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CNN Sunday Morning

Car Bomb found in NYC; Times Square Bomb Alert; Oil Spill in the Gulf Coast

Aired May 02, 2010 - 06:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Who left it there and why? We do not know. That search continues. The plates did not match the vehicle.

So the plates on that vehicle were taken off another vehicle. They did trace those plates back to a vehicle that was taken to apparently a junkyard. So maybe the plates were stolen so the investigation now goes on to actually trying to figure out who and why and frankly, what could be next?

So New York, which is always -- Brooke -- on high alert; always expected to be a target. Once again, dealing with the reality this morning that terrorism is all too real. Don't know if it's international terrorism just yet, according to federal officials. But still a lot would say it's terrorism nonetheless.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: So as we watch this car being taken to this facility in the Bronx -- and there it goes -- the facility also already has the bits and pieces as T.J. just mentioned, the propane tanks, the gas containers, the fireworks, the batteries.

And you know it will take hours and likely days for these investigators, forensics teams to take a very, very close look to perhaps trace the origin of those materials and make sure they are fingerprinting that car inside and out.

Of course the big question right now, who did this and why? We do not know, but we did hear from the mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg several hours ago. Here is what he told the public.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, MAYOR, NEW YORK CITY: Thanks to alert New Yorkers and professional police officers, we avoided what could have been a very deadly event. I'm going to begin by telling you what we know and what we don't know.

At about 6:30 last night, an alert T-shirt vendor who is a Vietnam veteran noticed an unoccupied suspicious vehicle on 45th Street, just off 7th Avenue, a few blocks from where we are standing.

He alerted police officer Wayne Ratigan of the NYPD Mounted Unit, who was on his horse, "MIGGS", patrolling Times Square. Officer Ratigan saw the vehicle, a Nissan Pathfinder, which had smoke emerging from vents near the backseat, and he also smelled gun powder. He, with the help of police officers assigned to Operation Impact immediately evacuated the area and called for the fire department and more police. Firefighters, emergency service officers, and the bomb squad responded, and the bomb squad confirmed that the suspicious vehicle did indeed contain an explosive device.

There were gas cans and bomb-making materials in the car. The experts at the bomb squad are removing them as we speak. Who abandoned the car and why are under investigation by the NYPD. Commissioner Kelly will fill you in on the details, but I wanted to thank the professionals at the NYPD and the FBI as well as the fire department and the Office of Emergency Management for their work tonight.

But most of all, the alert vendor and Officer Ratigan of the mounted unit. You know, we often say that when a terrorist is caught, he has a map of New York City in his pocket, and that's a conversation I had earlier tonight in Washington. And tonight is a further reminder of the dangers that we face.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: A further reminder of the danger as you hear the mayor there say, but he still said to his citizens, go about your business. This is, quite frankly, just something that's a part of life there in New York City.

But again, no suspect in custody. Don't know who might have done this, don't know why, what they might have been a part of, a larger network, an international network, Al Qaeda -- we just don't know at this point.

We know, like you heard the mayor say, we know what we know and there's a lot we don't know. So just what they know is in fact all these bomb-making materials were found in this car. You see the mayor there. He was in Washington, D.C.

The press conference he gave there was just a few hours ago in New York. He had made it back. He was in D.C., however, for the White House Correspondents Dinner. That's why he is wearing that bow tie -- that red bow tie. So that explains his outfit there a little bit.

But Kate Bolduan, I want to bring you in now. He was there, and he got to have a discussion quite frankly with all the important people who deal with Homeland Security, who deal with securing this country. What was the talk, or when -- at what point last night at the Correspondents Dinner did people start to get word that in fact something was going on in New York?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. Hey there, T.J. It was interesting because cell phone reception, which we all rely so much on was a little bit spotty within the ballroom. So people, me included, when we were in there kept leaving and going back in and making sure we were checking our Blackberries as the work continues.

But this is very interesting that Mayor Bloomberg as well as President Obama, journalists from all over Washington and outside of Washington, the Hollywood elite, were all together for this White House Correspondents Dinner.

And as we were leaving, I was wrapping up just around 10:45 or 11, as we were leaving and all starting to hear these early reports. There were definitely discussions going on amongst me and my fellow journalists and colleagues about what this was really about.

It seemed that there -- while we talk about suspicious packages and suspicious vehicles often, and then this unfortunately happens, you have these suspicious situations in big cities like Washington and New York City, everyone kept saying that it felt a little bit different. And as we know now, it definitely seems -- it's definitely a more serious situation than the typical suspicious package, if you will.

But we now know that Mayor Bloomberg, he very quickly got back to New York for this very reason, and we have already received in the past few hours a statement from the White House kind of giving a tick tock of how President Obama was informed and kind of the next steps that the White House is taking.

I want to read that to you. This says -- this is from the White House Press Office. It says, "At 10:45," basically when this dinner was wrapping up, "the president was updated on the excellent work by the NYPD in relation to the incident in Times Square. The president commended the quick action by the NYPD and asked John Brennan," -- that's his Homeland Security advisor -- "to communicate to NYPD that the federal government is prepared to provide support."

"John Brennan, working with the NYPD and others, will continue to keep President Obama up to date on the investigation." So the White House clearly taking this seriously.

They're on top of the situation, having their people exactly what would happen in this situation and any other situation that involved some kind of attempted car bomb or any kind of attempted act of terrorism that have his people, John Brennan especially, on the phones, talking to people, really kind of getting people connected.

But we should stress, as we have been all throughout the morning, T.J., you and Brooke have as well, that federal officials from this end, they're being very careful as they always are in these early stages, saying that connecting any dots -- and motivation wise -- would be way ahead, getting way ahead in the investigation and they don't want to do that.

We have heard from federal officials that they say right now it's too early to make any links to any major terror networks or terrorist groups, and also hearing from another official that there's no early clear indicators right now of this being linked to any international terrorism, but there are a lot of -- you just said, T.J. -- many more questions than answers at this point.

Namely, when I'm getting a lot of questions, people asking is when -- if and when will we here from President Obama, and we're checking with the White House, of course to see if there's any change on his schedule. HOLMES: You made a good point a moment ago as well about sometimes with suspicious packages and these early reports, often times they turn out to be nothing. We get almost immune to some of these reports that --

BALDWIN: We do, yes.

HOLMES: -- here they go, another suspicious package. But you know it's awfully eerie, here we are, Kate Bolduan, you and I once again, I was on the air with you around Christmas time, that day when we got those initial reports of that bomber on that plane going to Detroit.

