Hey, Idiot — I can’t believe our tax dollars are going to rebut your asinine conspiracy theories:

Faced with an angry minority of people who believe the Sept. 11 attacks were part of a shadowy and sprawling plot run by Americans, separate reports were published this week by the State Department and a federal science agency insisting that the catastrophes were caused by hijackers who used commercial airliners as weapons.

The official narrative of the attacks has been attacked as little more than a cover story by an assortment of radio hosts, academics, amateur filmmakers and others who have spread their arguments on the Internet and cable television in America and abroad. As a motive, they suggest that the Bush administration wanted to use the attacks to justify military action in the Middle East.

Most elaborately, they propose that the collapse of the World Trade Center was actually caused by explosive charges secretly planted in the buildings, rather than by the destructive force of the airliners that thundered into the towers and set them ablaze.

The government reports and officials say the demolition argument is utterly implausible on a number of grounds. Indeed, few proponents of the explosives theory are willing to venture explanations of how daunting logistical problems would be overcome, such as planting thousands of pounds of explosives in busy office towers.

Nevertheless, federal officials say they moved to affirm the conventional history of the day because of the persistence of what they call “alternative theories.” On Wednesday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a seven-page study based on its earlier 10,000-page report on how and why the trade center collapsed. The full report, released a year ago, and the new study, in a question and answer format, are available online at http://wtc.nist.gov.

See also: Conspiracy Theory Underground And Nico, Pod Theory, Controlled Demolition And The Flash Is Not A Sunday Matinee Hardcore Bill At CBGB, Ed Begley, Jr.?.

I don’t know which is more freaky — that the feds conduct covert aerial surveillance over New York City or that there is a market here for Hezbollah’s satellite television station:

A Staten Island man has been charged with aiding terrorists — by using his Brooklyn business to give local viewers a satellite hookup to a Lebanese TV station operated by Hezbollah.

Javed Iqbal, 42, was busted early Wednesday after authorities flew covert helicopter missions over his home and business to check out his electronic equipment and set up a complicated sting involving a bogus customer.

He was charged with conspiring to do business with a global terror organization, which is punishable by up to five years in jail. Prosecutors said the charges could be upgraded to providing material support for terrorists, which carries up to 15 years.

His lawyer, Mustapha Ndanusa, said his client is no terrorist, just “a small-time satellite receiver and dish network distributor.”

. . .

The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office says Iqbal, who was also known by the first name John, obtained a Federal Communications Commission license in January 2005 to broadcast satellite TV.

Last February a confidential source told the feds that Iqbal was selling access to broadcasts of Hezbollah’s Al Manar TV through his business, HDTV Ltd., at 6805 and 6809 Fort Hamilton Parkway in Brooklyn.

. . .

In June, a “wired” FBI informant walked into Iqbal’s Brooklyn office, asking to be hooked up to the “DISH network.”

The informant explained he was Lebanese and wanted to watch the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, which transmits secular or Christian shows. Iqbal asked if he was “Lebanese Christian” and when the informant said no, he asked, “Why don’t you watch Al Manar?” court papers say.

He described different service packages that would allow the customer to receive Al Manar and other Arab networks, including Al-Jazeera.

Court papers also say Iqbal falsely told the customer that Al Manar broadcasts were legal in the United States — and a month later changed his sales pitch to say they would soon be legal.

God help subway riders who now may have to endure this every day:

Cops halted a Manhattan subway and examined passengers carrying bottled water and other drinks yesterday after a concerned tipster reported seeing a bottle of suspicious liquid on the No.6 train, police and witnesses said.

The startling spot check was not part of a wider NYPD counterterrorism initiative and had no connection to the thwarted British terror plot to use liquid explosives to blow up passenger jets, authorities said.

It was a routine response to a suspicious package — but several passengers were still alarmed.

“This is a new level of fear, watching for people carrying drinks on the subway,” said Wallis Post, 25, of Manhattan, who was on the train searched by cops at the 51st St. station and again at Grand Central Terminal.

Cops halted the subway about 9 a.m. shortly after a tipster reported seeing a suspicious bottle of liquid on the train at 125th St., police said.

“Is anyone carrying a liquid?” a uniformed cop asked after boarding the train with another officer at 51st St., according to Post and another passenger.

Another cop then said into her hand-held radio: “We’re looking for the high alert,” prompting a few frightened passengers to get off the train, the witnesses said.

