New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who retires in a few days, warned that the city “remains squarely in the crosshairs of terrorists.” Another NYPD official warned that New Yorkers who have traveled to Syria to fight may return radicalized. A 300-member Army rocket battalion is deploying to the Middle East for nine months. A federal judge in Manhattan said the NSA’s telephone metadata collection “represents the government’s counter-punch” to al Qaeda’s ability to remotely operate an international terrorist network, and ruled that the NSA program does not violate privacy rights. The latest National Intelligence Estimate predicts that most gains against the Taliban in Afghanistan will quickly erode once US forces leave the country.