And initially, it was just fireworks. It wasn't a big deal. It was just an incident, and now it turns out he had links to Al Qaeda so you never know how these things are going to work out.

And one more thing on the president's schedule. Is he still planning -- he's going to keep his schedule the same? He was planning on going to the Gulf Coast, to Louisiana today. We do except him to keep that schedule and we don't know yet if we'll hear from him on this incident though, right?

BOLDUAN: At the moment, and I just pulled his schedule to make sure, you know I had all the times correct. But at this moment -- and believe me, we're checking with the White House and they are all awake right now, and have been throughout the night.

Right now, the schedule remains the same; that a few hours from now, well several hours -- maybe five hours from now, President Obama will be heading down to Louisiana to the Gulf Coast to see really, the horrific situation down there having to deal with the oil spill.

But we're clearly checking with him to see if there any change of schedule of any statements to be made, and you know that we'll have that to you as soon as we know.

HOLMES: Brooke Baldwin -- No, that's Kate. You're Brooke.

BALDWIN: Yes, thanks.

HOLMES: Excuse me, sorry about that.

BOLDUAN: We love working together.

HOLMES: All right. Kate Bolduan, all right we've been going at this since the wee hours --

BALDWIN: It's early.

HOLMES: -- like a lot of folks. Like you have as well, Kate. We appreciate you. We'll check in with you. Give us any updates you get.

BOLDUAN: Of course.

BALDWIN: All right. Kate Bolduan, thank you. Want to go over to Josh Levs, who's been hanging out in the studio as well. And Josh, I know you have an aerial view, it looks like, or perhaps a street view now of some of what we may be seeing from some of these surveillance cameras right around Times Square.

JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I'm going to tell you about this. One of the big things we're talking about this morning, right, is how many security cameras are there in this area, what kinds of images would they pick up?

And what I want to do, we can continue to see some of the latest video as well, but what I want to do is show you all a few things. First of all, I wanted to let you know what it was like for people inside Times Square in that area overnight. We have some pictures of that. Then we'll get to the security cams.

Let's zoom in here. These are some of the latest photos that we're getting. Keep in mind, Times Square is one of the busiest spots on earth. Whenever you see the celebrations on New Year's Eve, you know you're seeing images of that. A lot of people all over the world familiar with it.

It's also just one of the biggest images of New York City that exists. Every day, tens of thousands of people come through. You never see this, ever. This doesn't exist. Empty times in the middle of Times Square when it's just completely still.

These are some of the latest pictures we're getting. Now, let me take you over -- I want to show you what area we're talking about. A lot of you somewhat familiar with New York City and exactly where we're talking about.

First of all, here's the really, really big picture from a Google map. Here's Central Park up here. Boom, Times Square just underneath it. This, right here, for those of you who are a little more intimately familiar with New York, this is where this actually happened.

This right here is Broadway. And the place that we're talking about is right over here. It's at 45th Street, where 45th intersects with Broadway. And we were just hearing from our folks on the ground that it was a little bit south of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

Some of you might know of that area. Now, check this out. Security cameras. Officials are wanting to know what kind of security cameras are out there, and it's not just official ones from the government. There's all sorts of businesses there. They have their own security cameras.

I found an image here from the New York Times. This goes all the way back to 2002. Scotty, could you get weigh in here. Look at this. Every single dot is its own security camera in the area of Times Square, and this is all the way back in 2002.

So eight years later, we can assume dozens more. And this right here is 45th and Broadway. So you are seeing several in that area that easily could have picked up an image from this specific car. Someone getting out, someone planting it there, someone really doing anything all in that area.

And that is why it's so significant right now. As we take a look at what we're seeing, and all these pictures in that area, you know you have a lot of movement, you have a lot of people moving around at all times throughout Times Square.

And what the authorities are trying to find out is what images have been captured during the time that anything might have led up to this. We don't know who might have been interacting with whom.

And for those people who are familiar with Times Square, you will know that there's also a really good chance, once they start to find some images there, they might be able to track someone down who saw something and didn't even realize it.

There's so many tens of thousands of people that walk around in those area, it's possible that someone spotted something along the way, that someone caught an image, maybe even notice something -- didn't realize at the time how significant it was.

So all those images should give the authorities there an opportunity to track down people who might indeed ultimately be eye witnesses or witnesses to at least part of what led to today.

Obviously what we have right now is a lot more questions than we have answers. I'll just let you know another thing we're doing is following everything that's going on online right now. We're following Tweets from that area, people tweeting about what they saw last night, people tweeting about the experience from New York and what it was like to all of a sudden have this huge area shut down, people evacuated from what is one of the most popular areas of New York.

Also, Facebook going on. So guys, as we keep tracking this, I want everyone to know if you are someone who saw something, who was in that area, go ahead and get in touch with us by Twitter right here in the newsroom. I'm at Josh Levs CNN. We definitely want to talk to you.

And in the meantime, we are looking online at all sorts of images that come in that tell the story about what New York has dealt with overnight. And I mean, see, look at that picture. It's just a reminder there that at all hours, Times Square is pretty bright.

In fact, some of the video that we're seeing, even if we get back to that, even when we see video from 1 a.m., 2 a.m. you might take a look at it for a second and you might think it's daylight and get confused. That's because there's so much that goes on in so many parts of Times Square at all times that it is enough to light up the whole area. So guys, we'll keep an eye on that and we're going to see what kinds of images coming in from any of those security cameras.

And once more and more people go back to their stores today and access their own private cameras and they're able to see what those images are, start sharing that with police, and with all these other levels of authorities that are going to be looking in to this, it's quite possible that authorities will be able to puzzle together a pretty powerful image going 24 hours, 48 hours, whatever they need of everything leading up to that car being right there, and everything in it. Obviously T.J. and Brooke, that is the hope right now.

HOLMES: All right, Josh. We appreciate you keeping an eye on that stuff. We've been blessed to Harold Copus with us, former FBI agent here with us. And something we talked about earlier, so important with this car, that this bomb didn't go off. It's a lot easier to do your investigating when you still got the bomb in the car.

HAROLD COPUS, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT: And the evidence of the car.

HOLMES: Yeah.

COPUS: The car is going to be critical now. It's going to be tough to chase down the gas, the propane tanks. I'm not saying you can't. It's going to be tough. The car is going to be the key. I don't know what's inside that car. If they're smart they cleaned it. But quite frankly, fingerprints is what you're looking for and ownership of the vehicle.

