Rebecca Weiner learned about catastrophic threats at an early age: She grew up in Santa Fe, N.M., near the cradle of the nuclear bomb.
In college, Ms. Weiner studied the ethical questions that Manhattan Project scientists, and their wives, confronted as they devised the bombs that annihilated two Japanese cities, but that they hoped would “end war as we know it,” she said.
Now, Ms. Weiner, 46, has been named the New York Police Department’s deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism, commanding about 1,500 people spread throughout the city.
A lawyer and 17-year department veteran, Ms. Weiner is taking over a bureau that includes a counterterrorism unit created after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Since its inception, the unit has helped foil a plan to kidnap an American-Iranian journalist and what officials say were dozens of terrorist plots.
Persons:
Rebecca Weiner, Weiner, ”
Organizations:
Harvard, Manhattan Project, New York Police
Locations:
Santa Fe, Poland, New Mexico, American, Iranian