Authorities’ actions need to be explained in New York case

Federal officials say they have been unable to find any links between such Middle Eastern terrorist organizations as Hamas or Hezbollah and the three men arrested in Brooklyn last week while allegedly preparing to set off bombs in New York subways. The inability of U.S. and friendly foreign intelligence services to find a connection does not prove there is none, but it does strengthen the possibility that the plotters were freelancers, acting without external guidance. In a way, that makes this story even more frightening.

When there is outside direction, the chances of uncovering a terrorist plot sometimes improve. With luck, incriminating communications or money transfers can be monitored or the movement of weapons or suspects can be traced. But terrorists acting on their own initiative can be far harder to identify. If one of the would-be suicide bombers in the Brooklyn case hadn’t developed cold feet and tipped off authorities, there is every reason to think--as officials in New York concede--that many lives could have been snuffed out.

The full story of how a calamitous event was averted has yet to be told. What more urgently awaits disclosure is how the lead suspect in this case, a 23-year-old Palestinian named Gazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, earlier this year was allowed by a U.S. immigration judge in Washington state to post a $5,000 bond and remain free despite having been arrested three times while trying to enter the country illegally from Canada, where he had first arrived in 1993.

Abu Mezer was no ordinary border-jumper. He had been convicted of assault and a credit card crime in Canada. Once allowed to move about freely in the United States, Abu Mezer applied for political asylum, claiming Israel suspected him of being a Hamas member and would persecute him if he was sent back to his West Bank home. Both his criminal record in Canada and his raising of the Hamas membership issue should have set official alarm bells ringing. Apparently neither did. Why exactly--whether Immigration Service laxity or a loophole in the law or judicial ineptitude--now cries out for explanation.