Just as he did for Bush in 2004*, Rudy Giuliani argues that only Michael Bloomberg can save us from the post-9/11 specter of international terrorism:

Former mayor Rudy Giuliani warned Sunday that crime rates could soar to 1990s levels and the city could again be a victim of terrorism if Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t win reelection.

Giuliani’s dire predictions came during a tag-team campaign swing – the first time Bloomberg has tapped the one-time GOP star for help on the stump this election season.

“This city could very easily be taken back in a very different direction,” Giuliani told a crowd of ultra-Orthodox Jews at a breakfast sponsored by Brooklyn’s Borough Park Jewish Community Council. “It could very easily be taken back to the way it was with the wrong political leadership. Politics is important. It’s important toour safety. It’s important to our security.”

Bloomberg said that New York could become another Detroit.

“We all know that cities have gone through great boom times and then turned around and collapsed. Take a look at Detroit,” he said. “It went from a great city with lots of good-paying jobs to a city that’s basically holding on for dear life. All of our gains are always in danger of being turned around.”

*(”The former mayor said he believed that Mr. Bush was in the better position to protect the country from further terrorist attacks. ”One of the reasons the world is safer now is that we are going out and trying to find our enemies and demobilizing them,” he said. ”I was sitting there in Congress the night Bush announced the Bush doctrine. And I remember leaving that night feeling better that the president of the United States had reversed 20 or 30 years playing defense” against potential enemies, he said.”)

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009.

*That’s from Bloomberg’s statement to the 9/11 Commission in May 2004, and the sad thing is that he was talking about the lack of inter-agency cooperation, not even intra-agency cooperation:

The New York Police Department has removed a senior official from one of its two sometimes competing antiterrorism units, after it played a role in disrupting a sensitive federal terrorism investigation, current and former police officials said on Wednesday. He was replaced by a top official from the other unit.

The investigation was disrupted two weeks ago when detectives from one of the units, the Intelligence Division, sought assistance from a Queens imam who then alerted the central suspect in the case to the inquiry.

The transfers, which removed one official from the Intelligence Division and replaced him with another from the Counterterrorism Bureau, came in recent days amid intense activity in the case. Federal agents and police detectives have been hunting through New York City and other places for operatives in a suspected Qaeda bomb plot.

Again, the NYPD is playing with the security of all Americans. When they’re good, oh they’re real good, but there’s also a huge lack of oversight here. People in California, Denver or even New Jersey don’t vote for Michael Bloomberg, much less Ray Kelly, and when the NYPD fucks up, it affects them, too. I’m surprised more people aren’t more pissed . . .

Did the NYPD’s vaunted* counter-terrorism unit blow the FBI’s cover? Who knows:

Zazi had been under FBI surveillance, but the criminal complaint against him suggests NYPD officers acting without the bureau’s knowledge may have blown their cover by questioning Afzali, who is an imam in the New York City borough of Queens.

“They came to ask me about your characters,” Afzali told Zazi in a secretly recorded Sept. 11 telephone conversation. “They asked me about you guys.”

At least one of those New York Police Department detectives, referred to in the recently unsealed criminal complaint, works for a division that operates independently from an FBI-run terrorism task force.

The complaint also suggests investigators may have tipped off Zazi, a 24-year-old Denver airport shuttle driver, by towing and searching a rental car he was using on a New York City trip that heightened fears of an attack.

The maneuver, authorities say, produced evidence of bomb-making instructions retrieved from a hard drive on Zazi’s laptop.

But it also apparently didn’t get by the suspect: In the phone conversation with Afzali, Zazi said the car’s disappearance convinced him he was being watched.

NYPD and FBI officials have denied that the potential missteps forced their hand in a series of high-profile raids last week, prompted Zazi to abort his New York visit and caused friction between the two agencies, which work together through the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

And the Times notes that it’s actually misleading to consider the NYPD one monolithic entity because there is infighting within the department:

Current and former police and federal officials said the approach to the imam, and the resulting disruption, added to a long history of tensions and rivalry between the New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which in recent years have developed a new dimension: a clash of sorts within the Police Department, between its two primary antiterrorism units.

