Like a plot twist out of an Ian Fleming or Tom Clancy novel, the Secret Service announced Tuesday morning that it had uncovered the existence of a network of telecommunication devices and SIM cards at several locations near New York City, capable of placing millions of simultaneous phone calls and crippling phone service, from basic home phones to 911 emergency calls. The timing of the discovery could not have been more fortuitous, as President Trump was due to address the United Nations General Assembly at about the same time the Secret Service made the announcement. Don Mihalek is an ABC News law enforcement contributor and a retired Secret Service agent based in Philadelphia. He appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to describe the havoc the cache of phone machines could have unleashed on New York- and who would have set them up in the first place.
Mihalek explained what the Secret Service found for host Larry Mendte, as well as what investigators will try to figure out next. “They saw that there were, I think, 100,000 SIM cards in these locations, capable of making millions of phone calls. I think the Secret Service is quoted in saying they could call the entire country in about 12 minutes. It was a huge plot, the scope of which I don’t think anybody’s seen before and the type of which, especially for New York City who, after 9/11 and the blackout [in 2003] saw what lack of communications can do, was pretty significant. So, it’s tremendous work by them. The questions now, of course, are who is responsible for it, where is this investigation going to lead them and was this indeed a foreign plot on U.S. soil.”
Mihalek hinted at one possible scenario for using the devices, considering that the find happened while the UNGA was meeting close by in Turtle Bay: “Theoretically, it could have taken over the cell phone towers in and around the U.N., and can you imagine what intercepting all the communications coming out of the U.N. would look like for a foreign adversary, and then using some AI and then coming out a little differently on the other end, what that could do to international relations? So it’s definitely high on their list of what was going on.”
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