As the cops held the train, a woman in a gym outfit held up a Poland Spring water bottle with red juice inside it and told them, “I have this.”

The cops asked if the liquid had spilled on anything and then took it, Post said.

After a five-minute delay, the train was allowed to depart the station, but when it rolled into Grand Central another cop got on and asked: “Has anyone seen a liquid?”

Cops again searched the train before deciding there was no threat, Post said.

A creative defense emerges for a man accused of supporting terrorists:

The Columbia University-educated doctor charged with promising to provide medical care to Al Qaeda operatives will argue that professional ethics require him to offer medical aid to all patients, even terrorists.

This legal defense by the accused doctor, Rafiq Sabir, is outlined for the first time in court papers submitted recently in Manhattan. Lawyers for Dr. Sabir will challenge whether rendering medical services to terrorists counts as providing “material support” to a foreign terrorist organization, which is illegal under federal law. The case against Dr. Sabir presents questions about the line separating an ethical physician from a terrorist supporter who happens to hold an M.D.

Dr. Sabir, of Boca Raton, Fla., is one of four co-defendants charged with a loosely connected plot to aid Al Qaeda that prosecutors made public last year. In a Bronx apartment in late May 2005, Dr. Sabir swore fealty to Osama bin Laden and pledged to provide medical assistance to jihadists who were wounded while training, a criminal complaint charged.

But in a recent court filing, Mr. Sabir’s attorneys, Edward Wilford and Natali Todd, argue that the prosecution is unconstitutional because it impinges on a doctor’s ability to practice medicine.

“As a medical doctor, Dr. Sabir is committed to saving lives, regardless of the status of the individuals because to do otherwise, would be to violate his cannons of ethics,” his attorneys wrote. “A doctor, similar to an attorney, should not be limited to who he can treat, however unpopular such an individual may be.”

The gun was fake but, as the Queens Gazette notes, the threats were real enough to be taken into custody:

A 26-year-old man of Middle Eastern descent was observed pointing a machine gun, which later proved to be a replica, at an establishment at Queens Plaza North and Crescent Street on Wednesday, August 9. The weapon had “snaps” in it, causing it to make realistic noises of a gun being fired. He also resisted arrest. He was charged with making terroristic threats, menacing, resisting arrest, harassment, violation of a local law and disorderly conduct.

The question is what he was terroristically threatening. A strip club?

I think there’s also an army recruiter there, so maybe it was that . . . suffice it to say, we don’t need more crazy people waving guns — fake or real — at “establishments,” especially with Seattle so fresh in everyone’s minds.

Location scout: Queens Plaza.

Not to strike a distrustful tone in the wake of the very, very good news that a gigantic terror plot has been foiled, but it strains credulity that the NYPD even knew about the investigation for several months beforehand and still none of the bad guys caught on:

The New York Police Department had been kept apprised of the terrorist investigation for the past several months, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference.

That said, evildoers deserve a hearty “fuck you” for nail-clipperizing prescription medicine:

Dipty Jain, 30, a law student from Bedford Stuyvesant who was headed to Portland, went through the baggage screening process twice. The first time, she was allowed to keep her prescription medicine in her carry-on bag, but the second screeners told her she had to have a doctor’s note to accompany the medicine.

“They didn’t say you had to have the doctor’s note,” Jain said. “I’ve already tried to get in twice now.”

Give me back my valium . . . I think I’ll be needing it!

Looking on the bright side, one also could say that the system worked:

A fugitive wanted by federal immigration and customs agents somehow slipped through background checks and got a job making repairs inside the Midtown Tunnel, authorities said yesterday.

Carlos Amaya was busted only after an MTA Bridges and Tunnels officer noticed Amaya’s work ID had expired and checked his name for outstanding warrants, authorities said.

“This guy could have easily slipped through the cracks and gained entry to very sensitive areas,” said Joe Mauro, president of the Bridge and Tunnel Officers Benevolent Association. “This may seem inconsequential, but imagine the implications if this guy was a terrorist.”

Officer Christopher Schatz stopped the 44-year-old construction worker as he tried to use an expired work ID to get into a ventilation room, where air is pumped into the tunnel.

When Schatz asked Amaya for another ID, Amaya gave him a photocopy of a driver’s license and then a forged driver’s license, police said.

Schatz — who is assigned to a counterterrorism post created after 9/11 — quickly discovered that Amaya was wanted by the feds for unspecified crimes. The feds are now planning to deport Amaya to his native El Salvador.

