4 Charged in Plot to Bomb Kennedy Airport

4 Accused of Plot to Blow Up Facilities at Kennedy Airport
June 3, 2007
4 Accused of Plot to Blow Up Facilities at Kennedy Airport
By CARA BUCKLEY and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
New York Times

Four men, including a onetime airport cargo handler and a former member of the Parliament of Guyana, were charged yesterday with plotting to blow up fuel tanks, terminal buildings and the web of fuel lines running beneath Kennedy International Airport.

One of the suspects was taken into custody in Brooklyn and two others were detained in Trinidad, the authorities said, while the fourth man was still at large.

One defendant, the former cargo handler, Russell Defreitas, was arraigned yesterday in federal court in Brooklyn. He is a 63-year-old Guyanese native and naturalized American citizen who lives in Brooklyn.

Mark J. Mershon, the assistant director in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in New York, said all four men had "fundamentalist Islamic beliefs of a violent nature," although they appeared to be acting on their own and had no known connection to Al Qaeda.

Law enforcement officials said that Kennedy, which handles roughly 45 million passengers a year and 1,000 flights a day, was never in imminent danger because the plot was only in a preliminary phase and the conspirators had yet to lay out detailed plans or obtain financing or explosives.

The airport is fed jet fuel, gasoline and heating oil through a capillary system of pipes that run from New Jersey through Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens. Oil industry experts said safety shut-off valves would almost assuredly have prevented an exploding airport fuel tank from igniting all or even part of the network.

But officials said the four men determined to carry out their attack, having conducted "precise and extensive" surveillance of the airport using photographs, video, the recollections of Mr. Defreitas and satellite images downloaded from Google Earth.

They said the men had also traveled repeatedly to Guyana and Trinidad in recent months, seeking the blessing and financial backing of an extremist Muslim group based in Trinidad and Tobago called Jamaat al-Muslimeen, which was behind a bloody coup attempt in Trinidad in 1990.

"The enforcement action we are announcing today was taken to prevent a terrorist plot from maturing into a terrorist act," Mr. Mershon said during a news conference yesterday at F.B.I. headquarters in Manhattan. The motive behind the planned attack, he said, "was a pattern of hatred toward the United States and the West in general."

Mr. Defreitas was arrested Friday night at a restaurant in Brooklyn, the Lindenwood Diner. A federal magistrate judge ordered him detained at his arraignment yesterday, pending a bail hearing on Wednesday.

Mr. Defreitas walked slowly into the courtroom, his face drawn, wearing a greenish-brown knee-length tunic and loose pants. His court-appointed lawyer, Drew Carter, told Magistrate Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto:

"There's a lot more to the story. I don't want to get into this now, because it's not a trial."

One law enforcement official played down Mr. Defreitas's ability to carry out an attack, calling him "a sad sack" and "not a Grade A terrorist." Comparing the case with the plot in which a group of men were arrested last month on charges of planning to attack soldiers at Fort Dix in New Jersey, the official said the New Jersey plotters "were a bit further along."

But the official said that Mr. Defreitas's efforts to enlist Jamaat al-Muslimeen's aid could have had devastating consequences.

"They didn't have the money and they didn't have the bombs," the official said of the suspects, "but if we let it go it could have gotten there; they could have gotten the J.A.M. fully involved, and we wouldn't know where it could have gone."

The official declined to be identified because he was not authorized to comment on the case.

Abdul Kadir, 55, a former mayor of a town in Guyana and a onetime member of Parliament in that South American country, was arrested in Trinidad on Friday. He helped Mr. Defreitas complete the plan and secure financing, according to the criminal complaint, which was unsealed yesterday.

Mr. Kadir was detained after boarding a flight on Aeropostal, a Venezuelan airline, which was to go to Caracas, an official briefed on the arrest said yesterday. The flight between Port of Spain and Caracas, which usually takes less than an hour, had taken off but the crew was told to return to Trinidad, the official said.

The third suspect, Kareem Ibrahim, 61, was arrested in Trinidad. The extradition of both Mr. Kadir and Mr. Ibrahim was being sought.

The fourth suspect, Abdel Nur, 57, remained a fugitive, the officials said, and was believed to be in Trinidad.