Those tensions, according to police and federal officials, have led to communication and coordination problems between the two police units and between one of them, the Intelligence Division, and the F.B.I. The other unit, the Counterterrorism Bureau, oversees the more than 100 detectives assigned to work with the F.B.I. on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Bumbling police departments are a time-honored tradition — see Seasons 1-5 of The Wire! — but imagine the Congressional hearings that will take place if one day something like this actually costs lives . . .

*The New Yorker published one of the worst puff pieces during the Bush Administration.

Rather, it’s just the police department using up some of that extra cash lying around:

The city’s Police Department and the F.B.I. will collaborate tonight in a joint counterterrorism exercise in Queens, testing New York’s ability to intercept a so-called dirty bomb.

Around 300 city police officers and 400 employees from the F.B.I. will work together in the exercise. The main events are scheduled to take place between 9 p.m. tonight and 4 a.m. on Wednesday morning on the Clearview Expressway.

Police say traffic delays on the expressway are anticipated until 1 a.m. Wednesday.

. . .

During tonight’s exercise authorities intend to use a detection device to intercept a mock bomb in a vehicle on the expressway.

Once the mock bomb is located, the aim is to transfer it to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and practice the procedures required to make it safe.

. . .

In 2007 the federal government created the Securing the Cities initiative, and pioneered the program in New York.

The aim of Securing the Cities was to establish a cordon of radiation sensors 50 miles outside New York to detect an inbound dirty bomb, and since 2007 the police have already received more than $53 million in Homeland Security Department grants to implement the project.

However, this year’s federal budget proposed to eliminate Securing the Cities funding in 2010.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kelly suggested that the timing of the exercise, demonstrating the potential to intercept a dirty bomb, is no co-incidence.

“The thing we are concerned about is the zeroing out of the Securing the Cities budget,” he said. “It is very germane to the exercise tonight.”

When the next big terrorist attack happens we will be as unprepared as we were on 9/10/01, lulled into a dangerous complaisance by the Old West Main Street facade that New York has become:

Awakened residents thought it was a gas explosion, maybe a sonic boom. Others figured an espresso machine inside the Starbucks had blown up. One woman, walking by the dozens of official-looking law enforcement folks inside the crime-scene tape, explained to her young daughter how similar shows like “C.S.I.” are filmed before realizing the asphalt was no stage.

“This is the real deal?” she said with a gasp. “I’m explaining it like it was a movie.” She grabbed her daughter’s hand and hurried away.

The growing realization that the commotion at 92nd Street and Third Avenue on Monday morning derived from a small explosive device rather than a script left nearby residents stunned, curious and ultimately frightened.

. . .

Some noted how much it looked like television, while others experienced an odd collision between fiction and fact.

“It sounded like a bomb, to the extent that I know what a bomb sounds like,” said Casey Mallinckrodt, who was awakened with her family in their apartment one block north on 93rd Street. “It’s confusing. Obviously we don’t live in a bomb-riddled city most of the time. And bombing a Starbucks doesn’t seem like a terrifically pointed act of terrorism towards a community. It seems as though it might be a statement towards Starbucks.”

Now that the World Trade Center has already been hit, we need to go for the second-best thing:

The four men arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. were petty criminals who appeared to be acting alone, not in concert with any terrorist organization, the New York City police commissioner said Thursday.

The men were arrested in an elaborate sting operation at around 9 p.m. on Wednesday after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple, a Reform synagogue, and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue.

. . .

[James] Cromitie, whose parents had lived in Afghanistan before his birth, had told the informant that he was upset about the war in Afghanistan and that that he wanted to do “something to America.” Mr. Cromitie stated “the best target” — the World Trade Center — “was hit already,” according to the complaint.

I can almost make out the turnpike in the distance there:

On April 27, a plane that usually serves as the president’s plane was flying low over the New York City skyline, trailed closely by two fighter jets. It was a photo opportunity — authorized by several government officials, including Mr. Caldera — that infuriated Mr. Obama.

Earlier: What Kind Of “Photo Shoot” Involves Air Force One Flying At A Low Altitude Over New York Harbor? Publicity For A Harrison Ford Sequel?

Which is to say, I don’t get it:

A low-flying commercial jetliner, followed by a pair of military planes, flew low over the lower New York Harbor on Monday morning, skirting close to the Jersey City coastline and prompting evacuations of office buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey City, N.J.

