LIFE AFTER TERROR (son of FALN victim; Clinton pardons)

YOU sometimes hear how the first World Trade Center attack was a warning that the city ig nored. But it wasn't the first: Tomorrow is the 30th anniversary of the New York terrorist attack that killed my father, Frank T. Connor — the Jan. 24, 1975, bombing of Fraunces Tavern.

The killers struck on a warm, clear and pleasant winter's day. My dad, a 33-year-old officer of Morgan Guaranty Trust, was having lunch with clients. The bomb killed him and three others in unspeakably gruesome ways. One of his colleagues was decapitated; silverware from the table was lodged in the torsos of the others. This is the grotesque reality of terrorism.

A man goes to work one day, and out of nowhere his life is taken from him and his family. I was 9 years old, my brother Tom, 11.

The cowardly attack was meant to kill many more than those four innocents but immediately before the blast the bomb was kicked out of the way by an unsuspecting restaurant employee — shifting the brunt of the explosion away from the main dining area and directly into my father's table.

All these years later it is still hard to accept that his lunch party actually moved to "a better table" only minutes before the explosion.

The attack turned out to be the deadliest of the 130-plus bombings by the FALN, terrorists who claimed Puerto Rican independence as their cause. In due course, the group's members were caught or driven into hiding.

Those were different times. Our family never received so much as a phone call offering help from our state or federal representatives or the Red Cross. There were no lawsuits. When a family acquaintance offered his legal services, we dismissed him as an ambulance chaser.

But in many ways, we were better off "forgotten." We had friends, family, faith and each other for support. We cried together alone and focused our energies on looking ahead — doing all the things that my dad would have wanted for us.

My Irish-born mother Mary earned her GED and went on to graduate from college in 1986. Grandma Connor, through the grief of losing her only child, dedicated herself to my mother in raising my brother Tom and me.

The first question I remember asking the day of my father's death was, "Is grandma still our grandmother?" The definitive way in which my mother answered, "Yes, of course she is" reassured me that our family would stick together. That set the tone for our lives going forward.

We never felt like victims. Like my mother and grandmother, Tom and I were pushed to self-sufficiency, and rose to the challenge, focusing on school and sports, graduating grade school, high school and college, beginning careers, marrying and having children.

We are driven by never letting my father's memory down. Not to overcome the obstacle of his death would have diminished the meaning of his life and we loved him far too much for that.

We put the notion of terrorism aside — until August 1999, when the wound was reopened.

That's when President Bill Clinton offered executive clemency to 16 core members of the FALN.

Hillary Clinton was then eyeing the Senate seat soon to open up in New York, and pardons for the FALN were a longtime priority for many prominent city Democrats. We were outraged — our father was being betrayed for cheap politics. We "went public" as a family for the first time. Enlisting the same energies that saw us through the previous 24 years, we fought to keep those thugs in prison. We failed there — 14 of the 16 accepted clemency and were released that September. We were successful in that we did not back down; the issue should haunt the Clintons in the years to come.

Because times have changed in many ways — the next time terror hit our family, it hit the entire American family.

Like our father 26 years before us, Tom and I commuted every day through the World Trade Center. On 9/11, we were horrified eyewitnesses to the planes hitting the towers — and to working people just like us falling or jumping to their deaths.

I thought I might die that day — only blocks from Fraunces Tavern. But I managed to get home to Danielle and the kids. They would not grow up without their dad, like I did.

Tom and I got out — but our closest cousin, and our father's godson, did not. Steven Schlag worked on the 104th floor of the North Tower. Killed at 41, he left a wife and small children — like our father.

Like so many who waited with us in hope for word on our father that January evening in 1975, Tom and I sat in vigil at Steve's house that horrible September 2001 evening, waiting for word from him.

I remember staring bleary-eyed at Steve's father Donald (my father's first cousin and as close to a brother as he could have been), suffering through this nightmare yet again. Through my own tears and shock I tried to lend hope, while knowing there was none.

