Days 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.
