Saturdays insanity: Outcry leads to a review of New York City as venue for 9/11 trial

New York

N EW YORK | A letter and a speech may have doomed plans to bring the Sept. 11 terrorism trial to downtown New York.

The letter, sent earlier this month to the White House by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, set a whopping $200 million-a-year price tag to secure the city during the trial — more than double the original estimate. The speech by Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly detailed a planned lockdown of lower Manhattan certain to set new standards for gridlock.

The resulting political and public outcry forced the Obama administration to consider friendlier sites for the high-profile trial, even as the legitimacy of the New York Police Department’s security plan and its estimated cost went unchallenged.

The alternate locations, according to a Chicago Tribune report Friday, include Governors Island in New York Harbor, an Air Force base and a federal penitentiary near Manhattan.

White House officials seem to be backing off a pledge made late last year to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and his four alleged co-conspirators in a courthouse in downtown Manhattan.

However, Justice Department officials cautioned Friday that no decisions had been made about moving the federal criminal trial out of New York City altogether — or to go even further and leave the five defendants in the hands of a military tribunal.

Should the trial remain in New York, Kelly insists his plan is necessary — a reality that started to sink in after his remarks before business leaders.

“The investment that the department would have to make … and the details of the plan itself, how it would’ve impacted the traffic in lower Manhattan,” he told reporters Friday. “That was the first time they heard it in one fell swoop, so to speak, and it raised their concerns.”

A congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Saturday that the Obama administration proposed a $200 million fund to help pay for security in cities hosting the trials, to be included in the president’s budget being released Monday.

Since announcing late last year that New York would host the trial, the Obama administration has stumbled into a political fire that had burned the previous administration.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center, New York and federal officials have quarreled over how much of the city’s security costs should be borne by Washington. New York officials, led by Bloomberg, have complained for years that the government does not pay enough of those costs. The Bush administration long argued they have to spread resources to protect the entire country.

The latest round of that long-running fight began when the Bloomberg administration circulated a Jan. 5 letter to reporters from the mayor to the Office of Management and Budget in Washington.

The letter put the cost of stepped-up security at $216 million for the first year after Mohammed and the others arrive in Manhattan from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. After that, the mayor said it would cost $200 million annually for as long as the men are detained in the city — mainly overtime for extra police patrols.

The Police Department had given an initial estimate of $75 million a year but later warned it could be higher. Officials said a second, more careful analysis produced the totals cited by the mayor, who warned the trial would strain the resources of the nation’s largest police department.

“As 9/11 was an attack on the entire nation, we need the federal government to shoulder the significant costs we will incur and ease this burden,” Bloomberg wrote.

The mayor left Kelly to explain the threat — and the extensive plans to thwart it.

“Given the unprecedented media attention the trial will attract, one concern is that terrorists may attempt to strike again in an effort to garner the publicity,” he said in the Jan. 13 speech to a police organization.

On Friday, Kelly told reporters that public backlash made it “unlikely” the case would go forward in New York City.

The Chicago Tribune contributed to this report.