If convicted, all four suspects could face life in prison.

The charges were announced by Mr. Mershon; the city's police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly; Roslynn R. Mauskopf, the United States attorney in Brooklyn; and other officials.

According to the criminal complaint, which was sworn out by Robert Addonizio, an investigator with the Brooklyn district attorney's office assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the authorities became aware of the plot in January 2006; officials would not say how.

An informant with a criminal history including drug trafficking and racketeering agreed to work with investigators on the case, in exchange for payments and a reduced sentence.

Last July, the informant, whose name was not released, befriended Mr. Defreitas, officials said. Mr. Defreitas said he recognized the informant from attending services at a Brooklyn mosque, took him into his confidence and slowly disclosed his plan to attack Kennedy, according to the complaint.

Though Mr. Defreitas had lived in Brooklyn and Queens, he told the informant that his resentment of the United States hardened into hatred during his years as a cargo worker at the airport.

"He saw military parts being shipped to Israel, including missiles, that would be used to kill Muslims," the complaint read. Mr. Defreitas, who was secretly recorded by the informant, complained bitterly that he "wanted to do something" and that "Muslims always incur the wrath of the world while Jews get a pass."

Mr. Defreitas envisioned "the destruction of the whole of Kennedy" and theorized that because of underground pipes, "part of Queens would explode." He boasted that in addition to a huge of loss of life ?- "even the twin towers can't touch it," he said ?- the attack would devastate the United States economy and strike a deep symbolic blow against a national icon, President John F. Kennedy, officials said.

"Any time you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States," he said in one of dozens of conversations secretly recorded during the 18-month investigation, according to the complaint.

"They love John F. Kennedy," he said. "If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It's like you kill the man twice."

Mr. Defreitas worked as a contractor at the airport from 1990 to 1993, said officials with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the airport. Commissioner Kelly said he stopped working at the airport in 1995. The reason for the discrepancy was not clear.

In any event, the informant accompanied Mr. Defreitas on a series of trips between New York and Guyana, where the pair met with a number of co-conspirators, the authorities said. The group created code words like the "Chicken Farm" and "Chicken Hatchery" to refer to the plot.

As described in 33-page complaint, Mr. Defreitas seemed enraptured by the plot. He believed the informant had been "sent by Allah to be the one" and fantasized about the paradise that would await them after their martyrdom.

Mr. Defreitas was intent on meeting leaders of Jamaat al-Muslimeen to finance the plot, and another co-conspirator, Mr. Nur, agreed to help arrange the meeting. The group gained notoriety for the failed coup attempt, in which 24 people died, but today, officials said, it is known more as a street gang involved in drug trafficking. Authorities in the United States and Trinidad have closely watched the group's activities since the Sept. 11 attacks, but in the United States it is not designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

A representative of Jamaat al-Muslimeen, who declined to be identified, said in a telephone interview from Port of Spain that the group would have no immediate comment on the allegations.

In January of this year, Mr. Defreitas was back in New York, and over the period of a week he and the informant visited Kennedy Airport four times ?- all the while being recorded, videotaped and followed by law enforcement authorities.

Mr. Defreitas pointed out fuel tanks on airport property, nearby gas stations, possible sites of lax security as well as possible escape routes, the authorities said.

Using video he shot at Kennedy, which he hoped would secure funds for the plot, Mr. Defreitas returned to Guyana in February and began meeting again with co-conspirators, including Mr. Kadir, who, along with being a former elected official, is an imam.

Mr. Defreitas and the informant traveled to Trinidad on May 20 and stayed for two days with Mr. Ibrahim; then, all three men met with Mr. Nur in a compound owned by a leader from Jamaat al-Muslimeen, the authorities said. That group was interested in the plot but first wanted to learn more about Mr. Defreitas and the informant. Mr. Ibrahim was worried about presenting the plan to the group, and advised Mr. Defreitas to present it instead to contacts overseas.

Mr. Defreitas agreed, and he and the source returned to New York on May 26.

Less than a week later, believing they had enough evidence for a successful prosecution, the authorities picked him up.

One friend of Mr. Defreitas's expressed shock at word that he had been arrested in a plot to attack Kennedy Airport. The friend, Trevor Watts, 65, described Mr. Defreitas as not dangerous.

