I would love to be at the Aspen Security Forum today to listen to real-life Jack Bauer type stories from Mitch Silber
“As director of intelligence for the New York City Police Department, Mitch Silber has had a front row seat to events that many of us only ever see unfold in a movie theater: thwarted terrorist plots, jockeying for position among government agencies and the story of an inside leak of sensitive law enforcement documents that has had a reeling effect on the NYPD. Now, as he announces his decision to leave the department to go to work in the private sector, Silber describes the city's fight against terrorism as serious and complex.
To understand what he means, it helps to understand what happened in New York in the years after 9/11. Officials in the city of more than 8 million people took enormous measures to beef up their own internal intelligence gathering capabilities, something once left to federal agencies.
In 2005, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly talked to CNN about why the city felt it needed to establish what amounts to it's own air force, navy, ground forces and intelligence gathering capabilities after the attacks of 9/11.
"The reason why we did it, is we believe that we're at the top of the terrorist target list," said Kelly at the time. "We also have the United Nations here, we're the financial and communications capital of the world. We have major stock exchanges here."”
As you can imagine, it was not all by the book as this 911 call describes:
An Associated Press team won a Pulitzer for its investigation of the NYPD surveillance in NJ. That adds even more color and suspense to the whole story.
Move over Jack Bauer!
Photo Credit of Mitch Silber on right
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