HOLMES: Chances are they didn't clean it, because they thought the evidence was going to be destroyed.

COPUS: Well, that's my reaction. We're not talking about guys who really PhD candidates here.

BALDWIN: What would be potentially the smoking gun piece of evidence? As you're looking at the different pieces of what would have been this bomb that would have gone off, or the car, what are you looking for?

COPUS: VIN Number. In almost every case when there's been a car bomb here in the United States, and let's look at McVeigh, what he did in Oklahoma City.

BALDWIN: Yes.

COPUS: Eventually you found that axle. On the axle was the VIN number and then the chase started right there. That's what you're looking at here, except, you know someone removed it from the windshield. There are 12 other numbers on there. Not a problem at all.

HOLMES: A stolen car we assume, right?

COPUS: Well, it's one of two things. They either stole it -- if they're smart, they stole it. If they didn't, they rented it. Let's hope they use a low IQ and did a rental.

BALDWIN: And what about this junkyard? Because it's important to make the point that the tags on this car didn't match the car. So we don't have the obvious VIN number, that's been removed, and then you have tags that don't belong. They did some digging already and figured out wait a minute, these tags come from some other car that was supposed to be at a junkyard.

So if you're FBI, are you going to the junkyard trying to figure out the origin of the tag in that vehicle? COPUS: Well, certainly I'd have a couple of guys going to do that, but quite frankly, since I know it was from a junkyard or was stolen, I almost would bet you that's a lead that OK guys, we're going to chase down. I don't expect a lot from that. The car itself is going to give me the real information I need.

Always though, you never know, how did they get it out of a junkyard? Well, you can scale a fence, or maybe somebody was inside. We have no way of knowing. That's not going to be that important. You expect it to be a stolen tag.

HOLMES: The stuff in the car -- gas, propane tanks, clocks, wires --

BALDWIN: Fireworks.

HOLMES: -- fireworks as well. You put all that stuff together, and I guess you become what some would scenario why this did not have some nefarious intent. But if you put this together, nine times out of ten, what would you say the odds are that somebody was up to something if you got this in a car?

COPUS: Quite frankly, 10 out of 10. This was, you know there's no nine. This is a ten. They obviously intend to do some damage. They were going to hurt everybody at Times Square in that particular area. If you've ever been there, and I know most people have, that's very crowded. There's no doubt what they were trying to do.

BALDWIN: How would this thing have potentially been set off? We talk about those different components of this would-be bomb, but also the triggering device.

COPUS: Well, what's going to happen here, I have to ignite the gas and then blow the propane. That's where the real explosion is going to be.

BALDWIN: From a remote location or from within the car?

COPUS: From within the car. Someone got out of that car, set it, and then they either walked away calmly or ran, whichever. They left and they expected it to go off. It didn't happen. So it didn't ignite, so all we had looks like, was maybe some of the fireworks that just went off. Don't know why. Just say very lucky.

HOLMES: And still, the psychological impact, some has been done already. It would have been certainly immeasurable, the psychological impact, if it had gone off. But what would have been the real, the physical impact down there, and it may be hard to tell, but from the ingredients we have here, a couple of five gallon tanks of gasoline, some propane tanks, three propane tanks. How big of a boom are we talking about?

COPUS: Oh, you would have hurt a tremendous number -- you wouldn't take a building down. You'd blown out a lot of glass, you've have had a lot of damage to maybe the first or second floor. This was designed to hurt people, so you had the psychological damage and then you had the collateral damage. They didn't get the collateral. They did achieve the psychological piece. Now everyone's saying again, we're not safe. We probably never have been safe. We're always a target because we're an open country.

BALDWIN: You say 10 out of 10 in terms of the idea of this having certainly a nefarious intent. But when we hear from the mayor and we hear from the governor, we keep hearing not sophisticated, amateurish.

COPUS: Well, it'd have been sophisticated if it'd gone off. So it's amateurish that it didn't. It doesn't make any difference. They were out there to do damage. They just didn't achieve it. We're very fortunate.

BALDWIN: It still doesn't mean that it may or may not be tied to some sort of international terrorist organization.

COPUS: Absolutely has -- we have no idea where it's tied to. If I had to be a betting person, I'm going to say international more than domestic. But there's too much evidence here yet that we don't have. It'd be pure speculation right now.

HOLMES: Is this another indication to you -- and a lot of citizens might, you know it might not take up the responsibility, but some do. You see something suspicious and you call it in. Is that really our best line of defense? Every day citizens keeping an eye out?

Sure, we'd love for the federal government -- we'd love for law enforcement to be able to catch everything and be the first to do this but is this another indication that we are it? Citizens are the ones who are going to have to stop terror attacks?

COPUS: They have to be. When you really think about it, law enforcement's reactive. Something happens, they act. In this particular case, they reacted. Thankfully, a citizen was there and did something. This guy that was a T-shirt vendor, the hot dog vendor -- two of the luckiest guys around. I'd ask them to buy me a lottery ticket. I mean those guys are really fortunate.

BALDWIN: And we talk a lot about targets, and we talk about, we were saying earlier in terms of having maybe a domestic terrorist target, you would target a federal building within the United States. But your best guess, and we can't connect the dots yet, would be that New York is a symbol of America and it would potentially be a target for an international terrorist organization

COPUS: Always has been, always will be. We can't get around it. We have to face that, and as I said to you, I really think what these people are doing is they're trying to make New York like Baghdad west. They're going to do everything they can to bring damage there. They've already done it several times. There's no reason to think they won't try it again.

HOLMES: Nothing we can do about -- I mean like you said, we've all been to Times Square, and it's police and security and blockades here and there. Stuff is always cordoned off. You can go so far and I mean there's always a police presence. At the end of the day, you can't stop one nut from driving a vehicle down there and parking it.

COPUS: You never can, and that's the problem. As an open society, we can do anything generally you want to. So can I bring a car in there? Certainly can. Do I bring it in there with this intent? No. That's somebody that's really been on doing something bad.

BALDWIN: How long might it take for FBI, Homeland Security to be able to say definitively this is who did this?

COPUS: I would say by now they're already chasing down the owner of the vehicle.

BALDWIN: Yes.

COPUS: Those interviews were done -- It's 6-something in the morning here on the east coast. Those interviews started right, two, three o'clock this morning.

