Terrorists in the U.S.

Terror-Linked Migrants Crossing Into U.S.

By PAULINE ARRILLAGA and OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
Associated Press Writers
Friday, July 08, 2005

TIJUANA, Mexico - A restaurateur in this border city ran another business smuggling Lebanese compatriots into the United States, some with connections to Hezbollah. A Sept. 11 commission staff report called him the only "human smuggler with suspected links to terrorists" convicted in the United States. But he is not unique, according to an Associated Press investigation based on government and court records and scores of interviews.

Many smuggling pipelines through Latin America and Canada have illegally channeled thousands of people from countries identified by the U.S. government as sponsors or supporters of terrorism.

The men flocked to the cafe under the sign with the cedar tree, symbol of their Mideast home. Here, in this alien border land, it was the beacon that led to an Arab "brother" who would help them complete their journey from Lebanon into America.

They would come, sometimes dozens a month over a three-year period, to find Salim Boughader Mucharrafille ?- the cafe owner who drove a Mercedes and catered to some of Tijuana's more affluent denizens, including workers at the U.S. consulate only a short stroll away. His American customers were unaware that the savvy boss of La Libanesa cafe ran a less reputable business on the side.

Until his arrest in December 2002, Boughader smuggled about 200 Lebanese compatriots into the United States, including sympathizers of Hezbollah, designated a terrorist organization by U.S. authorities. One client, Boughader said, worked for a Hezbollah-owned television network, which glorifies suicide bombers and is itself on an American terror watch list.

"If they had the cedar on their passport, you were going to help them. That's what my father taught me," Boughader told The Associated Press from a Mexico City prison, where he faces charges following a human-smuggling conviction in the United States.

"What I did was help a lot of young people who wanted to work for a better future. What's the crime in bringing your brother so that he can get out of a war zone?"

A report released by the Sept. 11 commission staff last year examining how terrorists travel the world cited Boughader as the only "human smuggler with suspected links to terrorists" convicted to date in the United States.

But after Boughader was locked up, other smugglers operating in Lebanon, Mexico and the United States continued to help Hezbollah-affiliated migrants in their effort to illicitly enter from Tijuana, a U.S. immigration investigator said in Mexican court documents obtained by the AP.

Another smuggling network that is controlled by Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebel group ?- a U.S.-designated terror organization ?- tried sneaking four Tigers over the California-Mexico border en route to Canada not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigator Steven Schultz said. The four were caught along with 17 other Sri Lankans, all posing as Mexicans, attempting to enter ports at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa.

An AP investigation found these are just some of the many pipelines in Central and South America, Mexico and Canada that have illegally channeled thousands of people into the United States from so-called "special-interest" countries ?- those identified by the U.S. government as sponsors or supporters of terrorism.

Even when caught, illegal immigrants from those countries and other nations are sometimes released while awaiting deportation hearings, then miss those court dates, according to the AP's investigation, which also documented deep concerns about security threats along the lightly patrolled, 4,000-mile U.S.-Canada border.

The AP reviewed hundreds of pages of court indictments, affidavits, congressional testimony and government reports, and conducted dozens of interviews in Mexico and the United States to determine how migrants from countries with terrorist ties were brought illegally to America ?- and how the smugglers they hired operated throughout the world.

Many of the travelers, unassociated with any extremist group, genuinely came fleeing war or in search of economic opportunity. But some, once in the United States, committed fraud to obtain Social Security numbers, driver's licenses or false immigration documents, U.S. court records showed.

Worse, the boldness of the smuggling enterprises, the difficulty of shutting them down and their potential to be used as terrorist conduits trouble many security officials.

Lebanese carpenter Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, smuggled in over the California border, admitted spending part of his time in the United States raising money to send back to his country to support Hezbollah ?- at least $40,000, according to an FBI affidavit. Kourani, court records said, told the FBI that his brother is the group's chief of military security in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah is widely admired as a resistance force.

U.S. homeland security officials maintain they know of no cases of al-Qaida operatives using smuggling operations to enter the United States via traditional routes over the northern or southern boundaries, though they have warned that recent intelligence suggests the terror group is eyeing the borders as a way in.