"He's not that type of person," Mr. Watts said after learning of Mr. Defreitas's arrest. "He's not smart enough."

Mr. Watts said he first met Mr. Defreitas years ago, when both men lived on Albany Avenue in Brooklyn. Mr. Defreitas was working at Kennedy Airport at the time. His brother helped him land the job there, filling out his job application for him because Mr. Defreitas had trouble reading, Mr. Watts said.

Mr. Defreitas had been divorced and lost touch with his two children, Mr. Watts said. After leaving his Albany Avenue apartment, he moved from place to place and was homeless for a time, his friend said.

He also lived alone for several years in an apartment on North Conduit Avenue, near the airport. The daughter of his landlord described him yesterday as a "polite man" who always paid his rent on time. When he finally ended up leaving, he told the landlord that the weather was rough on his health and the cold was tough on his arthritis, the daughter said.

Mr. Defreitas was always thinking of ways to make money, Mr. Watts said. He had been in a car accident, and he spoke to Mr. Watts about his hopes of getting rich by winning a lawsuit. He sold books on a street corner in Queens and would ask his friends to give him their broken air-conditioners and refrigerators. He shipped the items to his girlfriend's sister in Guyana so she could repair and sell them, Mr. Watts said.

After coming home from a series of trips to Guyana, Mr. Defreitas started dressing in traditional Muslim clothes and referred to himself as Mohammed, said Mr. Watts, an auto mechanic.

Mr. Watts said Mr. Defreitas appeared to have adopted his fundamentalist beliefs only in recent years. He had previously embraced American culture, Mr. Watts said, and liked a particularly American brand of music, jazz, especially the saxophone.

In recent years, he lived in an apartment in a four-story building on Rockaway Avenue in Brooklyn, on a run-down block full of graffiti. Agents from the F.B.I.'s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested Mr. Defreitas at the diner, on Linden Boulevard, about 10 p.m. on Friday.

"When he was picked up last night, he was playing the guessing game about who the informant was," a law enforcement official said yesterday. "He was cooperative at first, but he was not providing any information that we did not know."

When confronted by the authorities with information about the plot, however, Mr. Defreitas denied any involvement, the official said.

Though the New York area has been the subject of several terrorist plots, Commissioner Kelly said this one was different because it was largely developed in the Caribbean.

"This is an area in which we have growing concern and I think requires a lot more focus," Mr. Kelly said, echoing a concern law enforcement officials have reiterated in recent years.

According to The Trinidad Guardian newspaper, Guyana's president, Bharath Jagdeo, said yesterday that he was unaware of the details of the arrests but that on Friday, the United States ambassador, Roy Austin, requested a meeting with him. He said he learned from Mr. Austin that Guyanese nationals were involved "in some plot at the J.F.K.," but he said there was no Guyanese connection to the overall plot. He noted that Mr. Kadir was not a government official but was, until about two years ago, a member of parliament from the opposition party.

Asked whether he believed that West Indians traveling to the United States would be subject to greater scrutiny, Mr. Jagdeo said, "I hope there is no paranoia."

"It's not as if it's a trend," he was quoted as saying. "We are hoping there is no adverse reaction."
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Reporting was contributed by Ann Farmer, Manny Fernandez, Kate Hammer, Daryl Khan, Marc Lacey, Angela Macropoulos, Patrick McGeehan, Ray Rivera, Simon Romero and Nate Schweber.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014432.php

A down-and-out JFK terrorism suspect
A down-and-out JFK terrorism suspect
It's alarming, plot investigators say, that a man of meager means made so much progress
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 4, 2007

WASHINGTON ?- He had little money, a limited education, few friends and frayed relations with his family. By all appearances, Russell Defreitas was "a pretty sad character" at age 63, in the words of one law enforcement official.

And yet the U.S. citizen from Guyana managed to make significant headway toward launching a terrorist attack on John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, officials said.

Defreitas, a retired JFK cargo worker, allegedly made surveillance tapes of airport facilities. He made trips to Guyana and Trinidad, some of them paid for by an accomplice, authorities said. And, they said, he managed in a relatively short time to find Muslim extremists in Guyana and Trinidad apparently eager to help.