BALDWIN: You think they're pretty far along?

COPUS: Oh, I guarantee you if it'd been me, I'd been already down there working it. So I know what's going on. I guarantee you they're -- interviews are being done even as we speak.

BALDWIN: Right.

HOLMES: You absolutely do know what's going on. We're glad we have your expertise this morning.

BALDWIN: Harold Copus.

HOLMES: You stick with us if you can.

BALDWIN: Stay close, Harold.

HOLMES: We even got you some breakfast back here to try to entice you to stick around for a little bit. But we appreciate you being with us this morning. Going to check back in with you.

Now did you see that live picture guys you all put up of Times Square? I do believe I caught a glimpse of that.

BALDWIN: There it is.

HOLMES: Times Square looks, quite frankly, normal right now. Few people starting to move around, but the daylight has come out and certainly the bright lights of Times Square seem to never dim.

But man, this is a very different picture from what we have been seeing for the past twelve hours, which this area was just shut down because of that suspicious vehicle.

We do have our Allan Chernoff and our Susan Candiotti standing by with us this morning. Guys, good morning to you both. I will go ahead and let you all take it away, and bring us all to where you are. Update us about is Times Square starting to bustle once again? CHERNOFF: Right. Well, T.J. for this hour in the morning, obviously it's still pretty quiet. But yes, Times Square is pretty much returning to normal. The street behind us, 45th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenue, this is the final block that is still blocked off.

And that's because only a few minutes ago the vehicle, a Nissan Pathfinder, where the explosion actually did occur inside of that vehicle, it was towed away. It was actually put on top of a flatbed truck covered with a yellow tarp, wrapped with police tape, and taken off to go uptown.

Now earlier, I should say earlier this morning, the bomb squad from the New York Police Department was here, and they were actually inside the vehicle. They took out the material that was in there -- fireworks, propane containers, gasoline containers, two gasoline containers, three propane containers, electrical wiring, fireworks as well as I mentioned, and two clocks with batteries in them.

The mayor -- Mayor Bloomberg had described the wiring as amateurish. All of that was taken up to the Bronx where the bomb squad has a facility. That's where they detonate bombs, and so of course they'll be analyzing everything. Now, the investigation, what are the clues that we have?

Well, a camera did actually capture this vehicle going through Times Square at 6:28. That was only six minutes before the call went in to the police about smoke and an explosion in the vehicle. So it was shortly before. There's a good chance other cameras in Times Square also captured that vehicle.

Perhaps they also may have captured the person stepping out of the vehicle who brought it in here in the first place. T.J., there are other clues as well that they'll be looking at. Just one more I'll mention.

The license plate on this vehicle did not actually belong to the vehicle. It was actually from Connecticut. The owner of that plate -- the former owner of that plate said that he had recently brought his vehicle to a junkyard. And so it seems this plate came from the junkyard. The police want to talk to the owner of that junkyard.

They certainly will and that could be a critical clue and may lead to a break in this case -- T.J.

BALDWIN: Allan, thank you. I want to also ask Susan Candiotti, who has been good enough to get out of her bed early on a Sunday morning and chat with us. And Susan, I know you've been in this business a long, long time. You have incredible sources.

What are you hearing from your sources, if anything, in terms of perhaps where this investigation is going? Perhaps any leads in terms of who did this?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brooke, we've been working on this since last night, since it happened. And so they certainly have a lot of areas to look at. As Allan indicated, they certainly need to talk to the owner of the junkyard to see whether they can establish where that vehicle came from.

They have to talk to -- you can imagine -- hundreds and hundreds of potential witnesses -- thousands of potential witnesses that were traveling through Times Square when this happened to see what people saw, did anyone actually see anyone leave that vehicle.

And, as Allan indicated, since last night, since we first started reporting on this story early Saturday evening, they are looking for any surveillance cameras, and there are many of them, that might have been whoever it was that parked that car, got out of it, and went on their way.

Only minutes later, as Allan indicated, that people first noticed smoke coming out of that vehicle. So they have a lot of ground to cover here, a lot of people to talk with. We already know of at least once instance where police were talking to a tourist, discovered that he had taken some photographs.

They took that camera, they interviewed that man who was here for his father's funeral as a matter of fact, and made copies of those photographs that he took as well after interviewing him. So these are the kinds of minute details they need to look at.

Then, of course they'll be looking at whatever details they can get from the vehicle itself, as you said, going over that vehicle with a fine tooth comb to see what was inside, what exactly precisely made up that bomb; looking for any kind of fingerprints that were made by the people who put that device together to see whether they can track that down.

Imagine if they can come up with some fingerprints, they can certainly put that into a database to see what they can find. They're also looking for any similarities to other incidents that might have happened. There was an attempted car bombing that happened in June 2007 for example in London where two Mercedes Benz sedans were packed with explosives similar to the kinds of items that were found in this car as well.

And the following day in London, at Glascow International Airport, there actually was an explosion of another vehicle when someone rammed a jeep through one of the barriers at that terminal.

So they'll look to see whether there are any similarities, as I indicated, to that particular case in terms of how this device was put together. A lot of ground to cover.

BALDWIN: A lot of ground to cover. It is still early, early for us here Sunday morning. And Susan and Allan, we thank you. Please stand by. But we also want to take a look more or less at the security angle of that and of this story, and for that I want to get to Lou Palumbo has been good enough to join us once again here on the phone -- Security Expert Lou Palumbo. And Lou, you heard them talking about this.

I mean, there's so many different angles that police and authorities have to chase. You need the junkyard angle, the surveillance camera, the video, the pictures perhaps from tourists in and around the area. The actual bomb components itself, and the car.

If you were an investigator, Lou, on this thing, walk me through the steps you would take.

LOU PALUMBO, SECURITY EXPERT: Well, I'll tell you, it's multi- faceted. You know you'd be canvassing the area, reviewing video tapes, and the intelligence community I'm sure has hit the ground running, talking to sources, informants, confidential informants.

Just networking in as many different directions as possible, you know following up with the vehicle, the owners, how the vehicle ended up in Times Square for example; tracing it step by step. So this investigation would be extensive and ongoing.

BALDWIN: Extensive and ongoing, and when we talk and we've been talking with Harold Copus here, former FBI Special Agent, you know he was saying look, obviously this thing didn't go off. Thank goodness.

But when you think about what was inside -- the propane tanks, the fireworks, some clocks, wiring, does it matter at this point whether or not this was sophisticated or not? The point is it didn't go off?

