June 16, 2007: Vol. 30, No. 24
Past issues
The Paper in print
RSS feeds
Print edition (PDF)
Email Alerts- The current issue
- Neighborhood Map
- Bay Ridge
- Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights
- Brooklyn Heights
- Downtown, DUMBO
- Carroll Gardens
- Cobble Hill, Red Hook, Boerum Hill
- Fort Greene
- Clinton Hill, Crown Heights
- North Brooklyn
- Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick
- Park Slope
- Prospect Heights, Windsor Terrace, Greenwood Heights
- GO Brooklyn
- Brooklyn Cyclones
- Not Just Nets
- Police Blotter
- Perspective
- Parenting
- Politics
- Transit
- Podcasts
- The Brooklyn Bride
- Brooklyn Boom
- Classifieds
- Merchant news
- About The Paper
- RSS Feeds
-
Enlarge this image
Enlarge this image
Enlarge this imageSimilar stories
Print this story
digg
del.icio.usDays after federal authorities arrested four Muslim men and charged them with a terror plot to blow up gas tanks at John F. Kennedy Airport, Rep. Vito Fossella invited the media to the Bay Ridge portion of the fuel pipeline to listen to him demand that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo figure out who is responsible for securing the site.
But Fossella caught a lucky break: when he got to Third Avenue and 65th Street, he noticed that there was, indeed, a hole in the fence that is supposed to keep ne’er-do-wells and terrorists away from the jet-fuel pipeline.
As this sequence of photos shows, Fossella’s press conference quickly turned into a great photo-op, too.
1. Fossella quickly noticed how insecure the Buckeye pipeline really is. He then doffed his jacket and climbed right through.
2. Fossella posed for photos at the access point to the pipeline.
3. Fossella and local activist Joanne Lucas made use of a rope that a homeless person installed.
Afterwards, Fossella said his press conference had made its point.
“It took us less than three minutes to find the hole in the fence, enter the rail yard and locate the pipeline,” he said. “It’s disturbing just how easy it was to do. It also proves how simple it would be for terrorists to take advantage of the security vulnerability of the site.”
A spokesman for the Buckeye Pipe Line Company has told The Brooklyn Paper that the pipeline, which carries jet fuel from Linden, New Jersey to JFK, is monitored on a weekly basis and is an extremely unlikely terror target because there is no air inside the pipeline to enable combustion of the jet fuel.
©2007 The Brooklyn Paper
Enter your comment below
By submitting this comment, you agree to the following terms:
You agree that you, and not BrooklynPaper.com or its affiliates, are fully responsible for the content that you post. You agree not to post any abusive, obscene, vulgar, slanderous, hateful, threatening or sexually-oriented material or any material that may violate applicable law; doing so may lead to the removal of your post and to your being permanently banned from posting to the site. You grant to BrooklynPaper.com the royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such content in whole or in part world-wide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or later developed.