Eleven Egyptian students on their way to a month-long cultural exchange to Montana are now unaccounted for somewhere in the U.S.:

Eleven Egyptian students who were supposed to travel to a Montana university after flying to JFK airport late last month disappeared in New York, spurring federal authorities to issue a nationwide alert, officials said yesterday.

The students — who were traveling with six classmates from Mansoura University in Egypt — had their student visas revoked for failing to show up at Montana State University in Bozeman, the officials said.

The other six students made it to the college.

“The FBI and ICE [Immigration and Custom Enforcement] would like to locate these 11 students in order to speak with them,” said FBI Special Agent Richard Kolko after the “be-on-the-lookout” alert was issued to all police in the United States.

No offense to Big Sky Country, but when you think about it, is it all that strange that some of the students may have bagged out? The program doesn’t sound like something you’d want to travel halfway around the world for:

Montana State University Provost David Dooley said 17 Mansoura University students signed up for a 32-day cultural-exchange program to intensively study English, learn about Montana history and go on several field trips.

Meanwhile, Peter King is saying what you’re thinking:

Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said the situation “has to be taken very seriously.”

“Having a number of students from an Arab country arriving on student visas and disappearing is cause for concern,” he said.

Further proof that there is a fine line between “gun collection” and “weapons cache”:

Prosecutors said Gregory Brozski, 56, kept more than 50 guns in his home and garage at 65-32 223rd Place, the second-floor co-op where he has lived with his mother since he was 16. He was arrested July 25, along with a West Islip man also charged with illegally possessing heavy artillery, after an investigation by Suffolk County police led them to Bayside, the Suffolk district attorney said.

Investigators said they found more than 50 weapons in Brozski’s home, including four AK-47 assault rifles, four UZI submachine guns, eight AR 15 semi-automatic rifles and a grenade launcher. He was charged with one count of criminal possession of a weapon. Brozski pleaded not guilty in district court in Central Islip and was released on his own recognizance, a spokeswoman for the DA’s office said.

The person who answered the phone at his apartment said Brozski was not available for comment. But neighbors said he was a quiet man who liked to collect guns but would only use them on trips to a firing range in Pennsylvania.

One neighbor, who declined to give her name, said she knew about the weapons but was never afraid he would use them.

“He looks mean but he’s not,” the neighbor said. “He’s a pussycat.”

She said Brozski had lived in the co-op with his mother for some 40 years and he took care of the elderly woman, who was recently hospitalized. He is a Vietnam War veteran who rarely talked about his time in the service. The neighbor said Brozski may have taken some weapons home from the war.

“The man’s a collector,” she said. “He would never use any of those weapons on anybody.”

Meow.

A United Nations employee has been indicted for his part in a smuggling ring that brought large quantities of a narcotic plant into the country, the proceeds of which funded Somali warlords. Somewhere, John Bolton’s self-righteous pushbroom quivers with rage:

A U.N. employee used U.N. diplomatic pouches to smuggle illegal drugs as part of a ring that brought 25 tons of contraband into New York in the past year and a half, federal prosecutors and the FBI said yesterday.

The shipments of khat — an illegal stimulant grown in East Africa — were received by a mail clerk employed by the United Nations, Osman Osman, who sent them across America, according to an indictment unsealed yesterday.

Prosecutors say Mr. Osman, a Somali citizen who had been employed at the United Nations for 29 years, was an important cog in the largest khat trafficking enterprise America has known. Forty-four defendants were named in yesterday’s indictment, and 14 were still at large, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office said.

Khat is an evergreen shrub grown along the Horn of Africa. Chewing the leaves has long been a custom in the countries of the region. Immigrants have brought the habit to America, where the active chemical in the leaf is as illegal as heroin. The trafficking ring exposed yesterday was responsible for importing more than $10 million worth of khat since the end of 2004, according to the indictment. A portion of the proceeds were sent back to Europe and the United Arab Emirates, in order to repay khat producers, according the indictment.

At a press conference yesterday, an FBI agent, Mark Mershon, said law enforcement officials hoped those arrested would cooperate with efforts to track down exactly where that laundered money went. The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, Michael Garcia, said that the khat trade is a known source of funding for Somali warlords.

*The Post’s headline was actually “Feds’ Khat Nip”.

Smoking on the subway platform is dumb* but doing it when your name is on the terrorist watch list is just dumb luck:

A man on the national terrorist watch list was smoked out by a sharp-eyed undercover cop yesterday, The Post has learned.

