Terrorist attacks may have been plotted out in Boston

The Boston Globe

Authorities in Boston Tuesday began searching for a terrorist group that carried out the most crucial part of the most coordinated, audacious terrorist attack ever directed at Americans.

Boston Police Superintendent-in-Chief James Hussey said a task force of local police, the State Police, the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was trying to determine if those who commandeered a pair of Boston-to-Los Angeles flights had been in Boston for some time, plotting the attack.

Hussey said that while it is too soon to determine who carried out the hijacking and deliberate crashing of at least four U.S. commercial airliners, the recent presence in Boston of two men with links to the terrorist Osama bin Laden would lead many investigators to suspect that organization was involved.

A former FBI agent who was based in Boston for more than a decade said it was no surprise that at least part of the operation was launched here, saying the bin Laden organization has members and sympathizers in the area.

Boston, he said, has "a lot of terrorist cells in this area. It’s a facilitator for terrorist activity. There have been cells here of bin Laden’s associates. They’re entrenched here. They’re able to use this area because of the proximity to New York and to fold into the local population, and they’re able to facilitate terrorist attacks."

Joseph Lawless, director of public safety for Massport, which operates Logan Airport, said it was too soon to know if there was a security breach that allowed armed hijackers onto the flights that originated at Logan.

When authorities learned that it was a flight out of Logan Airport that had been hijacked and driven into the New York landmark, their emergency plans took on greater urgency.

"It was obvious, then, that there is a terrorist cell operating here in New England," said Louis Elisa, the former regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.