The Next Attack

Terrorists in Iraq are becoming proficient at blowing up
oil refineries. Similar plants in a handful of American
cities represent our greatest vulnerability. We could
easily be making them less dangerous. But we

Across the Delaware River, three young men gather in a vacant lot. The leader of the group is a British national, a second-generation Pakistani from Liverpool who spent much of 2004 in Iraq. He has received training in bomb making from an Iranian tutor in southern Iraq and participated in attacks on Iraqi oil refineries. In the spring of 2005, a few months after returning from Iraq, the British-born jihadist traveled to the United States on a flight from London. Having never run afoul of the law in the United Kingdom, his name was not on the traveler watch list of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Further, as a British subject he was able to travel to New York without a visa.

With a letter of introduction from a radical British sheikh, the jihadist found his way to a Jersey City mosque. There, the local imam put him in contact with two Americans: a college student and his older cousin, both of whom had become adherents of the teachings of the radical Egyptian philosopher Sayyid Qutb. The three hatched a plan to use a commercial tanker truck to target the Sunoco refinery in southern Philadelphia.

Thousands of tanker trucks operate in the tristate area of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. The older cousin holds a commercial driver