Ashish Nayyar, an Indian national, was spotted puffing away on a cigarette by the plainclothes cop on the elevated No. 7 train platform at Queensboro Plaza around midnight Thursday, law-enforcement sources said.

The officer issued him a ticket for smoking. When he did a warrant check on the smoker’s name, he discovered Nayyar was on the terror watch list.

Nayyar had a Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association card on him from a relative who is on the force, police sources said.

He was brought first to a Transit Division holding area, where NYPD counterterrorism detectives and FBI agents interrogated him, the sources said. It was determined that the FBI in Texas had put Nayyar on the list.

Sources said Nayyar’s relative on the NYPD came down to the interrogation and got “huffy,” but left when he was told what the situation was.

Authorities had no photo or fingerprints on file to compare with Nayyar’s but were able to conclude he was the man on the watch list because he gave police information — his mother’s name and his hometown in India — that matched the data on the watch list.

After investigators confirmed his address and his employment, they decided that he was “not a player” in terrorism, a law-enforcement source said.

And it didn’t end there:

He was released into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for being in the United States illegally, sources said.

*You’d be surprised how many undercover cops seem to be looking out for this.

Phrases and words that shouldn’t be seen near each other include “explosion” and “building collapse”:

An explosion was heard before a fire and collapse at a 3-story building on Manhattan’s East Side on Monday, the Fire Department said.

Television reports said people were trapped inside, but fire officials did not immediately confirm that.

Heavy black smoke rose high above the building, wedged between taller structures on 62nd Street between Park and Madison avenues. Damage, including shattered windows, could be seen at one of the adjoining buildings.

The building reportedly housed a doctor’s office and a beauty salon.

Streets around the area were closed off to traffic as ambulances and rescue units responded just before 9 a.m.

Witnesses told reporters that they heard a loud explosion, but it wasn’t clear whether it was before or after the fire started.

The group alleged to have planned to blow up the PATH train tunnel apparently got the map on the Department of Homeland Security’s website:

The tunnel terrorists got their maps of the region’s vital underground passageways off the Department of Homeland Security’s Web site, sources said yesterday.

Maps of the city’s tunnels — including subways, PATH tubes and the Holland Tunnel — were found with the group’s reputed mastermind in Beirut, and were e-mailed to other members of the group, officials said yesterday.

. . .

Homeland Security did not comment on the report that its own Web site was used by the terrorists.

Alleged Al Qaeda ringleader encouraged to teach economics courses in order to maintain “secular, fun-loving” cover:

The alleged ringleader of the tunnel terror plot lived the life of an international playboy — on orders from Al Qaeda.

Assem Hammoud, 31, even fooled his mother, if Lebanese police and U.S. anti-terror officials are correct.

His mother, Nabila Qotob, said Hammoud drinks alcohol, had girlfriends, traveled widely and showed no similarities to Islamic militants.

She also said Hammoud taught economics at a local university.

To prove her son was no jihadi, Qotob showed off photos yesterday of Hammoud with his father and lounging shirtless on a speeding motorboat in Germany.

There were also very un-Islamic pictures of Hammoud with three smiling women — none of them wearing veils — on his arm during an undated stay in Canada.

“His morale is high because he is confident he is innocent,” said Qotob, who said she had recently visited her son in jail.

But Lebanese police, who arrested Hammoud on April 27, said in a statement that the suspect claimed he had been ordered to maintain a fun-loving, secular lifestyle to hide his Islamic militancy.

“He did just that with perfection,” the police statement said.

City officials say, “I told you so”:

New York tunnels, not Midwest corn fields, once again top the terror hit list, proving federal dollars should be dolled out according to need, officials said yesterday.

“We said continuously that when you catch a terrorist and look at the map in his or her pocket it is always a map of New York. Not a map of some other place,” Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.

“New York City, Washington, D.C., a handful of other large cities in the country remain the targets for terrorists because they symbolize America,” the mayor said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the threat showed “New York still remains in the cross hairs of the terrorists.”

The commissioner bristled when a reporter asked whether the city leaked word of the threat to gain additional security funds.

“Totally untrue,” Kelly said.

Authorities are moving to break up a terrorist ring that aimed to blow up the Holland Tunnel:

The FBI has uncovered what officials consider a serious plot by jihadists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in hopes of causing a torrent of water to deluge lower Manhattan, the Daily News has learned.
The terrorists sought to drown the Financial District as New Orleans was by Hurricane Katrina, sources said. They also wanted to attack subways and other tunnels.

