The subway terrorist threat that gripped New York last weekend was a hoax stemming from false intelligence provided by a normally reliable informant, US law enforcement officials were quoted as saying.
According to newspaper and television reports, the unidentified officials said the informant -- believed to be from Pakistan -- had admitted leading investigators astray about a plot to bomb the New York subway system.
The threat, which was unusually specific as to time and place, was taken very seriously by city officials who issued a high alert and flooded the subway network with extra police and National Guard troops.
The informant had fingered three men in Iraq as being behind the plot, but their subsequent capture and interrogation revealed no links to any plan or any known terrorist group, CNN quoted law enforcement sources as saying.
He also admitted to fabricating a story about another individual who had made his way into the United States to help lay the ground for the alleged bomb plot.
"The threat has washed out," the New York Post quoted a senior law enforcement source as saying. "If there was something going on, it was disrupted."
News that the threat was based on bogus information will increase the pressure on New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, who have already been criticised for overreacting.
From the beginning, there was some discrepancy over the nature of the threat, with the Bloomberg administration underlining its seriousness even as federal officials questioned its credibility.
Bloomberg, who is seeking a second term in mayoral elections next month, told reporters on Monday that he had no regrets about his decision to inform the public and ramp up security.
"We're going to take every single threat that has any chance of being credible seriously and do exactly what we did," he said.