Perplexed officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were inundated with calls from ferry passengers and residents in the area, but in fact there was nothing to be alarmed about. The large plane was a backup for Air Force One — a military version of a 747 commercial jetliner — and it was accompanied by two fighter jets, as part of a photo shoot, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Apparently it’s just that easy:

A stack of blank birth certificates has been stolen from the city Health Department’s offices, leading investigators to worry that they may have fallen into the hands of terrorists, The Post has learned.

On March 12, an employee discovered that 104 certificates with the agency’s stamp on them were missing from the department’s offices at 125 Worth St., near City Hall, sources said.

It was the first time in 10 years that blank birth certificates were stolen from the department.

The NYPD and the city’s Department of Investigation are investigating.

“It’s like hitting the Lotto for a terrorist,” one investigator said.

. . .

Investigators believe the theft was carried out by someone who has access to the offices, probably an employee.

When rich rogues aren’t stealing from us and each other to support their conspicuous Manhattan lifestyle, roguish governments are using Manhattan real estate as a front for their unneighborly activities:

The Fifth Avenue building that houses Juicy Couture’s flagship store is secretly owned in part by an Iranian bank that helps fund Tehran’s nuclear program, the feds charged yesterday in a bid for an ownership stake.

The Manhattan federal court case targets a 40 percent interest in 650 Fifth Ave. held by the Assa Corp., an alleged front company for Iran’s state-owned Bank Melli.

The bank has “facilitated the purchase of sensitive materials utilized by Iran’s nuclear and missile industries,” according to the Treasury Department.

If you are by chance traveling by rail this holiday weekend and the train seems crowded, check out the first or last car — both of which may be emptier than usual:

The FBI’s source reportedly told agents of an al Qaeda-connected group’s desire to place bombs or suicide bombers inside the first and last Long Island Rail Road commuter cars and detonate them as the train entered Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, also used by the Washington-New York-Boston Amtrak system and the New York City subway.

It’s been a while, old friend:

Federal authorities are warning law enforcement personnel of a possible terror plot against the New York City subway system during the holiday season.

An internal memo obtained by The Associated Press says the FBI has received a “plausible but unsubstantiated” report that al-Qaida terrorists in late September may have discussed attacking the subway system.

. . . “Ground Zero” is almost an anagram of “Green Zone”:

According to a 36-page presentation given by top-ranking police officials in recent months, the entire area would be placed within a security zone, in which only specially screened taxis, limousines and cars would be allowed through “sally ports,” or barriers staffed by police officers, constructed at each of five entry points.

Roughly a dozen guard booths would be established at street corners where pedestrians or vehicles are most likely to enter the area, while the western lanes of Church Street would be reserved for emergency vehicles.

All service and delivery trucks for the trade center site would be directed to an underground bomb screening center at the south side of the complex. Tour buses would drop off and pick up passengers at Liberty and Greenwich Streets. But no bus would be summoned from the underground security center and garage until all the passengers are present, a requirement that could leave large clots of tourists waiting for stragglers.

The plan is designed to prevent a third terrorist attack on the site, said Paul J. Browne, deputy police commissioner for public information, and, he said, would have little effect on either traffic or pedestrians. It is among the more striking features of the Police Department’s overall plan for Manhattan security, which also includes measures to photograph every vehicle entering Manhattan, and scan its license plate, and then keep the information on file for at least a month. The department hopes to have the plan in place by 2010, by the time Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg leaves office.

Landlords, company executives, public officials and some urban planners acknowledged the need for security at ground zero, but worried that the procedures would undermine the effort to reweave the trade center site into the city’s fabric. They fear that the proposed traffic restrictions could create tie-ups in a congested neighborhood and discourage corporate tenants from renting space, or shoppers from visiting the stores in the area.

. . .

The security zone would extend west from Church Street, between Vesey and Liberty Streets, and include portions of several adjacent blocks.

Mr. Browne, addressing criticism that the security plan would undermine a normal commercial and cultural life in the neighborhood, said, “I think this will reassure people that this is probably the safest business environment anywhere.”

So as new taxes make a pack of cigarettes cost up to $12, think long and hard about what terrorist organization you’re funding by buying bootleg smokes:

Nearly two dozen Arab cigarette smugglers have been smoked out for buying and then reselling contraband butts to New York bodegas and other shops.