PALUMBO: Does it matter? No, it doesn't. What matters is that someone was driven enough to attempt to inflict a tremendous amount of casualty on human life and property. I think that's the most important thing it did. Whether or not it was sophisticated, I mean, the incident that involved an individual detonating a device in his underwear wasn't sophisticated either.

The potential of the outcome is really what matters here. It doesn't matter if it's a sophisticated attempt or, you know we're fortunate it wasn't sophisticated because if it was perpetrated by someone who knew what they were doing, there would have been an immense amount of damage.

BALDWIN: It's the intent, both psychological and physical, and from -- we were talking earlier, and the psychological damage really has been done. What is next? Do you think this individual or individuals might perhaps be part of a larger organization?

PALUMBO: Yes, sure, it's possible. But you know until they hit the streets and shake this thing out piece by piece, they won't know exactly whether this was someone who randomly attempted this or this was a part of a conspiracy. That's something that will be the fruition of the investigation.

BALDWIN: What is priority number one for investigators at this hour?

PALUMBO: To identify who in fact -- who drove this incident. In other words, the first thing they want to do if they can is identify whether it was internationally driven or domestically driven, because that's going to take them down different avenues. That's really the first thing they're looking to do is to find out who drove this.

BALDWIN: And once they figure out who drove this, then what? PALUMBO: Then what they're going to do is go specifically to any individual or group affiliated. In other words, if this is kind of like what we've experienced in the United Kingdom where they suddenly have homegrown individuals that are taking up a cause, that's very problematic.

If it's just -- I hate to say it in this capacity -- but if it's just another attempt by an international group we already have knowledge of, that puts it in different context.

BALDWIN: And what does it say to you, Lou, that this happened on a Saturday in the middle of Times Square in terms of the circumstances, in terms of the timing, are you surprised?

PALUMBO: No, not at all. I mean they identified a time that was densely populated with pedestrian activity. The target value was high, quite frankly. The time of the -- day of the week, perfect. Saturday evening perfect weather.

I'm not surprised at all. You know, whoever this was, you know, knew a little bit about New York City and the volume of tourists and pedestrian activity there. They realized it was a high target value.

BALDWIN: Well sophisticated or not, what matters is finding this individual, individuals perhaps connecting it to a larger investigation and establishing intent. Lou Palumbo, one of our security experts. Good enough to join us on the phone. Lou, thank you for your insight.

PALUMBO: You're welcome.

HOLMES: Bottom of the hour here now, 6:30 Eastern Time. 6:30 in Times Square where they're maybe starting to get back to normal. Things are starting to look like Times Square again, where they had to clear the place out. Still, some pretty empty streets. Kind of, you know, 6:30 in the morning on any Sunday morning it's not going to be too packed.

But still, you often see a lot more than you're seeing there now. But this place has been shut down for the past 12 hours after -- really, right at about 12 hours ago, a suspicious vehicle was spotted. It was spotted by a T-shirt vendor who then alerted police and what was found inside, propane tanks, gasoline tanks, fireworks, commercial-grade fireworks, they're described as, electrical wires and clocks.

No one in custody right now. According to the mayor, they do not know who did this and do not know why. The investigation is underway now. Several people down there, witnesses we were able to talk to described hearing a pop.

Let me describe the video you're seeing here. That's the vehicle where the pop came from apparently, and this was just a short time ago, as investigators finally got all the materials out of that vehicle and moved that over to another facility, and they are going to be going over this stuff with a fine-tooth comb because they really do have now a treasure trove of information and evidence that whoever left this thing thought was going to be blown to bits by this bomb.

But it was not. But that's that green Nissan Pathfinder that was parked down there on Times Square. Now, this -- the person who first notified police, the T-shirt vendor, he reached out to a man by the name of Wayne Ratigan of the New York Police Department. We are starting to see our first pictures of this police officer who was the first on the scene who checked this out.

There he is talking, you see him there in the baseball cap I do believe, talking to the mayor, also the governor in there as well. But this was the man, Wayne Ratigan, the police officer, who was first alerted to this vehicle by this T-shirt vendor and then this man, this police officer then took the appropriate action, called it in, but also helped to get people away from the vehicle apparently before all the popping going on.

It could have been a much bigger pop but people describe a pop they heard. They got away from the vehicle. They also saw flames some people described seeing shoot up from that car. But that's Wayne Ratigan, just one of the heroes, quite frankly, that he is being called. You see him there with Governor Paterson, right there in front of him, he's speaking to.

Governor Paterson put out a statement as well about what was happening overnight. All the New York officials were part of this press conference we saw about two, three in the morning. So just a few hours ago. But this is the governor's statement, saying "tonight we owe an incredible debt of gratitude to the heroic actions of the New York City Police Department and to a single vigilant New Yorker who identified a suspicious vehicle near Times Square in New York City.

Luckily, no one is hurt and now, the full attention of city, state, and federal law enforcement will be turned to bringing the guilty party to justice in this act of terrorism." This act of terrorism as he describes it, but again, the issue is whether or not this is international terrorism versus domestic terrorism. At the end of the day, you live in New York and your city is about to be attacked, you're not that concerned if it was international or domestic.

You just know it's terrorism nonetheless, but the investigation that's a very important part of the investigation that's underway right now.

BALDWIN: And you know, we've been talking to Former FBI Special Agent Harold Copus about all kinds of different angles with this story, but one -- something that just struck me in hearing what the governor has said and finally seeing pictures of this very vigilant officer, and we talk about the vendor who spotted this smoke, and this really just underscores here in this day and age, in 2010, the importance for all of us to be vigilant.

COPUS: Always. You never know what you may observe, and in this case we just saw or heard about two people who really were on top of their game; they alerted the police and that averted a potential disaster.

HOLMES: You talk about those two people being on top of their game, but doesn't this necessarily mean, because maybe the police and Homeland Security -- our Homeland Security correspondent said there was no chatter necessarily, no indications that something was amiss, so because these two were on their game, does that mean they were on their game -- they had to be on their game because the federal officials weren't on their game?

Well, you know what, there's just so much that you, quite frankly, can do.

COPUS: Well, there's just so much you can do, and it doesn't mean the federal games weren't on their game. It means that who knows when these people are going to strike. They can strike at any time. We just saw at Times Square Saturday night. It does say, though, what's the FBI going to be doing next? Informants will have to be -- I mean those people were starting being rousted out last night.

