Bernie Kerik: Chemical Attack in Major US City Difficult

Islamic State (ISIS) terrorists have threatened to use drones for chemical attacks in the U.K., but former New York Police Comissioner Bernard Kerik tells Newsmax TV that such an attack would be difficult in a major U.S. city.

Larger cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago have a number of detection systems in mass transit systems that can find chemicals before they are used, Kerik said Monday on "Dennis Michael Lynch: Unfiltered."

Intelligence-gathering also is a major factor in stopping incidents before they even get off the ground, Kerik said.

Still, he said, "there are places around the country where we don't have those detection systems, and that could be a problem."

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Should someone succeed in getting something through detection, it could be deadly, he said.

"In New York City's mass transit system, Grand Central Station or Penn Station at 5 p.m. on a weekday, for example, you may have 250,000 people going through the system," he said.

"If they flooded the subway system with something or one of the subway cars down in the tunnels, it could cause an enormous amount of damage, death, destruction."

Law enforcement is likely on top of it, he said, and terrorists' ability to get chemical weapons is pretty difficult.

"The discharge capability itself would be even more difficult, so hopefully we're on top of it and don't allow it to happen," Kerik said.

Nuclear weapons are even harder to get, but nothing is absolutely impossible, he said.

"Hopefully, we'll know where this stuff is coming from or what they're doing and prevent it before it happens," Kerik said.

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