(CBS) 
Every morning, Commissioner Kelly gets an intelligence briefing. The day 60 Minutes sat in, for part of it, Kelly listened to details of a botched suicide bombing in Israel.

"The bomber goes to the back of the restaurant, which was unusual, and he's leaning over taking a drink of water from the sink. He’s wearing a suicide belt and it partially explodes. It cuts the bomber's body in half, but you don’t have the typical head blowing off," Cohen explained.

"Is that because it was positioned differently, or just because he was leaning over?" Kelly asked.

"It was the way that he was leaning over. That’s right," Cohen replied.

The source of all those details is Mordecai Dzikansky, a New York City Detective based in Israel — one of 10 New York cops stationed overseas. The NYPD calls them its "early warning system."

Asked why the NYPD needs officers overseas, Kelly says, "To ask the New York question. And the New York question is, 'Is there anything, any piece of information that’s going to help us better protect this city?'"

When bombs went off on in Madrid two years ago, killing nearly 200 people, the NYPD's man in Israel flew there immediately, met with Spanish police and sent detailed information back to the Big Apple.

"We found out that the terrorist had parked the van a couple blocks away from the station when they were moving their bags from the van into the train station," says Sheehan. "So what we did was we expanded our coverage of stations out a few blocks, and we made adjustments to how we talked to merchants and security people around the systems to tell them what to look for."

The program that tells merchants what to look for is called "Operation Nexus." Teams of cops visit businesses that sell products that could be used by terrorists.

"For example, as a result of the July 7 attacks in London: One of the key ingredients was hydrogen peroxide. Operation Nexus determined who produces the stuff and who they deliver it to," Cohen explains. "We put in place a program to contact each level to tell them what anomalies they should be watching for, and it trickles all the way down to the local hairdresser shop."

"So, you think if you learn enough about what happens elsewhere, you can prevent it from happening here?" Bradley asked.

"Absolutely," Cohen replied.

"But things like that, wouldn't that be information that eventually the FBI, the CIA, would have shared with you?" Bradley asked Kelly.

"The key word is 'eventually,'" Kelly replied, laughing. "So we can't wait."

"I mean, there's an implied criticism here that New York needs this information and needs it in a hurry — and we can't wait for you to get it to us," Bradley asked the commissioner.

"That's our position," Kelly replied. "We need the information. We're a city, the only U.S. City, of course, that's been attacked, twice successfully, by terrorists."

Asked if the creation of the counter-terror until was in any way a reaction to frustration with the federal government, Kelly says, "We can't rely solely on other agencies to protect us here. So there's nothing like self help, and that's what we're doing."

So far, the price tag for all that "self-help" has been nearly $1 billion, most of it New York own money. That money has paid for the tightest security blanket in the city’s history.

Produced By Harry Radliffe ©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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