Forget about Police Commissioner Ray Kelly's claims that the NYPD has a high-powered gun that might take down a plane. The real power is in the hands of the feds.
The feds keep shoulder-launched Stinger missiles, capable of bringing down a hijacked jet, in the city.
That’s right: Heat-seeking firepower with the ability to strike a jet traveling in excess of 400 mph and up to 11,000 feet in the air is stashed right here in Manhattan.
It is a weapon of choice of our military and, tragically, of Al Qaeda and terrorists around the globe who take shots at our troops.
Weighing less than 35 pounds, the Stinger uses infrared to lock on to the jet's engine exhaust heat. It is a lightweight, portable, shoulder-launched weapon that takes one person to fire.
The Secret Service brings its Stinger missiles along whenever the president is in town. In fact, the Secret Service kept one in an office in the World Trade Center before it was destroyed on 9/11.
How would I know that?
In a book I wrote called “The Man Who Warned America,” I reported that after the Towers fell, several law enforcement agencies that kept clandestine offices there showed up to help in the rescue efforts, but also searched for their secret stashes of documents and weapons.
“The Drug Enforcement Administration wanted to find the records of cases they had built against drug dealers, while CIA operatives came to the crumbled towers to get into secure safes that had held stacks of classified information and documents in a phony office they had set up," I wrote.
"The most closely guarded secret in the towers was kept by The Secret Service, which was concerned about a Stinger missile, which was used to protect the president in the event of an attack when he visited New York.”
Police Commissioner Kelly, speaking on “60-Minutes,” claimed the department now has 50-caliber rifle firepower to take down aircraft. It created a firestorm of publicity. And the NYPD has subsequently clarified that he was referring to a small single engine plane, at best.
Experts question whether the NYPD’s weapons have the ability to take down even a small plane. And they are dubious of the NYPD’s authority to even take that action.
Besides, if a terrorist-controlled jet is again bearing down on the city, the response would come from the U.S. military and their F-16s, not a cop in a helicopter.