So that's being checked. All of a sudden, anything that was on any wiretaps, you just went up one. You want to say what are we hearing? And the third thing that you want to be checking on now is that you want to see what kind of leads are being called in, because people -- other people saw something. They just didn't come forward last night.

And now, they're saying hey, this may help. Let me call it in. This could be very important.

BALDWIN: As if we didn't need reminding that we here in the United States and specifically in New York are very much so a target.

COPUS: We've been a target for a number of years. Nothing's changed, and I don't believe anything will change. You will never eliminate these type people. They're dedicated to what they want to do. We can't do anything about that dedication.

BALDWIN: We talk so much about just sort of reactionary after this incident has happened, and it's very difficult to even talk prevention because it's Times Square. You have the surveillance cameras; you have cars coming through, millions per year. There's -- would there have been anything that could have changed this incident initially?

COPUS: Absolutely not.

BALDWIN: No.

COPUS: And when you think about it, what was in that car? Nothing that any of us couldn't go right now to a store and buy -- propane gas, gasoline, containers to put them in, a couple of batteries, clocks --

BALDWIN: Fireworks.

COPUS: -- fireworks. There's nothing special here. It's just -- you put that combination together it's deadly.

HOLMES: You talked about the vehicle, you have the VIN number, you can trace that back fairly easily and fairly quickly you said as well. But what about some of those other items? Pretty tough to trace back just gasoline. Some of those other items in there, how many of those can actually be -- you go find and like a clock, the tanks of gasoline, the propane tanks, can you trace those things back?

COPUS: Well, I'd certainly -- there're two things I'd be checking on quickly. I'd be checking on those clocks, because that gives you -- that's probably a little bit unusual. So we can check on that. The propane you have a chance. Where -- and most of them, you know, if these guys really weren't thinking well, there's going to be a label on them.

Once I check that label, I might be able to find out who is the distributor of that propane type gas in what area.

BALDWIN: Let me just get down to the basics here. We're talking about finding a clock inside this car. What kind of clock are we talking about? What's the purpose of the clock?

COPUS: Well, it's a timing device. What happens here, I set it, and it works itself down to zero.

BALDWIN: That's when it goes off?

COPUS: That's when it's going to go off. So what we may have is any -- when I say zero, I may have it set to go off at 6:45 and so when the dial hits 6:45 it then -- hopefully what we're going to do is create a spark and then set off the -- first, the firecrackers.

BALDWIN: So you're telling me that these investigators can -- as they're taking these different components apart they can take this clock and somehow trace this clock back to what? Perhaps where it was bought?

COPUS: Well certainly where it was -- well, who manufactured it first. And from there, let's trace it and see where it was actually sold. And you know, there isn't a watch around that you can't look at and say hey, who made that, now who sold it, and I'm going to tell you this is not going to be something that's a $500 watch.

This will be something that's fairly cheap, so probably hurt him a little bit, but doesn't mean you can't run it down.

HOLMES: Let me ask you about something to put in perspective. You were telling us earlier about the target that makes you think possibly this was some act of international terrorism. Maybe of some foreign group, because they're going after something that's near and dear to us, doing some psychological damage as well as physical damage.

You talked about Timothy McVeigh. He went after a federal building. That was different. And maybe somebody in the U.S. might have gone after something like that. What does it tell you about him, quite frankly leaving it there and running away? We often see attacks in other countries, and they're suicide bombings. The guys were killed. In the Glascow -- the airport as well, they went down in that attack.

What does that tell you the guy left it there and ran off?

COPUS: Dedicated but not committed.

BALDWIN: Ha.

HOLMES: OK.

COPUS: Dedicated to doing something, but not committed to stick around to see if he was going to be successful. That's what it tells me. So it tells me the guy ran, got out of dodge. We got a shot at him. He's not that dedicated.

BALDWIN: Dedicated, committed, and long gone.

COPUS: And long gone.

BALDWIN: Presumably he's out of there, potentially headed to JFK. What about in terms of the airports? I mean once these thing happened, would you presumably have any investigators at the airports coming through all of those people getting on and off flights?

I mean this did happen, a lot of this unfolding in the overnight hours. So if he was trying to get on an airplane, would he have been successful?

COPUS: Well, he could have been successful. It all depends on his ID. Quite frankly I suspect what he would do is that he was a member of a strike team, and that means the guys that go out and actually do the action, he was to walk away from that. Someone picked him up. So that means there's, you know there's got to be a conspiracy.

This one guy could -- maybe didn't do it. He could have caught a subway, but I suspect he knew what was going to happen. He had a way to get out of there. Someone let him out. He can do anything. He can walk away forever, or he can be in the skies flying around. We don't know.

HOLMES: But you said they can easily track him down. Curious to see how this all plays out now because you say it certainly some -- some easy things to track this guy down; left a lot of evidence behind. Don't go too far away from us. We certainly appreciate having your expertise, having you sitting right here with us this weekend.

We're certainly to our viewers, not going to go far at all from that story, what's happening in New York. Things starting, it sounds like, to get back to normal in some way. But what we've also been keeping an eye on for the past several days, past couple of weeks almost now, the Gulf Coast; that big oil rig explosion that turned into then an oil spill.

Oil still 200,000 gallons a day being seeped out into the Gulf of Mexico -- the Gulf Coast down there I should say. Our Reynolds Wolf is there, and Reynolds, we've been asking and looking and waiting for this moment to come. Is it here now? Do we now know that traces of oil have in fact reached the Gulf Coast?

REYNOLDS WOLF, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well according to Governor Bobby Jindal, he mentioned that I know has informed of that there have been trace amounts of that sheen that have made its way to some of the outer perimeters, sort of the outer rims of parts of the Mississippi Delta here in extreme southern Louisiana.

But in terms of that crude oil, still not made its way onshore yet. There's a very good possibility we may see them actually land on beaches a little bit farther to the east; places like Biloxi, perhaps Gulfport, or Mobile, Alabama and then further on in until you get towards parts of the Alabama and in to the Florida Gulf Coast.

I can tell you one thing that's also very important which is a tremendous part of the story believe it or not, the weather elements. Just a moment, I want to give you a little bit of an illustration here. The wind has been picking up here and just use this cloth and you can see as I hold it up, well sure enough there we go.

Now it's starting to pick up again. This is not the white flag of surrender, trust me. This is just a cloth showing you how strong the wind is. And the reason why the wind is so important to mention is because that is the transferring element. It's the transferring mechanism that's going to help push that oil even closer to shore.

