In the TV series “24,” the villains and heros are both big on hi-tech.
In the season just ended, for example, Jack Bauer has recovered a device that allowed a terrorist to command our drones to fire on London as well as to order a US submarine to torpedo a Chinese aircraft carrier.
Real-life threats, however, are more prosaic. Let’s remember that the most lethal attack in this city’s history — the bringing down of the Twin Towers — came by way of box-cutters and a few piloting lessons in how to steer an airplane.
We had a fresh reminder last week, when someone scaled the Brooklyn Bridge and replaced the Stars and Stripes with faded white banners. No one noticed until early hours of the morning.
No doubt this was most likely a prank rather than a warm-up for a terrorist strike. But in some senses, it doesn’t matter. In climbing up the towers and replacing the flags undetected, the perpetrators exposed a weakness in security.
And we know the Brooklyn Bridge is a real terrorist target. Iyman Faris, a former truck driver, is serving 20 years in prison for his role in a foiled al Qaeda plot to blow up the bridge.
Faris, a naturalized American citizen, was convicted of casing the bridge for al Qaeda after traveling to a terrorist trainign camp in Afghanistan.
Ditto for the World Trade Center, which is also a target and which has also had its weak security exposed in highly embarrassing ways. Back in September, four men parachuted off One World Trade Center.
They were arrested in March, the same month 16-year-old Justin Casquejo, dressed as a construction worker, crept through a hole in the fence to gain access to the same building, snuck past a sleeping security guard and took an elevator to the top.
These were all low-tech operations. Indeed, to foil the spotlights on the area, the people who changed the flags on the Brooklyn Bridge covered them with lasagna tins you can buy for a dollar or two at any supermarket.
And back in the original World Trade Center attack — in 1993 — the bomber drove a rented truck loaded with explosives into the parking garage underneath.
Vigilance is a hard business. To watch the same place constantly when nothing is going on isn’t easy. But it’s the responsibility of the city to see that it’s done. That may mean more technology or more eyeballs on a site, or simply more attention to gaps.
But what it mostly means is remembering that those who brought down the Twin Towers on that terrible September day in 2001 have not given up on their plans to bring murder and mayhem to our city.