Oh Those Mischievous Mariners . . .

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?)

Man Seeing Gas-Go Up In Flames Curses Dumb Luck

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.”

On The One Hand You Incur The Wrath Of George Steinbrenner While On The Other You Have The ATF — And I’m Pretty Sure Steinbrenner Is Still Less Armed Than The Feds

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 Hesitant To Add Fuel To The Fire

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!

The Shape Of Jihad To Come

Apparently he planned to teach them Coltrane:

A jazz bassist and martial arts expert charged two years ago in an elaborate undercover terrorism investigation pleaded guilty yesterday to plotting to teach would-be Qaeda operatives how to wage jihad with hand-to-hand combat.

The man, Tarik Shah, 44, entered his guilty plea in Federal District Court in Manhattan. In exchange, he will receive a reduced maximum sentence of no more than 15 years.

The plea by Mr. Shah, who is from the Bronx, brings to a close his involvement in a wide-ranging federal sting operation that reached its height in May 2005 when an undercover F.B.I. agent posing as a recruiter for Al Qaeda met him in a ground-floor apartment near the Grand Concourse. There, the government says, Mr. Shah discussed a failed attempt to attend a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan and then, in words that were secretly recorded, pledged “bayat,” or allegiance, to Al Qaeda.

. . .

Mr. Shah’s conversations with the informer drew the interest of investigators, which intensified in December 2003 when he was arrested in Yonkers on charges unrelated to terror. The police discovered in checking his car phone the numbers of two men whom the F.B.I. had already identified as suspects in terrorism investigations.

Shortly after that search, Mr. Shah met again with the informer, who told him of a warehouse on Long Island that Mr. Shah could use for his martial arts training. Mr. Shah, the government says, was intrigued and offered the informer details of his own secret militant ambitions, claiming that his life as a jazz musician was his “greatest cover.”

Even while imprisoned and awaiting trial, Mr. Shah, who grew up listening to Cannonball Adderley records, continued to practice his music. He and his brother, Antoine Dowdell, a jazz pianist, would sometimes sing and scat in an isolated visiting area of the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan.