TIMES SQUARE UPDATE – AT 7:05 P.M. ET:  Police Commissioner Ray Kelly of New York, one of the few people I actually take seriously when a terror incident occurs, made clear today what the major break was in the rapid investigation.

Kelly said the break came when a police officer was able to get under the bomb car and find the hidden VIN (vehicle identification number).  Early reports indicated that the VIN had been scratched from its usual place, under the driver's side window.

This was also the break in the first World Trade Center bombing, which occurred in 1993.  Many people – including, fortunately, some terrorists – don't realize that the VIN is engraved in several places on a vehicle because the most visible stamping is so easy defaced.  After World Trade Center I, which was carried out by detonating a bomb in a Ryder rental truck, police found a VIN on the truck's wrecked axle, leading to a trace on the person who rented the truck.

The suspect, a native-born Pakistani who became a naturalized American only months ago, is still being interrogated.  First bulletins said that he claimed he'd acted alone.  Only a fool would believe that.  He may have planted the bomb alone, but he'd had training, incompetent it appears, in building bombs.

One new question:  It's now clear that the suspect was already aboard an airliner, with a ticket to Dubai, when authorities intervened and had the plane returned to the terminal.  But the suspect was on the no-fly list, which means the United States Government already knew something suspicious about him.  Question:  If he was on the no-fly list, how did he get on the plane?  That must be a subject for immediate investigation and punishment.

Andrew Malcolm, of the L.A. Times's Top of the Ticket blog, has the actual tape of the air controllers and Kennedy International Airport recalling the airliner carrying the suspect as it waited for clearance to take off.  It's here.

Obviously, this latest incident, coming only months after Fort Hood, fewer months after the Christmas day airline bombing attempt, and even fewer months after arrests in a plot to hit New York's subways, is leaving people jittery.  The terrorists have to be lucky only once.

May 4, 2010