[Sean]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060618/...bway_plot_book

A reported plot by al-Qaida terrorists to kill thousands of New Yorkers by spreading cyanide gas in the subway underscores the folly of a Homeland Security Department cutback of funds for major cities, a Democratic lawmaker said Sunday. "This is just more evidence that what Homeland Security did to us was terribly misguided and just wrong," Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record) said. "It shows that New York is the prime target, and shows the importance of prior intelligence and of manpower." New York lawmakers, and state and municipal officials, have pledged efforts to reverse a recent decision by the federal agency to cut New York's federal anti-terror allocations by 40 percent, some $83 million less than the $207 million it received in 2005. The cyanide plot is described in a new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," by author Ron Suskind and excerpted in the current issue of Time magazine. According to the book, U.S. intelligence agencies learned the scheme involved the use of a crude but effective device made of Mason jars that would release the deadly gas through several subway cars, but was called off, 45 days before it was set to occur, by Osama bin Laden's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri. Schumer, a leading proponent in Congress of tighter security measures for the nation's ports and transportation systems, quoted security authorities, "both federal and local," as saying the al-Qaida plan to spread deadly gas in the subways in 2003 was considered a valid threat.