U.S. law enforcement officials said Defreitas was nowhere near being capable of mounting an attack. He didn't have explosives, money or an executable plan. But one of the most alarming aspects of the case is that a man of such meager means made as much progress as he did, authorities said.

"It is a bit worrisome when someone like this, who is a bit washed up, is able to go out and solicit funding and the blessing of others who are more organized and experienced," said a Justice Department official familiar with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity. "It is a bit frightening."

Defreitas was one of four men charged in the case, which was announced by federal law enforcement officials Saturday. Defreitas was arrested at a Brooklyn diner Friday night; two alleged accomplices are in custody in Trinidad and are expected to be extradited to the United States; and another is said to be at large in Trinidad.

Authorities said others might be charged. The criminal complaint unsealed Saturday connects at least six unnamed individuals ?- most of them in Guyana, which neighbors Venezuela, or Trinidad, off the coast of Venezuela ?- to the alleged plot. Defreitas is accused of being the architect and catalyst, a disgruntled Muslim who, officials said, sought support for a plan to blow up buildings, fuel tanks and pipelines at JFK.

In some ways, the case may come down to whether jurors believe Defreitas was a menace. His court-appointed attorney, Andrew Carter, said in a telephone interview Sunday, "Even from the government perspective, [Defreitas] didn't have any means of carrying out this stuff they were allegedly trying to do."

Carter reiterated comments he made during Defreitas' arraignment Saturday, saying, "There is more to the story," and suggesting that one of Defreitas' main lines of defense could be that the government's case was based largely on a paid FBI informant with drug-trafficking convictions who may be angling for a more lenient sentence.

"There is a government source involved in a lot of this," Carter said.

Asked whether Defreitas was a terrorist who posed a danger to the public, Carter said, "I don't believe so," and vowed to "vigorously defend him."

Defreitas was portrayed in news accounts Sunday as a lonely figure, a man who made money selling books on street corners and shipping broken air-conditioning parts to Guyana. He is divorced and estranged from his two children, according to the reports.

"People around here never see that man," said a Trinidadian woman who runs a 99-cent store next to his apartment building on Rockaway Avenue in Brooklyn. "I'm right here 15 years…. The people in the building never see the man, so where did he come from?"

Her shop caters to people in the neighborhood who stop by for toothpaste, toy water guns and hair gel. The woman, who did not want to be named, said the local Caribbean community was close-knit so it was strange that no one she knew remembered Defreitas, not even residents in his building.

The neighborhood is largely populated by African Americans, Latinos and immigrants from the West Indies.

On Rockaway Avenue, employees at four grocery stores, a check-cashing business and Jay's West Indian Restaurant, which serves oxtail and curried goat dishes, said they had no idea who he was. One screamed at a reporter: "This is harassment. I tell everyone, I did not know that man!"

Defreitas' building is a faded four-story row house with a broken intercom that buzzes incessantly. Neighbors said the building was known to house drug addicts. Knocks on his door and others in the building went unanswered Sunday.

A bail hearing for Defreitas is scheduled for Wednesday, his lawyer said. Law enforcement officials said the government of Trinidad and Tobago was cooperating with U.S. authorities, who are seeking extradition of the two men in custody there.

One of the suspects, Abdul Kadir, a former member of Guyana's parliament, is portrayed in the complaint as a key figure, helping to pay for Defreitas' trips and making efforts to enlist financial and logistical support for the alleged plot from Jamaat al Muslimeen, an Islamic militant group in Trinidad.

Kadir's wife, Isha, said in a CNN interview Sunday from Linden, Guyana, that she was shocked by the allegations.

"You know, my husband ?- we are Muslims for 33 years," she said, according to a CNN transcript. "And no way, at no time we were ever involved in anything of plots of bombing or any plots against America. We are not a part of that. We have family ?- both of us ?- in America."
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Times staff writer Erika Hayasaki in New York contributed to this report.

What a dumb article. Here's a guy who has done nothing but solicit fund, which he didn't get, and find a few sympathizers and we are to believe that's frighting?

What would be frighting is if he had a workable plan, had money, had explosives and had the training to make it all work. Otherwise these guys were a bunch of fumbling idiots.

