As New York Fumes, Wyoming Says It, Too, Needs Antiterror Funds

It is hard to imagine there are many terrorist threats in a place where tumbleweeds regularly blow down the streets, as they do here in Wyoming’s largest city and state capital. For those who doubt, however, Wyoming officials point to the two men who were stopped by a state trooper in February on Interstate 80 about 10 miles east of Cheyenne, near the Nebraska border. The men, thought by the state police to be white supremacists, had nine pipe bombs in the rented trailer attached to their rented truck. Wyoming officials disposed of the bombs using a robot bought with a federal antiterrorism grant. That grant was part of the very antiterrorism program that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg recently called “pork barrel politics at its worst.” Testifying in May before the commission investigating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bloomberg said too much money was going to places that face limited threats – like Wyoming, whose population is about half a million, the smallest in the country – which this year will receive more than $38 a person in antiterrorist financing, more than any other state and seven times the per-person amount that will flow to New York. Full Story