Our family has endured and learned from the effects of terrorism for 30 years. We know there are no magic words to make it better. But I want to offer some words of hope to those families more recently affected: Even now, more than three years after the fact, you are on a lifelong, daily struggle. It may feel overwhelming at times, but you can overcome by drawing on your lost loved one, each other and your faith in God for strength.

Thirty years after Fraunces and a grown man, I still grieve every day for my father, but push on — as our whole family has since his death, never letting him down and always keeping his memory alive.

I can think of no better way for my father, Frank Thomas Connor, to be remembered than as a symbol of hope for those facing the struggle we began 30 years ago.

Recently a hardened fugitive terrorist was killed during his attempted arrest by the FBI.

Normally, this kind of news would make headlines. Or, if not headlines, you would expect that given this is the age of the war on terror, it would at least be reported positively, that the United States was keeping to its word on hunting down terrorists wherever they may be.

Maybe I should not have been too surprised that this event was either not reported in most of the news media or if it was, the terrorist was reported favorably and the brave FBI agents, protecting our people were called “assassins.” Maybe not so incredibly Amnesty International is calling for an investigation of this murderer’s death. The few articles on the subject I have seen (in Newsday, the Hartford Courant and The Bergen Record) portrayed Filiberto Ojeda Rios as a hero and a martyr to his “cause.”

These pieces, including one in the September 28 edition of the Bergen Record absurdly quote supporters who claim that Ojeda had not been involved in any terrorist violence for two decades (even assuming that is true) and therefore he should not have been targeted for arrest. Amazingly, they fail to mention Ojeda’s infamous terror “career.” (I have since spoken with the reporter for the Record who is now planning a more informative follow-up piece.)

This slanted reporting belies the violent truth of his terror.

My family is all too familiar with who Filiberto Ojeda really was. He was a terrorist who at least one FBI expert on Puerto Rican terrorism, Rick Hahn (retired) believes masterminded the January 24, 1975 lunchtime bombing of Fraunces Tavern in downtown New York City that killed my father, Frank Thomas Connor along with 3 other innocents.

Let me outline his infamous resume:

· 1966, founder of Puerto Rican terror Group, Mira, who bombed sites in NY and San Juan including a car bomb in San Juan at the hotel in which a US cabinet member was staying
· 1969, arrested but fled on his bond
· Fled to Cuba and was trained by Castro's agents
· 1974, one of the founders of the FALN
· 1975, believed by at least one FBI agent expert in Puerto Rican terror issues to be the main planner of the Fraunces Bombing that killed 4 and injured over 50
· 1978, Founder of Los Macheteros
o Killed police in Puerto Rico
· 1979, National Guard attack in Puerto Rico which killed 2 US servicemen
· 1983, Armored Car robbery in Ct.
o Of the $8 million stolen half was sent to Cuba.
· 1985, in Puerto Rico, arrested after open firing on FBI agents wounding one
o FBI returned fire hitting his gun but only knocking the wind out of him
o Given an ankle bracelet which he mailed back to the judge with a note saying he is a revolutionary
· 2005, as agents approach Ojeda let loose a pit-bull on one of the agents
o Shot another agent in the liver
o Shot two other agents in their bulletproof vests

It is sickening and insulting to read in these pieces of a New Jersey Rev. Rafael Rivera’s comparing him to Jesus Christ. The Jesus I know would never condone killing innocent people and leaving children without a father.

He has also been compared to George Washington: George Washington was a principled, honorable man, appointed by representatives of the people. He was the founding father of the greatest nation the world has ever seen. Ojeda was a thug and a stooge of Castro appointed by no one. To compare the two is nonsense. George Washington never killed innocent civilians in the pursuit of his “cause.”

Ojeda was a cold blooded terrorist, a coward and an enemy of the United States. His death will not bring back my father, Frank Connor, but President Bush’s United States did bring him permanent justice unlike the Clintons who pardoned his murderous comrades in 1999. In keeping with the spirit of what President Bush said after the 9/11 attacks, we brought justice to the terrorist (while bringing him to justice). We should all be grateful for that.

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