Counterterrorism officials are alarmed by the “lone wolf” terror plot because they allegedly got a pledge of financial and tactical support from Jordanian associates of top terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before he was killed in Iraq, a counterterrorism source told The News.

It’s not clear, however, if any cash or assistance was delivered.

The News has learned that at the request of U.S. officials, authorities in Beirut arrested one of the alleged conspirators, identified as Amir Andalousli, in recent months. Agents were scrambling yesterday to try to nab other suspects, sources said.

They didn’t indicate how many people were the target of the international dragnet but said they were scattered all over the world.

“This is an ongoing operation,” one source said.

U.S. agents were allowed to take part in the interrogation of Andalousli, a source said.

The alleged bombers had a small but significant obstacle standing in the way of their ultimate goal — basic physics:

Any plot to flood lower Manhattan by blowing up the Holland Tunnel is doomed to fail, experts say — because it would have to defy the laws of physics.

If the Hudson River surged into a ruptured tunnel, experts told the Daily News, the water would only rise to its own level — and might not even reach street level in the city.

“It might flood the Holland Tunnel, but that’s all it’s going to flood,” said Allan McDuffie, an Army Corps of Engineers expert on New York flood patterns. “It’s not going to get any higher than the level of the surrounding water.”

The sidewalk at the entrance to the Jersey-bound Holland Tunnel is exactly 10 feet above sea level, federal maps show.

The lowest points in the surrounding Tribeca neighborhood are the same height — along Canal St. from the West Side Highway to Wooster St., and in a nest of streets surrounding the Soho Grand hotel.

But even though Canal St. runs the route of an old canal, flooding experts say it’s only vulnerable to flooding from heavy rains or coastal storms — not from the river.

“There are ways that the city could get flooded, especially lower Manhattan, but I don’t think this is one of them,” said Irwin Redlener, head of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and author of the forthcoming “Americans at Risk.”

“It seems a little far-fetched. It’s not like the water is above the island,” Redlener said of the plot. “It doesn’t quite make sense.”

Like we’ve said before, please let this be someone’s lame idea of an art installation:

Cops are investigating whether a slew of unattended bags found around Brooklyn yesterday afternoon was a hoax, police sources said.

About 3 p.m., police started spotting suspicious briefcases, luggage and duffel bags in Park Slope. A grid search of the area turned up bags on Eighth Ave. and Carroll St. as well as spots on Union St., Montgomery Place and Berkeley Place. About nine bags had been found as of last night. “The more we’re investigating them, the more we are seeing them,” a police source said.

The bags were all empty or, in at least one case, contained another empty bag inside of it, sources said. So far, none of the bags contained anything hazardous.

You can either downplay the report (”‘We were aware of the plot and took the appropriate precautions,’ Paul J. Browne, the New York Police Department’s chief spokesman, said . . .”) or claim that it proves once and for all that Homeland is too chintzy, but you can’t do both. That is, except when it behooves you to do one or the other:

The chilling al Qaeda plot to release deadly cyanide gas in city subways makes the federal government’s decision to slash anti-terror funding for the Big Apple all the more insane, two powerful New York pols charged yesterday.

House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (R-L.I.) said the newly detailed poisonous-gas scheme “makes it all the more ridiculous and dangerous and inexcusable” that Department of Homeland Security cut the city’s funding by 40 percent.

“Police Commissioner [Ray] Kelly laid out 17 attacks or attempted attacks against New York that we know about. DHS knows it, and this is absolutely disgraceful,” he said.

. . .

President Bush is likely to get an earful about the cuts when he visits the metropolitan area today.

King, who will be traveling with Bush aboard Air Force One, plans to quiz the president about the cutbacks.

And Mayor Bloomberg, who has strongly protested the cuts, will greet Bush when he lands in New York on his way to speak at the Merchant Marine Academy commencement in Kings Point, L.I. — and can be expected to join in the criticism.

All points bulletin for a stolen truck containing 500 gallons of bleach:

The NYPD yesterday issued an alert warning cops to be on the lookout for a stolen truck containing a deadly industrial bleach capable of being used to make explosives.

The vehicle — a white 24-foot box truck — was stolen Thursday morning from the parking lot of the Savol Bleach Company, in East Hartford, Conn., police said.