At least one al-Qaida-linked man smuggled himself over the border. Nabil al-Marabh, a now-deported Syrian citizen once No. 27 on the FBI's list of terror suspects and accused by Canadian authorities of having connections to Osama bin Laden's network, was caught sneaking from Canada into New York in the back of a tractor-trailer in June 2001 with a fake Canadian passport.

"Several al-Qaida leaders believe operatives can pay their way into the country through Mexico and also believe illegal entry is more advantageous than legal entry," Jim Loy, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told a congressional committee in February. Further, he said, "entrenched human smuggling networks and corruption in areas beyond our borders can be exploited by terrorist organizations."

The Boughader case and others show just how easy it would be ?- even now, nearly four years after Sept. 11.

Just weeks ago, a federal grand jury in Phoenix indicted an Iranian tailor on charges of attempting to bring illegal immigrants from his native country over the Arizona-Mexico border.

"Today they could be smuggling people, tomorrow weapons," said John Torres, deputy assistant director for smuggling and public safety investigations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. "The vulnerability there is a criminal or terrorist organization could take advantage of that existing infrastructure."

What the records reveal is a labyrinth of networks, which use established routes frequented for years by migrants of many nationalities.

Smugglers employ recruiters and facilitators in such "special-interest" countries as Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Pakistan. One immigrant, in testimony against a now-convicted smuggler, described a "market of passports" in northern Iraq where individuals could illegally purchase documents to aid travel to America.

These smugglers use staging areas and transportation coordinators in such places as Quito, Ecuador; Lima, Peru; Cali, Colombia; and Guatemala City. They pay foot guides, drivers and stash-house operators in Mexico and the United States.

They have moved people by plane ?- into suburban Washington, D.C., Florida, California. And they have crossed clients in vehicles or on foot into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and over the Canadian border, then helped deliver them to destinations across America.

They have partnered with other smugglers transporting Mexican or Central American migrants, sometimes swapping clients and transferring immigrants from "special-interest" countries and other migrants in the same loads.

"This is really a word-of-mouth business," said Laura Ingersoll, an assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., who has prosecuted at least a half-dozen smugglers who moved illegal immigrants from Egypt and Iraq into the United States.

"People from places in the Middle East will hear about who to go through, and they tend to be people from their same country, but once you get into the system we saw associations that really were driven by, `What's the most effective way for me to move my product?'" she said. "I may call someone else and essentially sell my load to somebody who's got a boat or a truck or something going out. It's just like sacks of potatoes."

"A Mafia," is how one of Boughader's clients, Roland Nassib Maksoud, once described the business.

Maksoud, a liquor distributor, traveled from Lebanon to Mexico on a legal visa in late 2000, he told investigators, according to Mexican court documents. In Mexico, he said, he met two compatriots who passed along the name of a restaurateur in Tijuana who smuggled Lebanese into the United States. They had gotten the name, Boughader, from a Beirut vendor who charged them $2,000 each for their visas to Mexico.

When Maksoud found the cafe, three Lebanese men were out front eating.

"Salim is inside," they told him in Arabic.

Boughader was meticulous about both his professions. He kept a spiral notebook with the names of his smuggling clients, their phone numbers and the date they arrived at his restaurant. In a separate ledger, Boughader told the AP, he recorded the names and numbers of his cafe customers and their favorite dishes.

He went over instructions with his newest client. Maksoud was to get a room at a nearby hotel, which he would share with another Lebanese man waiting to cross. The fee would be $2,000 up front, plus another $2,000 once Maksoud was in the States.

In January 2001, Maksoud was taken to a house on the Mexican side where other migrants were awaiting passage ?- "different people from different nationalities," he told investigators.

One morning at 1 o'clock, he was awakened, crammed into the trunk of a vehicle and told not to make a sound as the car made its way through the border port of entry, a five-minute ride.

The journey north was more arduous for other Boughader clients. One stated in a Mexican court document that he trekked for four hours over the hills into California with Lebanese and Mexican migrants. A guide brought up the rear, erasing their footprints.

Other people-couriers use altered passports to fly clients to the United States. One of them, convicted smuggler Mohammed Hussein Assadi, schooled his Iraqi customers to carry nothing identifying them as Arab while traveling. He advised one migrant to shave his mustache, another to dye her hair blonde, still another to get a "European" haircut, U.S. court records showed.