Now I can also tell you that that's wind has been so strong we've seen Y-caps back in parts of the bayou, many of the roads back here in extreme southern Louisiana have been awash with water that has been pushed up. And that is one of the factors that is going to make this thing -- this huge mass of oil still believed to possibly bringing the extent of around 5,000 barrels of oil each day to the surface until they can hopefully cap it off.

I can tell you that some of the things they've also been doing to hold that back is putting up a lot of those protective barriers, 275,000 feet have been put up, possibly another 300,000 that have been held in reserve. And there have even been some reports that there may be another half million, possibly -- by the time all is said and done perhaps a million feet of that protective barrier set up around much of the Gulf Coast to try to keep things safe in terms of the economy, you know the economic -- you've got a lot of tourists going out to the Gulf Coast trying to enjoy the beaches and of course the waters, and the oil may ruin that.

Certainly it's going to have the effects on the fishing industry. We're talking about the sports fisherman as well as things like, say, shrimp or even the oyster beds. That's certainly going to affect those problems. And of course, when it comes to the environment, for several days we've been talking about the direct impact it's going to have on many animals, no question we're talking about the water fowl.

Of course the grasses you have on some of the marshy lands right towards the very end of the Mississippi Delta certainly those are going to be some of the places first effected. Some of those again, as I mentioned this morning, being affected by some of that oily sheen.

Now, one thing that happened yesterday, one new development that happened is the National Strike Force of The Coast Guard came in just yesterday. They brought in these huge trucks. These trucks with these tremendous implements on them called vessels of opportunity. Now what those things are, it's a neat contraption that they actually set up on -- it could be any sailing vessel.

A vessel that has to be at least though 65 feet or longer, and guys, what this thing is, it's simply a tool that they put on the back of a boat. It has these giant arms and actually brings in, almost like a giant combine, out in parts of the central plains bringing in corn? Well in this situation it brings in some of that higher crude, skims it from the water, and then brings it up to the top of this boat, top of this contraption, and it separates the oil from the water and brings in -- releases the oil back in to of course the Gulf and then takes skims off the crude that they're trying to eliminate, they're trying to get rid of, and takes that away from the water.

So that's just one of many that they're going to be bringing in to the area. It's all part of the process to try to get things back to normal, and let me tell you, this is going to be a mess that may be -- we may be dealing with for years to come. Let's send it back to you guys.

HOLMES: All right, Reynolds. Thank you. I know the president's heading down your direction. Supposed to be wheels up I believe at 10:45, 11 o'clock from Andrews Air Force Base.

WOLF: Absolutely.

HOLMES: He is making his way to you. We'll certainly continue to check in this morning. Also, like I said, with the other breaking news, we're not going to be too far from at any point today as what's happening in New York City.

We've been talking to you about it today, that terror threat, that scare that cleared out New York's Times Square yesterday when a car that was filled with bomb-making materials was found in New York City in Times Square that forced that evacuation.

You see? Beautiful shots of New York City this morning. There's a live picture of Times Square. This is not too far. Just a street or two over from where that vehicle was found. We're starting to see vehicles flow through here once again, but again it was shut down for some 12 hours and we just saw that vehicle, that -- the suspicious vehicle was taken out of there, just towed away less than about three minutes ago probably.

It was taken out, so maybe things are starting to get back to normal. It certainly wasn't a normal scene last night for a lot of people down there on Times Square. A Saturday night, Times Square, certainly a very busy area with tourists just in town. Forty million visit that area every single year.

But there was a lot of confusion last night about exactly what was going on, how big of a threat it was, and exactly what people were supposed to do. Take a listen to some of them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We were walking toward the bus at 44th right there on Broadway, and we heard an explosion sound, and we honestly stopped. We didn't know what to do. And that's, you know we saw everybody else start running, and we started running too.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody just started being backed up, and everybody was being pushed back and the barriers started going up.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We knew something was wrong when we saw all the ambulances and the cop cars. Everybody was facing towards the way we were.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: That was just a couple of folks there talking about the confusion they felt last evening. Again, some reports of people actually being told -- people were going to the theater district down there, Broadway, of course is down there in Times Square. People were told to get out.

Some didn't see their show. Some shows went on, but as soon as the curtain call came, they were told they had to get out. People were pulled out of restaurants; told they need to leave; but eventually they got all of Times Square cleared out last night for what was certainly a very -- a very scary and confusing still, but a lot of questions now that still need to be answered.

BALDWIN: Scary confusing I'm sure for police as well. I just want to get a little bit of police perspective. We have Sal Lifrieri on the line right now. He's a former head of the Officer of Emergency Management under Rudy Giuliani. He was also part of the elite hostage negotiation team with New York Police, and a detective also with New York Police as well, Sal, thanks for jumping on the line with us.

Let me just first ask you, let's say you are still with New York Police. You get the call, it's Saturday night. Busy hustle and bustle of Manhattan and Times Square. You hear about this suspicious vehicle. You hear about some suspicious components from within this vehicle. Smoke and possibly, as we've been reporting, an explosion. What's your first thought?

SAL LIFRIERI, SECURITY EXPERT (via telephone): Well, obviously the first thing you want to do is life safety issues. You know, you have to come into this with an abundance of caution, especially knowing what we know going into situations similar to this. You always have to work towards the potential of the bad, and then work it down to a negative.

And by that, it's simply you go in to it thinking that you do have a car bomb and more importantly from a first responder perspective, you want to be aware of secondary devices that could be planted.

And we've, you know, obviously we've seen that before. But everybody is trained on that, and it's something that you hope everybody is thinking of. So life safety is clearly the first thing.

BALDWIN: Let me ask you, Sal, because you're one of the first people to point out possibly a secondary device, and I have a former FBI agent sitting on the desk kind of nodding, saying yes. What sort of secondary device might have been -- might be involved here? LAFRIERI: You could have similar-type devices in the vehicles, and I think that was one of the reasons that you saw the evacuation of multiple areas last night. You know, you want to be able to look for either similar-type devices or packages that might be left around; something that could be secreted that's not going to be so catastrophic that it'll take a building down or kill hundreds of people.

But you know the big concept behind terrorism is to create the fear. And if you have secondary devices going off injuring the first responders, that just exponentially grows your panic.

