As if we didn’t know this would happen. You’ll remember that Obama decided - though his wank Eric Holder - decided to try 9/11 suspects just around the corner from Ground Zero. You’ll also remember I told you that New York City couldn’t afford the cost of hosting the trial. This week Mayor Boomberg confirmed it would cost over a billion dollars and asked that the side show be put on somewhere else. You’ll also remember how polls show Americans are solidly against such as plan, but apparently Obama isn’t concerned with public opinion or cost. Then again maybe not. Via the Ny Times:

“U.S. Drops Plan for a 9/11 Trial in New York City
By SCOTT SHANE and BENJAMIN WEISER

The Obama administration on Friday gave up on its plan to try the Sept. 11 plotters in Lower Manhattan, bowing to almost unanimous pressure from New York officials and business leaders to move the terrorism trial elsewhere.

“I think I can acknowledge the obvious,” an administration official said. “We’re considering other options.”

The reversal on whether to try the alleged 9/11 terrorists blocks from the former World Trade Center site seemed to come suddenly this week, after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg abandoned his strong support for the plan and said the cost and disruption would be too great.

But behind the brave face that many New Yorkers had put on for weeks, resistance had been gathering steam.

After a dinner in New York on Dec. 14, Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, pulled aside David Axelrod, President Obama’s closest adviser, to convey an urgent plea: move the 9/11 trial out of Manhattan.

More recently, in a series of presentations to business leaders, local elected officials and community representatives of Chinatown, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly laid out his plan for securing the trial: blanketing a swath of Lower Manhattan with police checkpoints, vehicle searches, rooftop snipers and canine patrols.

“They were not received well,” said one city official.

And on Tuesday, in a meeting Mr. Bloomberg had with at least two dozen federal judges on the eighth floor of their Manhattan courthouse, one judge raised the question of security. The mayor, according to several people present, said he was sure the courthouse could be made safe, but that it would be costly and difficult.

The next day, the mayor, who back in November had hailed the idea of trying Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four other accused Sept. 11 plotters in the heart of downtown Manhattan, made clear he’d changed his mind.

The Obama administration official said the decision to back out of plans for a New York trial had broad support but had not yet been made public.

Jason Post, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, said Friday night that the mayor would have no comment until the Obama administration had made an official announcement of its intentions.

Told of the administration’s decision, a spokesman for Mr. Kelly said, “We were not aware of that.”

But the spokesman, Paul J. Browne, said of Mr. Kelly: “He is of the mind that such a decision would give us some breathing room, but that New York has to remain vigilant because it remains at the top of the terrorist target list.”

“It is obvious that they can’t have the trials in New York,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, New York’s Democratic senior senator.

Mr. Bloomberg’s remarks on Wednesday set off a stampede of New York City officials, most of them Democrats well-disposed toward President Obama, who suddenly declared that a civilian trial for the 9/11 suspects was a great idea — as long as it didn’t happen in their city.”

The question then becomes where? Bloomberg when he flatly rejected proposals to move the trial to the less trafficked, less populated Governor’s Island. Media outlets are citing the cost, which is a factor, but this is nothing less than a backtrack considering Obama’s dwindling approval numbers.

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Barack Obama, 9/11, Terrorism, 9/11 Trials, New York