Lured by fake ads in Arabic-language newspapers, the smugglers bought $6 million in contraband smokes from New York tax and federal undercover agents.

And a top elected official now warns that the untaxed cigarettes could be funding terror overseas.

All the profits of the smugglers — whose sales to hundreds of area stores exceeds the business of most legitimate wholesalers — “was shipped overseas to the Middle East,” said Deputy Commissioner William Comiskey of the state Taxation and Finance Office.

“We know that the money wasn’t kept here,” said Comiskey, whose agents conducted the elaborate sting, noting that “it’s a possibility” that the smugglers’ multimillion-dollar operations, which also include sales of guns and counterfeit tax stamps, could be at least partly funding terrorism.

. . .

Noting that the suspected smugglers ducked paying $10 million in New York taxes, [Rep. Peter King (R-LI)] added, “If this money is going overseas, and this money is going to Hezbollah and Hamas . . . we’re talking about life and death, we’re talking about a very serious terror issue.”

The sting led to the arrests of 21 out of 27 men named in money-laundering, trafficking and conspiracy indictments unsealed this week. Most of them are originally from Yemen and Jordan.

The case, which is being prosecuted by federal authorities in Virginia, was set in motion in early 2007 by New York state Tax and Finance agents, who set up a warehouse in King George County, Va., and stocked it with cases of untaxed cigarettes.

The warehouse was extensively wired for audio and video surveillance.

The agents then took out an ad in an Arabic-language newspaper in New Jersey, offering “Tobacco for less . . . special prices for the Arab and African community,” and asking those interested to call a phone with a Virginia area code.

. . . frist check the return address. Then freak out about it:

A suspicious package with a return address in Saudi Arabia set off a police response that led to the evacuation of an Elm Park neighborhood last night and forced Little Leaguers from their baseball diamonds.

In the end, the small cardboard box was found to contain nothing more dangerous than about 20 hardcover and paperback books on myriad topics, including Middle Eastern culture and the Islamic religion.

Jacqueline DeJesus found the package, which had a shipping label from Riyadh, on the front stoop of her Princess Street home and immediately grew concerned.

“It had my eldest daughter’s first name on it and my address and that was it,” she said. “I’m Puerto Rican and American and have no family in Saudi Arabia, so I have no idea how it ended up here.”

Her daughter is married to a man who emigrated from the Middle East. But Ms. DeJesus said she wasn’t expecting any mail from overseas.

At about 7 p.m., cops evacuated Mrs. DeJesus, her family and neighbors, and stopped games in progress on the nearby West Shore Little League and Babe Ruth League fields.

The NYPD Bomb Squad responded within the hour and — after careful examination — determined that the box didn’t pose a threat.

. . . it’ll be a great place to watch people pick their noses:

The city is planning a new $30 million “super high-tech” NYPD command bunker in lower Manhattan to serve as the nerve center for crime fighting, as well as emergency response to terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

The technology-intensive, 22,000-square-foot Joint Operations Command Center will be a 24/7 hub housed in an eight-story building connected to Police Headquarters at 109 Park Row, according to a city document detailing negotiations between the NYPD and architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

The center will allow the NYPD to “coordinate with other agencies — local, state and federal — to identify, manage, and respond to crises throughout New York City,” according to the “notice of intent” document.

“The need for such a facility is imperative,” the document said.

Sources told The Post that the “state-of-the-art, sophisticated” center will have walls of high-definition video screens showing surveillance footage from a variety of places, including underneath bridges and underwater.

Cops will continuously monitor the screens to pinpoint suspicious activity or zero in on specific areas in the event of breaking crime. Criminal databases linked to the center will instantly provide responding cops with critical data.

The NYPD currently has an operations center on the eighth floor of Police Headquarters that doubles as an emergency-response center in crises, but one counterterrorism detective said, “It could certainly be more high-tech.”

. . . then the terrorists will have won:

Philippe Petit, the French aerialist and juggler whose unauthorized 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers is the subject of the documentary Man on Wire, which plays at the Tribeca Film Festival this week, doesn’t really approve of the Freedom Tower. “I stay away from politics because I am just a street juggler,” he says, “but I can tell you secretly that I am very unhappy to not have two towers being built, because I could offer to dance again — a dance of freedom, of victory, of ‘We shall not be doomed.’”