Central and South America are popular transit points because of their proximity to the United States and the relative ease with which migrants from countries with terrorist ties can obtain tourist visas there ?- either legally or through bribery. Assadi, an Iranian, worked from Ecuador, sometimes using the alias Antonio Roosevelt Choez Arreaga. He spoke Spanish in addition to Farsi and Arabic.

Bribery is another common tool for the organizations.

Boughader's clients told U.S. and Mexican investigators they paid thousands of dollars to obtain fraudulent visas from Mexico's consular office in Beirut. A woman who oversaw the office between 1998 and 2001 was arrested on charges of participating in the smuggling scheme.

In May, the former director of immigration in Honduras was arrested, accused of selling hundreds of Honduran passports to migrants from Lebanon, China, Cuba and Colombia ?- possibly to aid their entry into the United States. The investigation continues.

Maximiano Ramos, a former Los Angeles supervisor with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, admitted taking $12,500 to smuggle immigrants from the Philippines, home of the al-Qaida-linked militant group Abu Sayyaf. From 1996 to 2002, at least 40 migrants were diverted from connecting flights at Los Angeles International Airport and escorted out by security guards while Ramos was on duty.

Linda Sesi, an assistant ombudsman for the city of Detroit, is awaiting trial on charges of conspiring with four others to smuggle more than 200 migrants from Iraq, Jordan and other Middle Eastern countries into the United States from 2001 up until her arrest last September. The defendants allegedly charged clients more than $6,000 for tourist visas to South America and then, using falsified documents, flew them to Dulles airport outside Washington, D.C.

Some, including prosecutor Ingersoll, discount human smuggling as "a risky road" not likely to be traveled by terror operatives. But a former Sept. 11 commission counsel, Janice Kephart, said smuggling already is a chosen transportation mode for such groups.

Intelligence suggests that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of terrorists associated with more than a dozen extremist groups, according to the Sept. 11 commission's terrorist travel report Kephart helped write. Prior to Sept. 11, al-Qaida employed smugglers to get jihad recruits into Afghanistan for training, the report said.

Terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, "use human smugglers and document forgers to a great extent," Kephart said. "They know their value. It only makes sense that they would transfer that to infiltrate the United States."

Others noted that post-Sept. 11 security measures ?- more stringent visa requirements and security at airports and ports of entry ?- have made it tougher for terrorist operatives to seek legal passage.

"If you're a terrorist group looking to do something ... why not send them another route?" said Walter Purdy, director of the Terrorism Research Center in Burke, Va. "These people on the border, they don't come up and say, `We're part of Hezbollah.' They say, `I want to get a job in America' or `I'm going to see my cousin in New York. Can you get me in?' The guy will say, `How much money do you have?'"

Dismantling groups smuggling people from countries with terrorist ties is a priority, said Torres, the U.S. immigration official. But often when one smuggler is busted another eagerly fills his shoes.

Following Boughader's arrest, smuggling of Lebanese through Tijuana ceased for several months, ICE investigator Ramon Romo said in court documents filed in Mexico. Then some Lebanese men were apprehended at the Tijuana airport and another by the U.S. Border Patrol, and in April 2003 intelligence revealed that five members of Hezbollah were preparing to cross the border, Romo stated.

The information was passed on to Mexican authorities, who made some arrests.

Others have made it through.

Kourani, who helped raise donations for Hezbollah, entered the United States via the Lebanon-Tijuana pipeline, paying $3,000 in Beirut to get a Mexican visa, according to federal court documents. On Feb. 4, 2001, he and another man were smuggled into California in the hidden compartment of a vehicle.

Last month, Kourani was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison for conspiring to provide material support to a terrorist group. His lawyer, William Swor, said Kourani is not a member of Hezbollah and hasn't spoken in years with the brother who has a leadership role in the group. Prosecutors alleged the brother directed Kourani's U.S. activities.

ICE spokesman Manny Van Pelt refused to confirm that Boughader smuggled Kourani. Boughader himself couldn't specifically recall Mahmoud Kourani, though he noted he moved a number of people with the last name "Kourani" who were from Mahmoud Kourani's hometown of Yater, Lebanon, a longtime Hezbollah outpost.

Boughader acknowledged transporting a Lebanese man who worked at al-Manar, a global satellite television network owned and operated by Hezbollah. The U.S. State Department added al-Manar to its Terror Exclusion List in 2004, meaning anyone associated with the station may be refused entry or deported from the United States.

