I want my Terra! on the front page!

From today's "Questions for the managing editor:"

Q. I live in California and was astounded yesterday to look at my print edition of The Times for the article on the J.F.K. bomb plot and to find it back on page A30!

What has happened with the news judgment of your colleagues? A terrorist plot that could have badly damaged the entire economy of the nation, including those of us who live in the Bay Area, and it's relegated to the level of bridge club reports. You might wish to suggest to your editors that your readers do not live in a vacuum, that we do have alternative sources for news and they only make The Times look foolish with such ineptitude. No wonder your circulation and advertising are falling; your editors are turning a once-honored newspaper into a dinosaur in the electronic age.

-- Richard Godfrey, San Francisco

Q. Could you offer some insights on how The Times decided to play the story about the alleged J.F.K. terror plot? It was noticeably different than the way the other leading national papers played it; your placement (Metro) and coverage have been more skeptical. I'm particularly curious about why it was not considered a national story, but rather, a local one. Thanks.

-- Barbara, Manhattan

A. Here's the basic thinking on the J.F.K. story: In the years since 9/11, there have been quite a few interrupted terrorist plots. It now seems possible to exercise some judgment about their gravity. Not all plots are the same. In this case, law enforcement officials said that J.F.K. was never in immediate danger. The plotters had yet to lay out plans. They had no financing. Nor did they have any explosives. It is with all that in mind, that the editors in charge this weekend did not put this story on the front page.

In truth, the decision was widely debated even within this newsroom. At the front page meeting this morning, we took an informal poll and a few editors thought the story should have been more prominently played. Some argued it should have been fronted, regardless of the lameness of the plot, simply because it was what everyone was talking about.

And Mr. Godfrey, as to dinosaur-ism: we had the story up on nytimes.com before 1 p.m. on Saturday. The official press conference on the subject had not even started.

Outside of the oasis of civility that is TheTimes, reactions to this turning out to be, um, not so much are a little more heated.

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg Weighs in on Life-Threatening Plots

"There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life."

- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, commenting on the news that a skinhead gang was uncovered plotting to set fire to the New York headquarters of the Nation of Islam and the Islamic Thinkers' Society.

UPDATE : Oops! My mistake. Turns out he was commenting on the news that a Muslim group was actively plotting to blow up JFK Airport and kill thousands of New Yorkers. Par for the course. Not newsworthy. My apologies.

Well, not exactly.

When U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf described the alleged terror plot to blow up Kennedy Airport as "one of the most chilling plots imaginable," which might have caused "unthinkable" devastation, one law enforcement official said he cringed.

The plot, he knew, was never operational. The public had never been at risk. And the notion of blowing up the airport, let alone the borough of Queens, by exploding a fuel tank was in all likelihood a technical impossibility.

And now, with a portrait emerging of alleged mastermind Russell Defreitas as hapless and episodically homeless, and of co-conspirator Abdel Nur as a drug addict, Mauskopf's initial characterizations seem more questionable -- some go so far as to say hyped.

As for that "Muslim group," blowing up Queens does not appear to be in their "Mission Statement."

''Nothing could be as bad as the authorities made it sound,'' said Mike Ackerman, a former CIA officer who runs an international security consultancy in Miami. ``The fact is that pipelines are hit all the time. The leftists in Colombia have hit pipelines dozens, probably hundreds of times and the technology is such that sensors in the pipelines shut them down. To suggest they'd blow up half of Queens and probably all the way to Pennsylvania was ridiculous. It would have been a huge disruption, but nowhere near catastrophic proportions.''

Ackerman said such self-generating groups -- perhaps inspired by Al Qaida but not part of it or trained by it -- are unlikely to be capable of massive scale attacks. ''What they're capable of doing is bothersome but lower level scale attacks,'' he said.

He questioned, too, whether Abu Bakr's Jamaat al-Muslimeen (JAM) would have been able to supply the suspects with ''the expertise that would have brought this to fruition. He called JAM ``a very bad group'' but added it's more involved with kidnappings, robberies and drug trafficking. As for bBombings [sic], he added, ``It's not the kind of thing they do particularly, on a large scale.''

That's from a guy who makes his living as a security consultant.

It continues to amaze me that news that New Yorkers -- the residents of the city with the target on its back -- are sanguine about make the rest of the country quite literally shake in their collective boots.

And it also continues to amaze me that the U.S. Attorneys, FBI, etc., continue to trot out these horrible plots when they know that 1.) they're no where near being hatched, 2.) the "conspiracies" are being run by delusional homeless people, and 3.) they probably aren't technically feasible. Yes, they keep the rubes in a state of fear, but will only undermine their credibility should a real threat emerge.

UPDATED so that the headline would remotely make sense.