Gersh Kuntzman in the Brooklyn Paper, playing the Paul Krugman card*:

9-11 didn’t change anything except turning what could have been a mediocre presidency into one of history’s worst.

*As in, “I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society”.

A malfunctioning science project forces its owner to go into full Magritte mode to calm fellow subway riders:

A school science project that went awry and caused smoke to billow from a student’s backpack sent panicked B train riders scurrying for the exits Thursday in Brooklyn.

“This is not a bomb! This is not terror!” yelled Gregory Kats, 29, a computer engineering student at the New York City College of Technology.

Kats, 29, was heading home from school when wires on a device he had built short-circuited in his backpack, he told the Daily News afterward.

When white smoke began spiraling out of his backpack as the train neared the Seventh Ave. station in Park Slope, riders quickly became alarmed, he said.

“They were panicking, and I realized their fear,” an apologetic Kats said at his Sheepshead Bay home.

They “started to jump out of the train” as soon as it stopped at the platform and the doors opened, Kats said.

He said he tried to disassemble the contraption on the platform even as he reassured riders, “Don’t worry. This is my science project.”

Form follows function, and function follows security at JFK’s new terminal 5*:

From the moment that passengers first arrive at JetBlue Airways’ $750 million terminal at Kennedy International Airport in September, they will face an unmistakably post-9/11 world.

Most airline terminals have been jury-rigged since 2001 to accommodate all the extra security workers and equipment. But JetBlue’s new Terminal 5 is among the first in the United States designed from the ground up after the terrorist attacks.

The 340-foot-wide security checkpoint will dominate the departures hall the way ticket counters once did, occupying the focal point of the Y-shaped building.

There will be 20 security lanes. “They were sized with the idea that passengers have luggage, have children, have wheelchairs and have special needs,” said William R. DeCota, director of aviation at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs Kennedy.

After running the security gantlet, travelers will find a lot of benches where they can pull themselves back together.

There will be subtler touches, too: resilient rubber Tuflex floor (instead of cold, hard terrazzo) for the areas where one has to go shoeless.

Location Scout: JFK.

*Not to be confused with the old Terminal 5 or other variations thereof.

Bill Ayers is in the news again and a bomb goes off at the Times Square Recruiting Station:

A small explosive device damaged a landmark military recruiting station in Times Square before dawn today, prompting a huge police response that disrupted transit at the “crossroads of the world.”

The explosive device caused minor damage, and no one was injured when the explosive went off about 3:45 a.m., police said. The explosion shattered a glass entryway.

Members of the police department’s bomb squad and fire officials gathered outside the recruiting station, which has occasionally been the site of anti-war demonstrations, ranging from silent vigils to loud rallies.

Witnesses staying at a hotel in the area said they heard a “big bang” and could feel the building shake. A large plume of smoke was also visible after the explosion, they said.

Location Scout: Times Square Recruiting Station.

At some point it may make more sense just take your chances:

Law enforcement officials have major concerns about security weaknesses in the planned World Trade Center complex, a Daily News investigation has found.

The potential problems expressed to the Port Authority and others involved in the most high-profile development project in New York City history include:

* A row of three mostly glass towers positioned too closely to city streets, increasing their vulnerability to attack.

* Difficulties in inspecting some 2,000 delivery trucks and sightseeing buses that will enter or leave the site daily.

* A vehicle security center that hasn’t been fully designed and relies on vehicle inspection technology that hasn’t even been developed yet.

. . .

Towers 2, 3 and 4 — which will rise between Greenwich and Church Sts. to 79, 71 and 64 stories, respectively — contain too much glass, sources familiar with the issues said.

They also are not set back far enough from the two streets — where uninspected trucks will whiz by — to meet the most rigorous security standards, the sources said.

. . .

Another concern: The buildings do not meet Department of Defense or Department of Homeland Security blast standards. That means they can withstand certain types of explosions – but not more powerful blasts.

The DOD blast standards — rarely applied to U.S. skyscrapers — are typically used in U.S. embassies and missions abroad, sensitive government facilities and military bases.

