surveillance activities were to look at potential targets for a terrorism attack, including here at rockefeller plaza. he also looked at times square. a number of major tunnels and bridges in new york city and key government centers, including the fbi headquarters in new york, on top of that, surveilled fenway park, prudential center in boston and washington monument. those are surveillance activities. in addition to that, he attempted to kill somebody he believed was an israeli spy. he had a handler according to court documents from hezbollah, somebody that was arrested july this year, has been detained. he is in custody at this point, and it is important to note, chris, no active terrorist plots he was part of, but seemed to be operational knowledge of bomb making. the fbi according to court papers brought in, sabts, special agent bomb technicians reviewed some drawings. those are now part of court
contrast. so when there was a terrorism attack in london, donald trump said the following august 14 of 2018. another terrorist attack in london. these animals are crazy and must be dealt with through toughness and strength. that s when the attacker was a muslim. and yesterday, my warmest sympathy and best wishes go out to the people of joonew zealand. very standard. the speech is different. and then i also want tzeand, a awning, a asenator from queensland. and here he is talking about what he says is the actual cause of what happened. i ll read it. he goes on and on and says left wing politicians will rush to claim the causes are gun laws or national views. but the real cause he says of blood shed in new zealand is the
terrorism command found three improvised explosive devices received in the mail by three transport hubs across the city. they were found near london city airport and heathrow airport and the waterloo railway station. they are treating it as a linked series. matt bradley has the latest details. what have we got? they are treating these as linked because they came in basically identical packaging and they are treating it as a terrorism attack. as you mentioned, they referred the counter terror officers and called on them to investigate this. that shows some level of preparedness and they are calling these bombs ieds or improvised explosive devices. if you have been following them in the middle east, that means a lot of different things and normally it refers to something like a small bomb, normally homemade similar to a land mine.
get a handle of what was going on here. we have heard witnesses say that this that at least one person we heard say he knows the shooter. so that is helpful to law enforcement. sit not a terrorism attack. it would appear to be workplace violence. i think law enforcement wants to get a handle on the scene trying to fig youre out how many here. they are trying to determine whether there is an ongoing threat and how many victims are there. this went on for about an hour based on our latest information. we have covered a lot of mass shootings. did that seem like a long time to you? yes. when you see these kinds of shootings.
yes, there was a significant history in the public cases. we know that there was some concern i think out of a is your fit of caution, there were nypd deployed outside media entities today. again, i think in the absence of knowledge of a motive whether there was something broader than this particular paper. the ncpd is uniquely prepared to send heavily armed units to specific locations based on threats that happen. if there s a terrorism attack overseas if it happens in a subway, they respond on the subway. it s something they have the ability and resources to do. we see that here in new york city before air became aware there may be some other cities doing that. as we learn more about what drove account shooting, police departments will react to that whether this is a longer term protection or something that appears to be isolated to this newspaper. it s something we have to wait and see.