Experts Cast Doubt on Credibility of JFK Terror Plot
Experts Cast Doubt on Credibility of JFK Terror Plot
Agence France-Presse
Tuesday 05 June 2007

An alleged plot to blow up fuel tanks and pipelines at New York's JFK airport had little chance of success, according to safety experts, who have questioned whether the plot ever posed a real threat.

US authorities said Saturday they had averted an attack that could have resulted in "unfathomable damage, deaths, and destruction," and charged four alleged Islamic radicals with conspiracy to cause an explosion at the airport.

But according to the experts, it would have been next to impossible to cause an explosion in the jet fuel tanks and pipeline. Furthermore, the plotters seem to have lacked the explosives and financial backing to carry out the attack.

John Goglia, a former member of National Transportation Safety Board, said that if the plot had ever been carried out, it would likely have sparked a fire but little else, and certainly not the mass carnage authorities described.

"You could definitely reach the tank, definitely start the fire, but to get the kind of explosion that they were thinking that they were going to get... this is virtually impossible to do," he told AFP.

The fuel pipelines around the airport would similarly burn, rather than explode, because they are a full of fuel and unable to mix with enough oxygen.

"We had a number of fires in the US. All that happens is a big fire," he said. "It won't blow up, it will only burn."

Even if the attackers had managed to blow up a fuel tank, the impact would be limited, he said, citing the example of North Vietnamese forces attacking US fuel dumps during the Vietnam war.

"They hit the fuel tanks with pretty big rockets. You would get a big fire but not a big explosion other than the rocket."

"There is a difference between just exploding the tank and a huge explosion. The tank may explode and blow up some metal, but that certainly wouldn't go very far," he said.

His comments contrasted with those of US Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf, who insisted at the weekend that "the devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable."

Jake Magish, an engineer with Supersafe Tank Systems, also cast doubt on the credibility of the plot, saying: "The fantasy that I've heard about the people saying 'they will blow the tank and destroy the airport,' is nonsense."

"There are people there responding to hysteria, I think. But from an engineering point of view, if someone is successful in blowing a hole into a tank, they will just have a fire from one tank.

"There is no way for the fire to go from tank to tank, that is nonsense. It just won't happen."

Besides the alleged plotters' capability, other questions have focused on the main source in the probe - a convicted drug dealer who infiltrated the group and whose sentence was pending as part of his cooperation with police.

Neal Sonnett, a former federal prosecutor, told the New York Times there was also a danger in overstating how serious or sophisticated a plot really was.

"There unfortunately has been a tendency to shout too loudly about such cases," he said. "To the extent that you over-hype a case, you create fear and paranoia," he said.

The New York Times on Sunday pointedly avoided giving much coverage to the alleged plot, devoting only a brief on its front page continued on the local section, despite the story breaking in the early afternoon on Saturday.

Terror Arrests Puzzle Many in Guyanese Enclave in Queens
June 5, 2007
Terror Arrests Puzzle Many in Guyanese Enclave in Queens
By ELLEN BARRY and ETHAN WILENSKY-LANFORD
New York Times

Over the course of 30 years, the sober-sided houses of Richmond Hill, Queens, have been transformed into an echo of the Caribbean, with candy-colored paint jobs, fanciful ironwork and beds of vivid flowers. Immigrants in this neighborhood care passionately about their houses, as well as their cricket teams and Bollywood musicals. Terrorism does not seem to fit here.

News that three Guyanese and one Trinidadian man were accused of plotting to attack Kennedy Airport has met with bafflement in Richmond Hill, home to some 25,000 Guyanese immigrants.

Waves of Guyanese have fled violence and political upheaval in their home country, lured to the United States by the promise of a quiet, prosperous life. The notion that this apolitical community could produce Islamic extremists, said Dolly Z. Hassan, is "very bizarre ?- very, very bizarre."

"Nine out of 10 Guyanese don't understand the conflict in the Middle East and they are not concerned," said Ms. Hassan, a Muslim who moved to the United States in 1968. Religious terrorism, she added, "is not in the Guyanese blood. I have never heard of it even existing in Guyana."