I guess this is what people use Nerf balls for these days:

Cops yesterday revealed the chilling arsenal of pipe bombs allegedly fashioned by a Bulgarian immigrant in Brooklyn Heights — including a Nerf football stuffed with nails and a device designed to hang from a ceiling and rain down deadly ball bearings when detonated.

Ivaylo Ivanov, 37, was indicted on more than 100 counts of weapons charges in that case and another involving hate crimes stemming from him allegedly scrawling swastikas and anti-Semitic statements on local synagogues.

Police said they do not yet know if Ivanov, who is Jewish, was planning an attack on area Jews with the weaponry. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said investigators are poring over “voluminous” material seized from Ivanov’s computer looking for clues as to what he planned to do with the weaponry.

Investigators have not found any bomb-making literature, but “Ivanov clearly knew what he was doing,” said NYPD bomb-squad commander Lt. Mark Torie.

An array of artillery, including a sniper rifle, machine gun, silencers and pistols, were taken from the fourth-floor apartment on Remsen Street — a historic brownstone-lined block in one of Brooklyn’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

. . .

Ivanov has told cops that the guns were for protection and that he wanted to bring the bombs on a fishing trip and explode them under water.

. . .

Cops said Ivanov also distributed anti-Semitic pamphlets while making his rounds as a dogwalker.

Earlier: Neil Simon Meets Steven Seagal.

Here’s something you don’t see every day in Brooklyn Heights:

A bloodied Ivaylo Ivanov, 31, approached officers at about 1:15 a.m. around the corner from 58 Remsen St., where he lives with his roommate, who is often overseas for work, police sources said.

Ivanov told the cops he had been shot in the hand by a stranger, and he was taken to Long Island College Hospital.

There, he changed his story and admitted he shot himself — apparently while cleaning one of his guns, the sources said.

When cops searched his fourth-floor apartment, they found six pipe bombs, sniper rifles, a handgun, shotguns, a crossbow with arrows, silencers, bomb-making equipment and other weapons — prompting an immediate evacuation of the building and others on the historic, tree-lined block.

. . .

Neighbors in the building said Ivanov shares the unit with Dr. Michael C. Clatts, 50, a pioneer AIDS researcher.

Clatts, an assistant professor at Columbia, is conducting AIDS research in Vietnam for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

. . .

[Ivanov] has been on the NYPD’s radar at least since September, when he became a suspect in a slew of hate crimes in the area that included swastikas painted on synagogues and cars.

After his arrest, he told cops he was working for Israel’s Mossad spy agency, the sources said.

“They are both what I would consider eccentric people,” Penny Kaufman, who lives on the second floor, said of the roommates.

I don’t know who that was for but trust me, it wasn’t for me:

Is it real life imitating reel life or is it just a coincidence that someone detonated a galvanized pipe bomb in front of “The Sopranos” star Michael Imperioli’s West Side theater early Tuesday?

Police know the culprit is not a terrorist, but they’re still not sure why the small device — 4 inches long, 2 inches in diameter and packed with black powder — was placed near the entrance to Studio Dante, the West 29th Street theater run by Imperioli and his wife, Victoria.

The 1:05 a.m. blast damaged the windshield of a van parked in front of the building, but there were no injuries.

. . .

Souza, a bridge painter who lives nearby, told police he has no enemies.

“When they said to me it was a bomb, I said, ‘It wasn’t intended for me,’” Souza recalled. “I have no problems with nobody. It’s strange, very strange.”

Imperioli was questioned for several hours by police; he could not be reached.

Apparently the previous employee left a bunch of crap in his desk:

U.N. inspectors found vials of poisonous gas in one of their offices near U.N. headquarters, a spokesman announced today.

Two plastic packages containing gram-sized amounts of liquid were discovered last week as U.N. inspectors were archiving old files in a room at 866 East 48th St. Yesterday, an inventory report revealed that the packages contained the chemical agent phosgene, an old warfare agent that was used in a majority of chemical deaths during World War I.

The chemicals were recovered in 1996 from a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility, Al Muthanna, and sent to the wrong office, the U.N. said in a statement. Normally, they would have been sent by military transport to a laboratory equipped for analysis.

The U.N. said that chemical weapons experts had sealed the packages and placed them in a secure location on the sixth floor. The floor was evacuated this afternoon as a Hazardous Materials unit responded to remove the materials and bring them to a military facility outside of New York, police said.