BALDWIN: And fortunately, you know, we didn't have to go there. This thing didn't fully ignite. It didn't fully go off thanks to a vendor in the area, and one of the police officers very vigilant and, in the governor's words, heroic actions of a New York police officer to see the smoke, and to immediately start clearing people.

But Sal, in terms of just public safety, this has to be a tremendous challenge to start to clear the crowds out of Times Square on a Saturday. Talk to me about that.

LAFRIERI: Well, fortunately, it happens in a location where the New York City Police Department is very familiar with excessive crowds. There are game plans that are put in to place for Times Square for New Year's Eve. So whereas you know, as a result of crowd control practices, it makes it a little bit easier when you're playing on a home field, but that's only as far as dealing with crowd control issues.

The real issue and the real problem here is dealing with a situation like we've had last night that clearly shows some vulnerability.

BALDWIN: In terms of what?

LAFRIERI: In terms of the fact that it's somewhat easy to introduce a device into a neighborhood. You know, the story still has to be -- and the investigation still has to be worked on and told. But this could very well be something not of an international nature. This could be something that's much more of a homegrown in the form of a Timothy McVeigh.

BALDWIN: Yes. So you're saying vulnerability in terms of someone or multiple people putting these different components together -- the gas, the batteries, the fireworks -- putting it in this car with the tinted windows, driving smack dab in the middle of Manhattan into Times Square, parking the car and hopping out. Is that what you're saying?

LAFRIERI: Sure. You know, one of the things that both the attorney general and the director of the FBI has said in testimony over the last year or so is the homegrown terrorist; the homegrown person is really problematic. I can tell you in the time that I was in the office as director of security, I would -- the things that kept me up at night weren't the Bin Laden's or the Hussein's of the world but was really the Timothy McVeigh types. Those particular type of groups, you know, it's always one or two guys your traditional, investigatory methods don't work. They're not moving enough money; they're not moving -- they don't have communications to speak of that you can track.

You don't know what they're up to. And fortunately, we've been very lucky with them not being able to execute a plan properly.

BALDWIN: So it's the vulnerability. It's perhaps the fear of a homegrown terrorist. It's interesting you talk about that. We were talking earlier about how New York is such a target for international terrorist organizations. But you know, you make a great point, that this could be a homegrown terrorist and that certainly would not just keep you up at night but a whole lot of people, you know, worrying and wondering if this might be that precisely.

Let me ask you this: What's next in terms of the investigation? You know, they're taking the different components to this would-be bomb to the Bronx. They're taking the vehicle. We saw it wheeled away as well. What's next? They start fingerprinting? They start going to the junkyard to figure out where those plates come from? What are you doing?

LAFRIERI: Well, there are a couple of different aspects. Forensically you have -- the vehicle has to be really taken down, you know bit by bit. I mean you're looking to a sophisticated level for DNA evidence, and that's just on the vehicle side.

Then you have the entire -- what we used to call in the department -- the canvas which was the talking to as many victims or witnesses that you can to understand what they saw and try and piece together a description of the person.

From the other side of it, you have the intelligence capabilities where you're starting to reach out to networks or groups to see have we missed anything or has anybody said anything to us that would give us an indication as to who this person might be?

If you want to relate it to a you know, a case that occurred not too long ago in the city, within the last couple of years, the bicycle bomber. All of the steps that were taken there would be similarly done here including right down to CCTV and trying to pin all of that together.

BALDWIN: As we still watch and wait, and I don't know if it would take hours, days, to get to the bottom of who did this, why they did this, but is the takeaway I'm getting from you, Sal, is simply the fact that we are still very vulnerable?

LAFRIERI: We are definitely vulnerable. I think the fact that we have to increase a level of recognition of what's going on around us, we're taking proper steps and, you know, terrorism today has become -- has changed policing totally.

Before it was a crime would occur and we would react to it. Now, what we're trying to do is to identify problems before they exist and respond to them. So it's changed the entire paradigm of policing.

And by us starting to recognize what's going on or what are the trouble signs before an event occurs is important. And we're starting to take steps in that direction.

We've created a training program specifically for recognition of observable behavior. The law enforcement is utilizing programs similarly. TSA, we understand we see this all the time, the programs that they're handling.

So we're taking steps in the right direction but clearly without sounding like an alarmist, we're vulnerable.

BALDWIN: We are indeed vulnerable. Fortunately you had some officers out there and some individuals who are very vigilant. Sal Lifrieri, I thank you for your perspective and that's interesting, yes. The description of a police officer these days is very different than what it used to be. Sal, thank you.

LAFRIERI: You're welcome.

HOLMES: All right. You're looking at video -- to our viewers, you're looking at video of that vehicle, that all-important vehicle that was found; that suspicious vehicle that had all those bomb-making materials in it just a short time ago, had the tarp put on it and was towed away by investigators who will now do their investigating.

This vehicle, you would assume, and by all accounts from our security experts, was expected to be destroyed, an explosion in Times Square last evening. But an alert citizen alerted a police officer and at that point Times Square was evacuated. No idea who is responsible at this point, but that investigation is ongoing, and so important now that they have all this information -- the bomb-making materials; they have the vehicle, the VIN number.

They have so much information now that some of our security experts including one FBI investigator that's sitting right next to me still right now says in short order, they will be able to track this person down, at least get some idea of who this person was because of all this information we have.

Josh Levs, I believe you're teeing things up for us over there, is that right? Josh is keeping an eye on some iReports of people being evacuated. We are getting those iReports. We're also starting to get a few pictures in as well.

But we're getting close to the top of the hour. So let's go ahead and reset for you what's going on. It's about 7 o'clock here Eastern time in Atlanta where we sit; also 7 o'clock Eastern time in New York in Times Square where let's show you these pictures now of New York City and certainly quite different scenes.

You see the top there, a couple of live pictures of Times Square, and also of just the great city of New York. But on the bottom, this as the scene last night as police were using a robotic arm to check out this vehicle that had a suspicious -- something was suspicious about it.

Smoke was seen coming out of it, so a citizen -- a T-shirt vendor -- alerted police about it. At that point, several people reported hearing a pop, and then also seeing flames in that vehicle. So believe that some kind of explosion took place inside, possibly something went off but certainly not what could have been.

The mayor saying, and also the police commissioner saying that a tragedy was averted and they say that in fact this was a car bomb. But at this point no idea who is responsible. No one has claimed responsibility. Also don't know yet if this was an act of international terrorism or whether or not this was a domestic incident of some kind from someone from inside the United States trying to do us harm.