Despite the Pakistani Taliban's claim to the bombing attempt, investigators are looking into the video captured by a tourist from a Pennsylvania town showing a possible suspect in his 40's. The man is white.
Kelly said officers were on the way to a Pennsylvania town to talk to a tourist who might have recorded the suspect on his video camera. The video shows a white man in his 40s taking off one shirt, revealing another underneath.
This will be a significant development in my opinion for several reasons, if it turns out to be anything - but I won't speculate. I don't have any more information than what is in the article at this point. The man could just be some guy taking off his shirt, totally innocent. He may be light skinned and not caucasian. He may be a white sympathizer to foreign terrorists. He may be a militia member or another type of domestic terrorist. All possibilities are open. I advise everyone to put their preconceptions on the shelf and let the cops do their work free of racial or other kinds of stereotypes. Reporting the individual's color is merely the way that investigators look for suspects. And it's not racial profiling once they've got him on video. It's just reporting what the video seems to show.
The commissioner said there's no evidence that a Pakistani Taliban videotaped claim to the failed car bombing is valid.
...
"Clearly it was the intent of whoever did this to cause mayhem, to create casualties," Kelly said at a news conference at police headquarters. "It's just a sober reminder that New York is clearly a target of people who want to come here and do us harm."
He said New Yorkers are lucky that the bomb did not fully detonate because it "looks like it would have caused a significant fireball." He said the vehicle would have been "cut in half" by an explosion and people nearby could have been sprayed by shrapnel and killed.
"It wasn't an accident," he said. "It was somebody who brought this to the location to send a message to terrorize people in the area."
Update [2010-5-2 18:27:31 by banderson]:
Kelly ... said that they have identified the registered owner of the Nissan Pathfinder found with deadly explosives. The license plate on the vehicle was linked to the registration of another vehicle, which was found in an auto repair shop in Connecticut, he said.
The license plates were not stolen, but Kelly would not clarify how the license plates of the vehicle in Connecticut were placed on the Pathfinder.
Police have reviewed hours of surveillance footage and found a white male in his 40s who looked 'furtively' toward the car with the bombs...
The surveillance footage showed that the man changed from a dark-colored shirt on Shubert Alley, about half a block from where the car was parked on West 45th Street and 7th Avenue. As he walked away from the scene, the man then, looked back toward the vehicle, roughly at the time that the bombs were scheduled to explode, authorities said.
Update [2010-5-2 20:20:19 by banderson]:
NEW York Police today confirmed the owner of the SUV involved in Saturday's failed Times Square bombing had been identified.
However, a spokeswoman told NewsCore they did not have the Nissan Pathfinder's owner in custody "as far as I know".
... the Nissan Pathfinder had been traced back to Texas, where it had been recorded as scrapped.
...
investigators believed the car's actual owner had nothing to do with the bomb and that the vehicle's Connecticut licence plates didn't match the make of the car.
The licence plate's last known location was Kramer's Used Auto Parts in Stratford, Connecticut.
Update [2010-5-3 0:42:40 by banderson]: VIDEO of white male suspect released. Guy with bald spot at center right:
http://news.yahoo.com/...