"For us, Hezbollah are not terrorists," said Boughader, a Mexican of Lebanese descent, echoing the feelings of most Lebanese. "I regret that what I was doing is against the law, but I don't regret what I did to help people."

Along the border, people are still getting such help day in and day out.

After Sept. 11, Boughader said, "I changed my phone numbers and told my sister if a Lebanese showed up at the restaurant to turn him away. But they kept coming." And, for at least nine more months, he kept smuggling, he admitted when he pleaded guilty in the United States.

"The checks they do at the border are still very bad," he said, "because, regardless of everything, it is still easy to cross."

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Terrorists could target US milk supply killing thousands

PressEsc
Contributed by John Hashcrop
Wednesday, 13 July 2005

Terrorists could easily target the US milk supply killing or causing serious illness to hundreds of thousands, a Stanford University researcher claims.

New testing procedures and hardening government safety rules could prevent a nightmare scenario of threats to the nation's milk supply, warned Prof. Lawrence Wein.

Mere 4 grams of botulinum toxin dropped into a milk production facility could cause serious illness and even death for 400,000 people in the United States.

Investments that would cost the public only 1 cent more per half-gallon of milk could prevent this nightmare scenario, according to Lawrence M. Wein of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Not only milk, but soft drinks, fruit and vegetable juices, processed tomato products, and even grains - anything that goes through large-scale storage and production and rapid distribution - could be at risk for such an attack, with catastrophic consequences for the American public, Wein said in his most recent study.

In the case of milk, says Wein, all it would take is for someone to obtain a suitable strain of botulinum toxin - the most poisonous substance known to humans - from an overseas black market lab, grow it in culture, and pour it into an unlocked milk tank or milk truck.

From there, the contaminated milk would make its way into large processing silos, where it would poison at least 100,000 additional gallons.

Only a fraction of the toxin would remain active after pasteurization, but according to Wein's mathematical model, that could be enough to infect the approximately 400,000 people who would drink the milk.

"Only 1 millionth of a gram is enough to poison an adult," Wein said, "And there would be more than that per person remaining in the distributed milk to do the job."

Based on their mathematical models of current distribution of milk, Wein and Liu estimate that within 48 hours of ingesting contaminated milk, consumers would begin to display symptoms.

If authorities were able to notify the public within the subsequent 24 hours to stop drinking milk (an ambitious time period), the contamination could be reduced.

But, of those eventually exposed, "about half would die," Wein said.

The death toll would be high (as much as 50,000 he estimated), due to the current insufficient supply of ventilators and antitoxins in the U.S. medical system.

Wein called for the US Food and Drug Administration to make current volunteer safety guidelines mandatory, such as requiring that milk tanks and trucks be locked and that two people be present when milk is transferred from one stage of the supply chain to the next.

Before releasing milk into silos, milk-tank truck drivers should be required to employ a new 15-minute test that can detect the four types of toxins associated with human botulism.

Drivers currently are required to wait for an antibiotic residue test and the toxin test could be conveniently accomplished at the same time.

"A single set of tests can be performed on each 5,500 gallon truck at a cost to milk producers that would raise consumer prices only several cents a gallon," Wein said. "We the public need to ask ourselves whether the elimination of this catastrophic threat is worth a 1 cent increase in the cost of a half-gallon of milk."

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Majority of Americans think terrorists will strike U.S. soon

US News
By DPA
Jul 12, 2005, 19:00 GMT

Washington - A poll conducted after the July 7 terrorist attacks in London and released Tuesday found that most Americans think there will be an act of terrorism in the U.S. soon.

According to the CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, 55 per cent of Americans think it is very or somewhat likely that terrorists will strike the U.S. "over the next several weeks". That figure has increased by 20 per cent over the past month.

The public now also feels that the war in Iraq has made the U.S. less safe from terrorism, with 54 per cent of respondents sharing that view. That figure was up 15 per cent from two weeks ago.

The London terrorist attacks, and the media attention they received, also contributed to twice as many people as a month ago who now name terrorism as the most important problem. Seventeen per cent of those asked said terrorism is the most important problem, up from 8 per cent at the beginning of June.

The poll also showed that views of President George W. Bush's ability to protect the U.S. from terrorist attacks have not changed.

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Do you feel that border security needs to be strengthened?