Russell M. Defreitas, who, according to a federal complaint, planned to bomb the airport's fuel pipeline, remained in custody in New York yesterday, awaiting a bail hearing tomorrow. Two other suspects ?- Abdul Kadir, a former Guyanese member of Parliament, and Kareem Ibrahim, a Trinidadian ?- will fight extradition from Trinidad and Tobago to the United States, their lawyer told a court in Port of Spain yesterday. The authorities were still looking for a fourth man, Abdel Nur.

A surveillance video released yesterday showed Mr. Defreitas meeting a government informant at the Lindenwood Diner in Brooklyn just before his arrest. Two of the four suspects had made visits to leaders of Jamaat al-Muslimeen, a Trinidadian radical Muslim group, according to a federal complaint. The group's leader, Abu Bakr, yesterday denied assisting the men in any way, according to The Associated Press.

While New Yorkers talked about the arrests over the weekend, business continued on Liberty Avenue, where shopkeepers stock sugar cane and machetes. Cars cruised by playing chutney soca, a mixture of Indian and Caribbean music, and even the curry had a West Indian flavor.

Guyana is a study in ethnic fusion. More than a third of its people are descendants of African slaves brought to pick sugar cane and cotton; nearly half are the descendants of Indians imported as contract laborers in the 19th century, according to the State Department. Fifty-seven percent are Christian, 28 percent are Hindu and 7 percent are Muslim.

Most were driven to leave by crime and political turbulence. Ms. Hassan, an immigration lawyer, recalls émigrés weeping at the airport in 1968, when she left, but now, she said, "they just want to get out." In 2005, 143,476 Guyanese lived in New York City, 73,316 of them black and 31,342 of them of Indian descent, according to data gathered by Social Explorer, Queens College's demographic research group.

Newer arrivals speak without nostalgia of the country they left behind.

"Too much crime," said Zahir Singh, a construction worker who has lived here for six years. "Racism, and all that. I spent 30 hard years there, and then my family brought me here. I make decent dollars, and I'm happy."

One impulse has united successive waves of Guyanese immigrants, said Latchman Budhai, a former president of Maha Lakshmi Mandir, a Hindu temple on 101st Avenue ?- the desire to make money. Women worked multiple shifts as home health aides, and men went into construction. Families bought properties in decaying neighborhoods and did their own renovations, sometimes running afoul of the city's Department of Buildings. Those properties have soared in value.

"What these people care about is money," said Mr. Budhai, 59. "Everything they do is business, business, business."

This quality, many immigrants said, makes the notion of a Guyanese terror cell particularly strange. Kamrul Khan, who was praying at the Masjid Al Abidin mosque on Liberty Avenue yesterday afternoon, said he was repelled by religious violence. Mr. Khan, 56, a taxi driver who is also the mosque's president, said several of his relatives worked in the World Trade Center.

"Politics, I have no politics," Mr. Khan said. "I'm not involved in politics."

A similar response came from Max Rahman, who opened a halal butcher shop on Liberty Avenue five years ago. He long ago tuned out the politics of his home country, and had little regard for the strict form of Islam practiced in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. His goal, he said, was to own a home.

"Just get a better life," he said. "It's not about religion. The stuff that's going on is back in Iraq and stuff. Not Guyanese."

Still, several Muslim men interviewed said they had been stereotyped since 9/11, and Mr. Khan described a humiliating search at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris as he, his wife and two relatives were returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca.

The history of racism in Guyana is painful and unsettling for Indo-Guyanese and Afro-Guyanese alike, said Madhulika S. Khandelwal, director of the Asian/American Center at Queens College.

"They do share this frustration: They feel like they have been dominated and colonized," she said. "There are people who are frustrated or they are unhappy or angry about things. It does come out in very strange ways."

Several Guyanese said they worry that the plot will result in a reaction against their community. Albert Baldeo, a Guyanese lawyer who is planning to run for the State Senate next year, appeared at a press conference over the weekend to denounce the plot that the suspects are accused of.

But others, like Ms. Hassan, are more incredulous than alarmed. All weekend, friends and acquaintances were chattering about the plotters; in the end, they agreed that the case was a peculiar aberration.

"They think it's silly. Very, very silly," she said. "This is like the Three Stooges. People come in and ask, ?'Did you hear?' Everybody is there laughing."
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Alan Feuer and Jonathan P. Hicks contributed reporting.