Bombed Recruiting Office Back to Work

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Knight Ridder | March 10, 2008

As city authorities investigated the explosion yesterday at the iconic Times Square military recruiting station, efforts to persuade Long Islanders to join the military continued largely uninterrupted.

At the Armed Forces Career Center in Greenlawn, located in a Broadway strip mall that includes a pizzeria and a 7-Eleven, the recruitment center was closed yesterday morning. But several recruiters said in phone interviews that it was not shut due to the Times Square blast, but rather because they do not hold set hours.

"It's business as usual," Petty Officer Scott Whitaker said.

The Pentagon sent instructions to the military's recruiting stations nationwide to be vigilant, a Pentagon official said.

"This appears to be an isolated incident," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, adding that "there is no impact on our recruiting mission in New York City."

At the Armed Forces Career Center in Hempstead Village, a storefront office on Fulton Street, there was no unusually heightened security yesterday morning, said a Marine recruiter who would not give his name. Business went on as usual, with uniformed service members coming and going through a door with a buzzer-controlled lock.

A Marine Corps spokesman for recruiters in the northeastern United States said his colleagues have "a heightened awareness of what happened." But he said he would not say whether the military had mounted specific changes to security in response to the blast in the city.

"As Marines, you remain vigilant about that stuff anyway," said Capt. Donald Caetano, who is based in Garden City.

Caetano said top military officials notified recruiters by e-mail and phone that they should be alert in the wake of the bombing.

Staff writer Craig Gordon contributed to this story.

Bombings related?

Investigators are searching for connections between yesterday's Times Square attack and two previous bombings in Manhattan.

OCT 26, 2007: Two small homemade bombs exploded outside the Mexican Consulate in Murray Hill in Manhattan. The blasts shattered windows but caused no injuries.

MAY 5, 2005: Someone placed a crude grenade in a concrete planter outside the British consulate on Third Avenue and threw a second, fuse-detonated device at the building. The attack caused minor damage to the building.

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