In battle against terrorists, border security is vital

Sun-Gazette Editor
July 19, 2005

Could a London-like attack be carried out in the United States by a "sleeper cell" of terrorists? The risk is there, of course, but U.S. security officials publicly point to signs that al-Qaida, at least, has not been successful in nurturing such cells here.

Terrorist border-crossers are another story, highlighted by the recent formation of the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition, among whose top priorities is border security.

The group notes an apparently growing number of non-Mexicans illegally crossing the U.S. border into Texas.

The U.S. Border Patrol says that nearly 100,000 non-Mexicans have entered Texas illegally so far this year, perhaps triple the number for the same period last year. Surely some of the increase in Texas crossings reflects increased border enforcement efforts elsewhere, but the Texas sheriffs' point is no less valid: Terrorists easily could be among such a large number of illegal border crossers.

Once inside the United States, illegal immigrants find that political correctness will lend them a helping hand to blend into American society.

Many banks, aided and encouraged by federal agencies, will even open accounts for people known to be illegal immigrants; immigration authorities are kept in the dark about such transactions, of course.

The Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition seeks federal homeland security funds to pay for border policing that the federal government ought to be doing. Local police agencies along the border need and deserve such assistance.

But they should not be expected to bear the brunt of border enforcement alone.

The federal government needs to get serious about bolstering border security, and it should put an end to efforts, however well intentioned, to coddle illegal immigrants once they have gotten past the border.

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Tancredo: If They Nuke Us, Bomb Mecca

Fox News
Monday, July 18, 2005
Associated Press

DENVER ?- A Colorado congressman told a radio show host that the U.S. could "take out" Islamic holy sites if Muslim fundamentalist terrorists attacked the country with nuclear weapons.

Rep. Tom Tancredo (search) made his remarks Friday on WFLA-AM in Orlando, Fla. His spokesman stressed he was only speaking hypothetically.

Talk show host Pat Campbell (search) asked the Littleton Republican how the country should respond if terrorists struck several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons.

"Well, what if you said something like ?- if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," Tancredo answered.

"You're talking about bombing Mecca," Campbell said.

"Yeah," Tancredo responded.

The congressman later said he was "just throwing out some ideas" and that an "ultimate threat" might have to be met with an "ultimate response."

Spokesman Will Adams said Sunday the four-term congressman doesn't support threatening holy Islamic sites but that Tancredo was grappling with the hypothetical situation of a terrorist strike deadlier than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

"We have an enemy with no uniform, no state, who looks like you and me and only emerges right before an attack. How do we go after someone like that?" Adams said.

"What is near and dear to them? They're willing to sacrifice everything in this world for the next one. What is the pressure point that would deter them from their murderous impulses?" he said.

Tancredo is known in the House for his tough stand on immigration and had a 100 percent rating last year from the American Conservative Union (search) his votes and positions on issues.

Mohammad Noorzai, coordinator of the Colorado Muslim Council (search) and a native of Afghanistan, said Tancredo's remarks were radical and unrepresentative but that people in Tancredo's position need to watch their words when it comes to sacred religious sites and texts.

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Tunnels, like the subway tunnels mentioned in the below article, are security weaklinks that need to be strengthened.

Who's Watching the Underwater Tunnels?

The New York times
July 20, 2005
By SEWELL CHAN

Hours after the London subway and bus bombings on July 7, New York City's police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, announced that officers would be posted immediately at the entrances to all 14 of the city's underwater subway tunnels.

The action underscored the Police Department's concerns about the tunnels, but it also exposed this reality: For most of the time since 9/11, nearly half of the tunnels have not been continuously guarded by the police.

The chief police spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said the department staffed the tunnels' fixed guard posts as needed, on the basis of threat assessments and other forms of intelligence.

The question of how best to safeguard the tunnels is among the most vexing for the police and transportation officials struggling to address the many security challenges posed by the country's busiest mass transit system. It involves decisions about money, personnel and technology.

The reasons for concern are straightforward. One vulnerability assessment after another conducted since Sept. 11, 2001, by or on behalf of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has placed the underwater tunnels at the top of the list of critical infrastructure.

The 14 tunnels form a vital network and are the product of varied construction methods spanning decades. The tunnels link four of the city's five boroughs under three bodies of water - the East River, the Harlem River and Newtown Creek - and range in length from 650 to 5,489 feet.

