9/11 trial security to cost $200m a year: Mayor
Security for the upcoming trial in New York of suspects in the 9/11 attacks will cost more than 200 million dollars a year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday.
Giving the first estimate of the price tag for securing the highly sensitive trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four co-defendants, Bloomberg said the city would need federal assistance.
"We estimate the cost for security operations will be approximately 216 million dollars for the first year and 206 million dollars annually in subsequent years," Bloomberg wrote in a letter to the director of the federal Office of Management and Budget in Washington.
Bloomberg wrote that federal assistance was needed because New York's "financial resources are in short supply, and we have been forced to reduce our Police Department's headcount."
"As 9/11 was an attack on the entire nation, we need the federal government to shoulder the significant costs we will incur and ease this burden."
By comparison, he wrote, the 2004 Republican Party convention held in New York lasted a week and cost 50 million dollars for security.
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