Cost factors hinder plans to hold trial for KSM in NYC

A letter and a speech may have doomed plans to bring the Sept. 11 terror trial to New York. The letter written by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to Washington earlier this month 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 has forced the Obama administration to consider looking for a friendlier home for the high-profile trial, even as the legitimacy of the New York Police Department's security plan and its estimated cost goes unchallenged. Kelly insists the 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." By announcing late last year that New York would host the trial of admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four alleged al-Qaida cohorts, the Obama administration stumbled into a political fire that had burned the previous administration.