The authorities have so far focused their efforts on trying to control access to the tunnels, while exploring longer-term improvements like using new synthetic materials to buffer tunnels against an attack.

A major problem is that hundreds of people - from transit workers to outside contractors - regularly enter the tunnels to fix everything from track ties to train signals, without being asked for so much as an identification card.

In 2002 and 2003, the authority and an Army research center discussed a counterterrorism plan that would have included electronic access cards to enter the tunnels and sensors that use sound, heat or motion to detect the presence of an intruder. The plan fell apart because of disagreements over the scope of the Army's control.

Meanwhile, shortly after 9/11, New York City Transit, an authority subsidiary that operates the subways, erected simple booths at tunnel entrances to house police officers. By 2003, at a cost of nearly $7 million, the booths had been upgraded to include intercoms, telephone lines and video monitors linked to closed-circuit television cameras.

But the new booths were not entirely satisfactory. Although heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems were installed, police officers complained of foul odors and poor air circulation.

And although the police officers were assigned to serve as antiterror sentries at the tunnels, there has been pressure for them to respond to regular crimes underground.

After Sept. 11, the department assigned officers to guard the entrances to all 14 tunnels at all times. It also did so after the Moscow subway explosions in February 2004 and the Madrid commuter train bombings in March 2004.

But for most of the time since early 2002, the police have kept a permanent presence at only eight of the tunnels, Mr. Browne, the police spokesman, said in a statement.

At the other six tunnels, officers were posted round the clock to ride back and forth, standing in the first car so they could observe any intruder trying to enter a tunnel. When the officers reached the station at the other side of a tunnel, they exited and crossed over to the opposite platform for the return ride.

"We evaluate threats against the city every day," Mr. Browne said. "Obviously, there are periods when the collective intelligence judgment is to add resources and to provide fixed coverage to certain sensitive locations. Ideally, you'd want to have all things covered at all time, but we can't do that."

The current 24-hour coverage at all 14 tunnels will continue at least as long as the country's mass transit systems remain in a state of high alert, Mr. Browne said. The transportation authority plans to reimburse the police for much of the overtime duty, which has cost more than $1.9 million a week, he said.

In addition, officers from a special operations division, attached to the Police Department's Transportation Bureau, regularly inspect, on foot, the underwater tunnels and emergency exits for intruders. None have been detected since Sept. 11, Mr. Browne said.

While there have been no intruders found in the underwater tunnels, homeless people and others have been found wandering onto the tracks and into regular subway tunnels underneath the streets and have been arrested or ejected from the system.

Experts said that a constant police presence around the tunnels may be necessary, no matter the expense.

"At its root, while the immediate purpose of terrorism is to kill or harm people, its ultimate purpose is to frighten or demoralize," said Arnold M. Howitt, the executive director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard, who has written extensively about domestic preparedness. "Having people die in a tunnel, particularly if it were flooded, would be a dramatic statement and a propaganda victory for terrorists."

Dr. Howitt quickly added that he did not believe such a calamity was likely, and indeed, civil engineers said it would be enormously difficult to rupture the outer wall of an underwater tunnel.

"It would take just an enormous explosion to breach the lining," said Jack K. Lemley, a civil engineer who, from 1989 to 1993, oversaw the design and construction of the Eurotunnel, the world's longest underwater tunnel, which connects Britain and France under the English Channel.

Mr. Lemley, who runs an engineering firm in Boise, Idaho, has worked on major tunneling projects in New York City, including reconstruction of the Holland Tunnel and the East Side Access project, which will eventually connect the Long Island Rail Road to Grand Central Terminal.

Because many of the city's subway tunnels were bored into solid rock, an explosion would "tend to relieve itself up and down the tunnel" rather than cause a break in the tunnel itself, Mr. Lemley said.

"The difficulty, obviously, would be the people that were in the tunnel at the time of an explosion or some other kind of attack, and how to extract them," he said.

Most of the subway system's underwater tunnels were excavated in rock. The major exception is the 63rd Street tunnel, which is used by the F train and connects Manhattan and Queens via Roosevelt Island. An immersed-tube tunnel, it was prefabricated and then carefully submerged, section by section, into a trench dug into the bed of the East River. In partial use since 1989, the tunnel was completed in 2001.

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