt to revive the legacy of the events of September 11, when two planes crashed almost simultaneously into the two high-rise towers of the World Trade Centre, sending them crashing to the ground and killing over 3,000. One attack, broken up in 2002, was to be focused upon West Coast cities, with the distinct possibility that Los Angeles, CA, the 'New York of the West Coast' would have been a target. Another disrupted plot involved hijacking planes and bearing down on East Coast landmarks, rubbing salt in the wounds that still smarted just two years after the worst terrorist attacks the United States had ever seen. A third terrorist horror was to take the form of a nuclear - or 'dirty' bomb - being exploded in a major city, in what would possibly be more damaging than any number of transport-based attacks. According to intelligence gathered, a 2003 plot to use airplanes to divebomb Heathrow airport was also broken up by British and American forces working together.

It is public transport that is the focus of concerns in New York City today, however, the third month after the July 7 bombings in London, which left tens of people dead. It is the worry of intelligence officials that US terrorist cells seek to emulate the successes of the London bombers, and information released indicates that a plan had been hatched to simultaneously bomb the New York subway network, stretching across 468 under-and-overground stations, with 19 bombs concealed underneath prams and pushchairs. These innocuous props would hide the instruments of sheer horror that would be detonated, affecting a large number of the 4.6 million people who use the subway system each and every day.

New York sits and waits to see whether such an attack will materialise: until that point, it will carry on.