Securing the City: Inside America's Best Counterterror Force: the NYPD

By Rebecca Jones, Special to the Rocky

Published January 29, 2009 at 7 p.m.

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* Nonfiction. By Christopher Dickey, Simon & Schuster, $26. Grade: B+-

Book in a nutshell: Terrorism is nothing new to New York City. Long before 9/11 and the destruction of the Twin Towers, the city was always a magnet for the disgruntled, and saboteurs with a violent political agenda have been blowing up buildings and killing innocent New Yorkers for a century.

In his new book, Dickey explores the history of terrorism in New York City, and goes into great detail about how the city put together its own network of counterterror experts that rivals anything the FBI, CIA or other "alphabet agencies" of the federal government have devised. After all, if foreign terrorists plan to launch an attack on American soil, chances are good it will play out in New York.

Best tidbit: Consider this description of the capabilities of an NYPD helicopter: "It is a state-of-the art crime-fighting, terror-busting, order-keeping techno toy, with its enormous lens that can magnify any scene on the streets almost one thousand times, then double that digitally; that can watch a crime in progress from miles away, can look in windows, can sense the body heat of people on rooftops or running along sidewalks, can track beepers slipped under cars, can do so very many things that the man in the helmet watching the screens and moving the images with the joystick in his lap, NYPD detective David Aschau, is often a little bit at a loss for words."

Pros: Inside these pages we meet all the names we've come to know and dread: Richard Reid, the infamous if bungling shoe bomber; Alireaza Safi and Shmad Safari, the Iranians expelled when they were caught taking pictures of New York subway lines; Adam Gadahn, the so-called "American Taliban"; Mohammed Babar, a Pakistani-born New Yorker who moved back to Pakistan to help al-Qaida, despite the fact that his mother worked in the World Trade Center and survived the 9/11 attacks.

Dickey weaves them all into the tapestry that is the terrorist threat to New York.

Cons: The terrorists' names have become familiar, the anti-terrorists' names, not so much. Dickey references lots of people, and it's hard to keep them all straight. A list of the cast of characters to remind readers of who's who in which agency would have been useful.

Final word: Readers will be scared by the near misses and anxious about the future, but can't help but also be inspired by this well-researched story of just why and how plot after plot against the city has been foiled.

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