Inside the truck are canisters containing 500 gallons of hypochlorite, a highly concentrated chlorine-based bleach used in the chlorination of residential swimming pools, police said.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff pleads with New Yorkers to stop sending him postcards:

. . . [C]ontrary to news media reports, significant landmarks like the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge were included in our deliberation over where money would go. It is true that they were not classified as national monuments and icons. Why? To help New York’s application.

We purposely placed these structures into other categories: the Empire State Building into the large office building category and the Brooklyn Bridge into the bridges category. We did so because those categories generate a higher complete risk grade for New York’s financing proposal than icons like Mount Rushmore that, while important symbolically, would have fewer human and economic consequences in case of an attack.

New York City is miffed that Homeland won’t fund overtime pay for the police:

Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, who is chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the allocation formula was flawed.

“This is indefensible,” Mr. King said. “It’s a knife in the back to New York, and I’m going to do everything I can to make them very sorry they made this decision.”

He said senior department officials who had briefed him about the grants made clear that they were unimpressed with the city’s plan.

For example, New York spends a large share of its grant money to cover overtime costs for police officers who are guarding high-risk targets, like bridges or the subways, a recurring expense.

New York, in the coming year, also intended to spend about $80 million in grants to install a security camera system in the Wall Street area, allowing the police to monitor details as small as license plates, an approach similar to the so-called Ring of Steel in London, said Paul J. Browne, the deputy police commissioner.

But the emphasis on spending on recurring costs — like overtime — was cited as a factor in the relatively low rating the city’s application received, one federal official said.

Then there was the national monument/icon issue:

The risk-assessment scorecard used to distribute federal homeland security funds lists New York without a single national monument or “icon” — stunning mistakes that critics yesterday blasted as bewildering.

The single-page document, released yesterday by officials critical of the feds, also reports that the city — home to many of the nation’s largest financial institutions — has only four “assets” in the banking and finance sector.

“It’s outrageous that these bean counters don’t think the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge are national monuments or icons,” said Jordan Barowitz, a spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg.

“It looks like they came to a conclusion first then filled it in,” fumed Sen. Chuck Schumer, referring to the 40 percent cut for the city in the latest allocation.

“To say that there are no national monuments in this city that are vulnerable to an attack is . . . an insult to every New Yorker.”

The New York Post reports that Hezbollah sleeper cells are active in the city:

The Hezbollah terror group — one of the most dangerous in the world — may be planning to activate sleeper cells in New York and other big cities to stage an attack as the nuclear showdown with Iran heats up, sources told The Post.

The FBI and Justice Department have launched urgent new probes in New York and other cities targeting members of the Lebanese terror group.

Law-enforcement and intelligence officials told The Post that about a dozen hard-core supporters of Hezbollah have been identified in recent weeks as operating in the New York area.

Sources said the activities of these New York-based operatives are being monitored by FBI counterterrorism agents as part of a nationwide effort to prevent a possible terror strike if the confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program spins out of control.

Additional law-enforcement attention is being centered on the Iranian Mission to the United Nations, where there have already been three episodes in the last four years in which diplomats and security guards have been expelled for casing and photographing New York City subways and other potential targets.

. . .

Hezbollah has so far limited its activities in the United States to fund-raising and criminal enterprises. The FBI has already taken down two major rings, one in Charlotte, N.C., and one in Detroit, in which members were smuggling cigarettes, Viagra and baby formula, and kicking profits back to Hezbollah.

More proof that the Yankees are evil:

Yankees apparel and a shave was the disguise of choice for would-be bombers planning to blow up the Herald Square subway station, according to court testimony yesterday.

The idea was that “we should not look like Muslims, we should look like regular people,” Osama El-Dawoody, an NYPD informant, said in Brooklyn Federal Court.

El-Dawoody spent his third day on the witness stand providing an overview for hours of secretly recorded conversations with alleged bomber wanna-be Shahawar Matin Siraj in the summer of 2004 as details of the plot took shape.

Siraj, 24, suggested that the 50-year-old El-Dawoody would look more discreet by trading his kufi — a Muslim headpiece — for a baseball cap.

“Wear, like, this kind of stuff with the New York Yankees on it or something,” Siraj said.

Don’t worry, though, because the plot gets stupider and stupider:

According to their plan, the bomber would take the F train to the 42nd St. station and place an explosive device in a garbage can. Then he would board another train to the 34th St. station, place a second device in the garbage or a toilet there and take the train to the Broadway-Lafayette St. station.