Actually, “marine mischief” sounds a lot like a bad 50s romance novel:

An illegal submarine bumped into trouble off the coast of Red Hook Friday morning.

The replica of a Revolutionary War submarine was stopped by the Coast Guard after it came too close to the Queen Mary 2 ocean liner.

Police took the sub’s sole occupant into custody, as well as two other men in a nearby rowboat.

They have not been charged yet, but have been issued citations for unsafe sailing and violation of a security zone.

In a statement, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says the craft did not pose a terrorism threat and was a case of “three adventuresome individuals” involved in “marine mischief.”

Sure, it’s all good clean urban exploration until you start freaking out her majesty. (Or is it a case of bad performance art?)

Saturday was a bad day to get caught with 80 gallons of gas in your burning minivan:

A Mexican man sparked fears of terrorism in Brooklyn last night when his minivan containing a tank with 80 gallons of gasoline caught fire, cops said.

Dennis Alvareto, 35, was illegally reselling the gas out of his 350-gallon capacity van on McDonald Avenue near Avenue C in Kensington — almost directly in front of a Yeshiva and near a Mosque — when the fuel pump ignited at about 8:50 p.m., they said.

He yanked the hose out of the tank and drove away, then returned to put out the burning hose with a bucket of water, witnesses said.

Charges were pending against Alvareto last night.

. . .

“If the wrong person [knew he had all that gas in the van, he] could do some real damage,” said witness Giacomo Incannila. “They could come and steal it. Next thing you know, it would be like what happened in London.”

If you want to make money selling crap on eBay, hawk comic books, baseball tickets or even your wife’s Lladro, but whatever you do, please try to avoid trafficking in hazardous and potentially lethal chemicals:

Fears of home-grown terrorism shuddered through a large section of Staten Island last night when local and federal authorities uncovered about 3,000 pounds of potentially explosive chemicals stored in a Graniteville home and nearby storage facility.

Potassium nitrate, sulfur, mercury and peroxide were among the 21 different types of chemicals discovered during a raid of 199 Ada Drive, police said. Quantities ranged from 5 to 215 pounds, according to one law enforcement official speaking on the condition on anonymity.

The disturbing discovery led to the evacuation of more than 200 residents from 56 homes on Ada Drive, which is off Richmond Avenue bordering Baron Hirsch Cemetery.

At the nearby Public Storage Facility at 1107 Goethals Road North in Mariners Harbor, cops found 2,500 pounds of potassium nitrate, a component of gunpowder. The chemical, also known as saltpeter, is commercially used as fertilizer, cleaning solvent for septic tanks and meat preservative.

Investigators say Miguel Serrano, 57, the homeowner of 199 Ada Dr. who also was renting the storage space, had purchased the chemicals in bulk and was reselling them for a profit on the Internet.

It is believed that Serrano was also using some of the chemicals, including mercury and peroxide, to clean his pool.

He was charged with reckless endangerment; other charges are pending, police said.

“He was an unlicensed chemical salesman,” said one cop source with knowledge of the investigation. “He has no conscience. Who knows who he was selling to on the Internet?”

Officials downplay* the threat to life and limb from Guyanese parliament members**:

Federal authorities said that four men were hoping to blow up Kennedy International Airport and a large swath of Queens by detonating a fuel pipeline and storage tanks, but oil industry executives and local officials said yesterday that such a plot was probably not feasible.

While it is true that the tanks at Kennedy Airport are connected to a network of underground pipes that run from New Jersey through Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens, an exploding tank should not ignite the pipeline, they said. The pipes, which carry jet fuel, gasoline and heating oil, have valves that can be operated from headquarters in Pennsylvania to cut off the flow if sensors indicate that there might be a leak or rupture, said Roy Haase, an official of Buckeye Partners, the company that operates the pipeline.

“It’s not like the pipeline is a stick of dynamite and the whole thing would blow up,” Mr. Haase said. He said it was more likely that the damage from an exploding tank would be limited to the immediate area around the tank.

Each of the fuel tanks at Kennedy “is its own self-contained unit” 200 to 300 feet from the nearest road, said Stephen Sigmund, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport.

*Then again, they tend to do that until they admit that it was actually scarier than first thought; it seems to take about six months for this to happen.

**No, really — a parliament member!