Smoking Car to an Arrest in 53 Hours

[spanone]

The keys found in the ignition of the sport utility vehicle that was left to explode in Times Square on Saturday evening did more than just start cars: one opened the front door to Faisal Shahzad’s home.

The young woman in Bridgeport who last month sold Mr. Shahzad the rusting 1993 Nissan Pathfinder prosecutors say he used in the failed attack did not remember his name. But she had his telephone number.

That number was traced back to a prepaid cellular phone purchased by Mr. Shahzad, one that received four calls from Pakistan in the hours before he bought the S.U.V.

It was 53 hours and 20 minutes from the moment the authorities say Mr. Shahzad, undetected, left his failed car bomb in the heart of Manhattan until the moment he was taken off a plane at Kennedy Airport and charged with trying to kill untold numbers of the city’s residents and tourists.

“In the real world,” said the New York police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, whose detectives investigated the case with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, “53 is a pretty good number.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/nyregion/05tictoc.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

[JackintheGreen]

1. All this without torture?!? Just regular police work???

That can't be right. Pretzel-nit said. Sith-lord Cheney, too.

[FBI_Un_Sub]

4. Good, competent, professional police work.

Not motivated by the Rovian formula of "It's easier to re-elect a war time President" -- or the Cheney formula of rewarding big contributors. The system actually work with honest. competent people.

[TwilightGardener]

2. Color me impressed.

[WhiteTara]

3. bu..bu..but the M$M says it was just luck

those talking heads are just tools, but they sure can get their message out. I wish we had a real news service that didn't have to editorialize with each story.

[gratuitous]

5. And it just KILLS the Republicans

They're left with ineffectual whining about how Shahzad "almost" got away. Yeah, and the Bush administration "almost" caught bin Laden, but like Wile E. Coyote chasing the Roadrunner . . . Well, the analog breaks down in that it's not anyone in the Bush administration who got blown up by their hare-brained schemes, it was luckless civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[NJmaverick]

6. K & R!