It was unclear whether the bombs would be triggered by remote control or timers.

Siraj said he hoped the explosion would “take down” the shopping mall above the Herald Square station.

Idiots! No one actually uses the Manhattan Mall! No matter:

Killing people was not their main goal. They had hoped to minimize casualties by striking in the early-morning hours on the weekend when the stations subways were mostly deserted — except for the homeless, the tapes show.

“You cannot save [the] homeless,” Siraj said.

These guys sound very American, actually, with this you-cannot-save-the-homeless bootstrapper talk . . .

Like many things these days, whatever happened was either incredibly stupid or incredibly scary:

[Staten Island resident Debra] Sander . . . made the unsettling discovery after flying JetBlue Airways from Newark to Tampa to spend the Easter holiday with her siblings.

When she arrived with her young son at her brother Willy’s home in Clearwater, she began unpacking — only to find a strange white, button-down shirt lying atop her own clothes.

“I thought it was weird,” said Ms. Sander, who initially believed she had mistakenly packed a shirt of her husband’s.

Then she noticed badges, lettering and insignia identical to that of the [Transportation Security Administration]. Also attached to the shirt was someone’s name tag and ID number.

. . .

According to Ms. Sander, her suitcase has a TSA-approved combination lock for which only the agency is supposed to have a universal key.

“Either somebody with the TSA is lying or someone who isn’t a member of homeland security has a universal key to the lock,” said Ms. Sander.

She said that a few people to whom she told the story tossed around conspiracy theories that perhaps the shirt was misplaced by a terrorist who had intended to deliver the item to a colleague.

“After 9/11, anything is possible,” she said. “But the best possible scenario is that it was done by an irresponsible worker. Then maybe they shouldn’t be working there.”

One of “the largest and most prominent banks” in the city is responsible for funneling $3 billion to terrorists, the Post reports:

Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau has shut down a massive terror-finance pipeline in which a whopping $3 billion in profits from drug deals and other crimes flowed through a major New York bank to Middle East fanatics, The Post has learned.

Morgenthau told The Post his office is pursuing a settlement involving possible penalties against one of the largest and most prominent banks in New York — which he declined to identify — for maintaining an account where funds that originated in South America’s notorious “tri-border region” were rerouted to suspect accounts in the Middle East.

Evidence developed in the course of a three-year probe, which has already resulted in charges against other New York-based financial institutions, revealed that about $3 billion that flowed through the account over a two-year period was going to terror groups Hamas, al Qaeda and Hezbollah, Morgenthau said.

“I can’t go out and arrest Osama bin Laden. But I can try to cut off his money,” Morgenthau said of his massive probe.

. . .

John Moscow, a former Assistant District Attorney for financial crimes under Morgenthau, told the House International Relations Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations last week that there are hundreds of thousands of shady banks around the world that “are taking deposits from people they never met and from brass-plate companies with no assets except the bank account, and are inserting the money into the world monetary system.”

“Most of this is in dollars, and most of it goes through Manhattan,” Moscow testified. Morgenthau would not name the latest New York bank under the gun, but said the case could be concluded — with possible penalties — “any day now.”

He said most of the $3 billion in suspicious funds were generated, through criminal enterprises, in the lawless tri-border region of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay.

Over a two-year period, the $3 billion was sent to the New York bank account by a shadowy money-transmittal company in Montevideo, Uruguay.

The money then flowed into bank accounts in the Middle East locations including Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Beirut, Lebanon, and Ramallah in the Palestinian territories.

First, Yale enrolls a former Taliban official to study. Not to be outdone, Columbia invites Libyan, um, leader Muammar Gadhafi to participate in a symposium on “The Prospects for Democracy” in the latest Ivy League competition to see who can piss off the New York Sun more:

A Columbia University discussion on democracy in the 21st century that included an hour-long speech by the dictator of Libya was co-sponsored by an institute named after his manifesto, which states, “All existing forms of government are undemocratic.”

In the manifesto, called “The Green Book,” Muammar Gadhafi goes on to write that “the masses struggle to eliminate the various forms of existing dictatorships,” which include “one-party, two-party or multi-party systems of government, which all inappropriately call themselves democracies.”

During an hour-long speech delivered via satellite at “The Prospects for Democracy” conference, Mr. Gadhafi explained violently cracking down on political opponents, saying, “In our countries, the opposition takes the form of explosions, assassinations, killing,” he said, according to the AP.

