While the entire operation will be similar to the deployment for a New Year’s Eve celebration, the difference this time is it will have to be sustained over months or more, officials said. Mr. Kelly has told the Justice Department that the costs for security operations, including paying officers’ overtime, are expected to exceed the initial minimum estimate of $75 million.
We all know full well it will take more than a few months to wrap up what Holder is billing as the “trial of the century.” A 2004 NYPD fiscal document from 2004 estimated the average annual cost of police protection on New Year’s Eve at $3.5 million in police overtime alone. The security costs could easily total half a billion or more over the course of what may be a very long trial, held up at every turn by al Qaeda lawyers and their ACLU buddies. What will this kind of security entail, you ask? It’s called the “counterterrorism overlay package“:
And two months ago, with several hundred thousand people gathered in Times Square for New Year’s Eve, the pressure was really on the commissioner and the NYPD. They had executed what Kelly calls their “counterterrorism overlay package.” Undercovers were everywhere. Intelligence officers mingled in the crowd. Sharpshooters were on the rooftops. Police boats were on the water, choppers were overhead, and Hercules Teams were ready to move. Kelly also had the department’s Archangel package in place, which includes ESU teams equipped to detect a chemical or biological attack and to respond if one does in fact occur. Is New York less safe than it was? “You don’t want this kind of perception to fester. I’m aware that it’s out there. The elephant in the corner of the room is 9/11. That’s why people feel less safe.” The five days leading up to the celebration had been especially difficult. There were intelligence reports detailing serious harbor threats, including information about a possible plan to stage eight separate diversionary acts culminating with a major terrorist attack. All the locations were covered. The water had an eerie, blacker-than-usual look to it because it was mostly empty. No pleasure boats were allowed out.
You might think the New York Times would want to give its local readership a little more advance notice that their lives are about to be interrupted, potentially for years on end, by a daily New Year’s Eve-style security lock-down. And it’s worth asking if Holder had any idea that this was what the transfer of KSM to New York City would entail when he made his decision without consulting New York City Police Chief Ray Kelly or New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg or Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.
