Officials worry about New York subway threats

The Big Apple might be in trouble:

The New York City Police Department is investigating what it deems a credible tip that 19 operatives have been deployed to New York to place bombs in the subway, and security in the subways will be increased, sources told ABC News. While the police department is taking the threat seriously, it is also urging the public not to be alarmed because – while the source is credible – the information has not been verified. According to sources in intelligence, emergency services and police headquarters, when three Iraqi insurgents were arrested several days ago during a raid by a joint FBI-CIA team, one of those caught disclosed the threat. Because it slipped out during the arrest, the plot was deemed credible.

This comes just a week after New York transit officials turned down a federal offer of funding for more police dogs:

The Department of Homeland Security is spending $2.7 million to provide 30 bomb-sniffing dogs, along with training for their police handlers, to 10 transit agencies, including the subway systems in Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington.

But New York's subway system, by far the largest and busiest in the country, is not one of them. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority turned down an invitation to apply for the money, officials said yesterday, because the grant would have come with restrictions that they called cumbersome and because the dogs could have been withdrawn and used elsewhere during a national emergency.

Houston, naturally, doesn't need dogs, because we have an elite Israeli-trained Metro counterterrorism commando squad.