Audience members received the dictator “politely,” the dean of the university’s School for International and Public Affairs, Lisa Anderson, who moderated the event, said. She said his remarks are “what you would expect from the author of ‘The Green Book.’”

The two-day conference was co-sponsored by the university, The Green Book Center, the D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, and al-Fatah University in Libya.

. . .

Ms. Anderson said she hoped the conference marked the beginning of a “scholarly collaboration” between the American and Libyan academic communities.

. . .

When asked what impact the conference may have on Libya’s reputation, Ms. Anderson said, “It didn’t hurt.” She dismissed the notion, though, that it gave Mr. Gadhafi legitimacy. “We’re not in the business of thinking about that,” she said. “I hope we have continued relations with the Libyan academic community. That’s good for us and good for them.”

This also serves to note that writer Azi Paybarah has successfully parlayed his stand against the New York Press’ decision not to run those Danish cartoons into a job at the Sun. Good for him!

Chuck Schumer and Peter King will be bummed to hear that sensitive New York landmarks are already compromised:

Dubai Holdings, the state company of Dubai, already owns the Helmsley Building, the Essex House, and Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, which boasts American-as-apple-pie wax renditions of eight presidents—and self-appointed national conscience George Clooney. Dubai International Capital is the third-largest investor in DaimlerChrysler, and through investments with the Carlyle Group and JPMorgan, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has dollars and dirhams in a wide range of U.S. companies. Each Dunkin’ Donuts’ coffee, Baskin-Robbins sundae, Hertz car rental, and Alain Ducasse dinner New Yorkers buy makes the sheikh richer.

You may be more concerned that the Carlyle Group now owns Dunkin’ Donuts, in which case New York Magazine buried the lede here . . .

I’m sure this will amount to nothing, right? Please say “right”:

The Delta terminal at LaGuardia Airport in New York was evacuated Friday after a man who had been targeted for additional screening left the screening area, the Transportation Security Administration said.

The man sat down, took off his shoes, then left the area without them, said TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis.

“TSA Security and Port Authority Police are searching for him now,” she said. “He’s going to have to come out at some point.”

The incident occurred at 2:50 p.m., she said. All outgoing flights from terminal D have been stopped until the man is found.

An interesting 24 plot twist reveals itself on Staten Island:

A crook broke into a Department of Environmental Protection employee’s vehicle on Staten Island and swiped a laptop computer with a disk containing information about the city’s water-distribution system, police said yesterday.

Not to worry, though — there’s nothing sensitive on the computer, because if there were, there wouldn’t be an article in the Post about . . . never mind, don’t go there:

Sources said the information was not classified or confidential and the car apparently was not singled out, since other vehicles on the block, Devens Street in Westerleigh, were also burglarized.

Alternatively, you could always try not supporting organized crime and international terrorism by avoiding buying counterfeit items in Chinatown:

Trish and Kim didn’t realize how dazed they were until they were standing in line at the Chinatown Starbucks on Canal St.

“I’m shaking now,” Kim said Tuesday. “I didn’t realize how scared I was.”

The two Connecticut women, who declined to give their last names, were on their biannual ritual trip to the big city for a little shopping and lots of talking. They always make a point of hitting Canal St., where they stock up on fake Coach, Prada and designer purses for a fraction of what the real bags would cost. On Tuesday, however, their experience was unique.

“Usually, the purses are right on the street. But this time they took us into a small back room behind a hidden door. That’s where the bags were,” said Trish.

While they were in the room, the store attendant who had accompanied them began receiving calls on his cell phone. As he was communicating in Chinese, he urged the women, “Shh, quiet, police, police. Anything you want, cheap. Please, quiet.” Trish and Kim tried not to move for 25 minutes while the attendant spoke on his phone. Finally, he ushered them out of the room and led them to a back door that led into an alley. “Come back to pay, one hour,” he said. “Good price.”

Recounting her adventure as she recoverd in the nearby Starbucks, Kim said if they hadn’t been ushered out so quickly, she would have taken all the bags in the room for the $10 price per bag the attendant was asking. “But I can’t fit any more bags in my closet,” she said, “so it’s probably a good thing.” Prices for the fake bags usually range between $30 and $50.

See also: Interpol Secretary General Ronald K. Noble’s testimony to Congress on the links between intellectual property crime and terrorist financing (July 16, 2003).