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Commentary By Jason L. Riley

The Lessons of Paris and 9/11 Unlearned

Public Safety, Culture, Cities National Security & Terrorism, Culture & Society, New York City

Surveillance is not just about making arrests, but knowing where the next threat might come from.

The timing could have been worse, but not by much. Exactly one month before the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, a federal appeals court reopened a discrimination lawsuit filed against New York City over a counterterrorism program begun in the wake of 9/11.

The 2001 World Trade Center attack was the second time the buildings had been hit in eight years—a car bomb was detonated underneath the complex in 1993, killing six and injuring more than 1,000. Follow-up plots to bomb the George Washington Bridge, the United Nations and the FBI’s New York office were thwarted by an informant who had infiltrated the terrorists. But after 9/11, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly stepped up the city’s offense against Islamic extremists bent on killing innocent Americans.

Read the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal.

This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal