Workers Head Back to Court

Extra guards, fewer phones

By Patricia Hurtado | STAFF WRITER

September 19, 2001

Crossing several checkpoints where armed U.S. marshals and National Guardsmen stood watch, the 750 people who work at the federal courthouse in Foley Square returned to work yesterday for the first time since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

A week ago Tuesday, helmeted U.S. marshals armed with machine guns and wearing flak jackets ringed the perimeter of the old courthouse and its adjacent high-rise of offices a few blocks north of the Trade Center.

The colonnaded old courthouse has been a high-security zone since the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, terror attacks for which four al-Qaeda members have been convicted of federal bombing conspiracy charges. Members of the group are high-level associates of Osama bin Laden, whom President George W. Bush has called a prime suspect in last week's attacks.

Yesterday in Foley Square, things were back to some small semblance of normalcy. Tourists walked on the sidewalk around the perimeter still in place around the courthouse, the site of numerous terrorism trials, including that stemming from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

During the lunch hour, federal prosecutors whose offices are in the high-rise adjacent to the courthouse ate and chatted at outdoor picnic tables. The food stands at St. Andrew's Place did a brisk lunch business, and marshals patrolled the area.

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mukasey, the chief judge, issued two orders Monday. The first granted prosecutors extensions in their cases and suspended so-called "speedy trial" deadlines for filing motions in cases, citing "extraordinary circumstances."

He noted that federal law enforcement authorities had deployed thousands of staff members to the scene of the attack.

"To date, these agencies continue to devote the overwhelming majority of their officers and resources to rescuing victims and to investigating terrorist crimes," he said.

Mukasey noted that all trials in the Southern District had been suspended and that no grand juries had been able to reconvene.

Clifford Kirsch, district executive for the Southern District, said the building was serviced by the Verizon phone system at 140 West St., which was damaged in the attack.

Phones still were not working in the courthouse complex, he said, and it was unclear when they would.

"We're all getting by on cell phones here, and it's unclear when it'll be up again," he said.

Kirsch said that jurors sitting on cases should call the courthouse in White Plains at 914-390-4220.