Albany Incompetence Nearly Let Pants-Wetting Terrorist Wannabe Get Away

There's been a curious lack of coverage of the New York City schoolteacher turned pants-wetting terrorist wannabe Theophilus Burroughs since news broke yesterday. I guess this is a sensitive time to point out some Americans have an affinity for Hamas and Hezbollah.

Today the New York Post's John Crudele notes how bungling bureaucracy in Albany nearly let Burroughs slip away, as he was no longer under surveillance during a critical time in the investigation and was even allowed to travel outside the country.

Bureaucratic nitpicking and petty jealousies in Albany nearly let one of the bad guys get away.

A screwball Stuyvesant High School music teacher named Theophilus Burroughs had a dream of sending some serious weapons -- AK47s, M16s, grenades, Uzis and hunting rifles with scopes, to name a few -- to a Middle Eastern terrorism organization.

The plan, he told undercover investigators, started long ago when his parents wouldn't give their consent for him to fight in the Middle East.

It was better, Burroughs' Trinidadian mother purportedly told him, to follow his dream while inside the US.

Warped idealism wasn't Burroughs' only motive.

The teacher also apparently didn't like the salary he was making at the high school, so like so many others in his profession, he moonlighted.

Only instead of tutoring, coaching sports or teaching driver's ed, Burroughs allegedly branched out into things like selling bootleg cigarettes, counterfeit tax stamps and -- eventually -- guns.

At least 20 guns in all, although Burroughs had promised more and led confidential government informants to the South Carolina source of his weapons.

As The Post reported exclusively this week, Burroughs was nabbed on Tuesday by authorities at a warehouse in a grimy section of the Bronx. He'd been there a number of times, first to buy cartons of illegal cigarettes, which he'd resell at huge profits, and later to sell guns -- also at big markups -- to people he thought were like-minded terrorists.

He was mistaken!

The only trouble was, the good guys almost couldn't hold on long enough to nab Burroughs. Officials in Albany came close to shutting down the Bronx sting a few weeks ago, even though they had already been informed that it had hooked a teacher with bad intentions.

The reason: a dispute over EZ Passes, pizzas and a few other petty things that normally wouldn't come between justice and an alleged gunrunner who talked matter-of-factly of killing cops and bombing religious centers.

The undercovers, I'm told, had taken a bank's suggestion and segregated EZ Pass money from the operation's regular funds without asking the bureaucrats. And they'd spent a little too much -- in the eyes of Albany -- on pizza and other meals.

The standoff between the undercover operatives and Albany got so bad, in fact, that gun-loving Burroughs, who has at least one young daughter, was roaming around the region without surveillance for weeks and even took a pleasure trip to the Caribbean.

Such incompetence will probably result in promotions for the idiots in Albany. They'd fit right in with Janet Napolitano's crew in Washington.