Praying Nobody Screwed with the Tunnel

Back in March 2005 I was detailing what my pre-retirement days commuting to Manhattan from suburban New York via New Jersey were like. In that piece I wrote

My day used to start in the dark at 5:00AM and by 6:30AM I'd be on a bus to New York City praying nobody screwed with the tunnel under the Hudson that day...

For anyone that has never ridden in the NY/NJ underground tunnels, there are PATH (train) tunnels (I think 2), and the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, which are vehicular. The exit of the tunnels into Manhattan are not that far from Ground Zero. In fact, one of the tunnels was dedicated for a while after 9/11 to the trucks removing debris from the site of the WTC.

The tunnels run deep -- but not that deep -- below the mighty Hudson River and its many billions of gallons of water. The water is held at bay by a huge and complicated network of walls, barriers, massive framework and tons of dirt and cement. What you see when you travel through the tunnels by car are the shiny white ceramic tiles that line the walls. Similar in the PATH tunnels only they're not as pretty. The tunnels are a few miles long, but if you're even mildly claustrophobic they seem 100 miles long -- especially if the traffic is slow (although it can move bumper to bumper at 50 mph! The tunnels do have some minimal lighting, but since it's like riding in a car or bus through the tube of a roll of paper towels in two lanes of bumper to bumper traffic, it is stilll dark and gloomy. If an accident or diabled vehicle blocks one or more lanes, it becomes a parking lot just that fast.

There is security at the entrance to the vehicular tunnels (usually Port Authority police but when the alert level goes up, the NJ National Guard with appropriate weapons and search personnel); trucks are scrutinized closely and quite often stopped and searched. Trains are a bit more problematic because there are many entrances and more than 200,000 people ride the trains each day. For my part, I rode through the tunnels in the mornings and the evenings with my radio headphones firmly planted in my ears and with my eyes closed for the most part and if stopped in traffic silently repeating my mantra, "i. am. not. under. the. hudson. river. i. am. not. under. the. husdon. river..." I don't need to detail the effect that releasing the river water to any part of Manhattan (or any large city) would have.

So today, I awake to this story...

FBI agents monitoring Internet chat rooms smashed a possible Al Qaeda-linked terrorist plot to attack New York City's underground transportation system, law enforcement officials said Friday.

Although now they say it was not the Holland Tunnel that was targeted but the PATH tunnels.

However, from breaking news, it seems that -- once again -- some a$$hat on the inside decided to LEAK the details of this CLASSIFIED investigation to the media before they were ready to close out the home grown cell and some a$$hat newspaper or other media outlet decided to publish the details!!! Grrrrrr... Some day soon, these leaks and the premature publication of the details are going to cost Americans their lives -- civilian or soldier -- unless we start prosecuting those who leak the information and those that make the decision to publish/publicize the details.

Copyright Some Soldier's Mom 2006. All rights reserved.