Poised for blowback from bin Laden raid

On Friday evening, outside the Holland Tunnel in Jersey City, police shot and wounded the driver of a Jeep who authorities say was fleeing a drugstore robbery, alongside a fellow suspect, with bags of heroin in tow. The incident shut down the crossing's Manhattan-bound lanes for hours. The driver, facing multiple criminal counts, was said this week to be recuperating in a hospital.

Imagine the same incident, but occurring on Monday -- particularly the detail of this Jeep accelerating wildly to evade Port Authority officers, near the tunnel entrance.

The picture might have been different given the announcement Sunday night of Osama bin Laden's death.

"There would have been a lot more firepower unleashed," said a veteran law-enforcement official, "and more of an assumption on the cops' part that these were terrorist bad guys."

The threat of blowback wraps itself tightly into the political messages out of Washington, D.C., Albany and New York City.

"It's coming," warned the official, who's city-based. "Otherwise they [al-Qaida] lose face . . . We smacked a hornet's nest so the ones that got out are looking to sting."

So even as elected representatives in the nation's prime target for attack spoke positively and optimistically of bin Laden's demise, many made sure to mix in public caution.

Reinforcing the standard see-something-say-something appeal, for one, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo warned that "the threat of al-Qaida did not die." He ordered up extra precautions.

Even before the shootout at bin Laden's compound in Pakistan, the MTA relaunched its latest set of "see-something" ads.

Emergency management expert Jerome Hauer said the same message he advised shortly after the 9/11 attacks fits the moment: "We are under an increased threat right now, but that doesn't mean we need an increased level of fear."

"There's nobody better to understand an environment than the people who live, work and travel in it. They're the ones who will notice unusual things," Hauer said. "By empowering people you reduce the fear because they become part of the process rather than helpless."

Hauer added: "I do believe there will be some kind of event here in the U.S." -- not spectacular like 9/11, perhaps a suicide bombing. "As positive an event as killing bin Laden is, we don't know what the blowback is going to be."

On Long Island, Bruce Blakeman, lawyer and former vice chairman of the Port Authority's security committee with a longtime interest in security matters, said that with data seized from the bin Laden hideout, al-Qaida operatives would be scurrying underground.

"I think the greater threat would be from independent operators or lone wolves," Blakeman said. "I think that is the immediate concern for federal, state and local agencies."

A narrower public message goes: Even if you're not fleeing a robbery, it may be a bad time for crazy driving, especially in and around sensitive sites.