During a news conference today, a question was lobbed towards Mayor Bloomberg about the report. He answered that it was impossible to truly know how many plots they'd actually stopped. Canny! Also, funny, because a city website pointed to by ProPublica lists fourteen of them.

But Paul Browne—the Deputy Commissioner for the New York City Police Department (better known as police chief Ray Kelly's spokesman)—wasn't going to take the fairly reputable, well-documented, and pretty technical reporting of ProPublica lying down. And not by going to them and refuting their piece with a quote, but by delivering some words to the comments section.

Oh yes:

The NYPD never said it stopped 14 terrorist plots. We’ve repeatedly said that New York City was the target of at least 14 terrorist plots since 9/11 because it is a fact. Critics want others to believe that terrorists who failed were not threats. If you believe that, we have a bridge to sell you – one that al-Qaeda hoped to destroy.

That's too bad. We were hoping to buy back the Queensboro, scrub Ed Koch's name off of it, and rename it after 59th Street. But seriously folks, here's an NYPD site with 14 terrorist plots on it, here's the mayor saying it, and here's the fact that Browne waited to deliver a technical response until he could get in under the radar:

The NYPD did not respond to requests for comment on the list of 14 alleged plots and how it was assembled.

That said, Browne certainly has the Commenter Voice down fairly well: Acerbic unfunniness laced with a god complex underlined by the belief that people other than bloggers and other commenters actually read comments and hold what they have to say in any regard. Might be time for him to sign up for a Gawker account!

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

A November 21 letter signed by 13 news organizations, and drafted by an attorney for The New York Times, reminded NYPD that the had agreed that " additional training to reinforce media guidelines, for newer officers on the force, would be beneficial."

Although NYPD insisted such training had been ongoing, spokesman Paul Browne recently reissued the following noninterference order:

"Members of the service who unreasonably interfere with media access to incidents or who intentionally prevent or obstruct the photographing or videotaping of news in public places will be subject to disciplinary action."

They've also been distributing a summary of protocol for interacting with media to officers at demonstrations.

Much more at Capital!

On November 15, the mayor defended the media blackout that kept reporters out of Zuccotti Park as the NYPD evicted its occupants, claiming it was for the media’s own good. "It's to prevent a situation from getting worse and to protect members of the press," the mayor said.

But in light of reports that journalists were wrongfully arrested and bullied, the New York Civil Liberties Union appears to be offering some additional protection.

"Many of you were roughed up, harassed and even arrested yesterday," read an email sent out to reporters by an NYCLU employee last week. The email urged reporters to come forward with stories of abuse from the Tuesday raid.

"Problems with the NYPD? Let me know," it said. "If need be, we can speak on background only or we can keep names and other identifiers confidential."

The NYCLU did not return request for comment, but we caught up with Norman Siegel, the longtime director of group, and a legal adviser to protesters. In 2009, Mr. Siegel successfully sued the city for police press credentials for non-traditional journalists.

“The bearer of a press card is entitled to cross police lines and barriers for breaking news events,” Mr. Siegel explained. “Monday night clearly was that.” There is a provision to deny press access, but the order must come from a supervising officer or DCPI, not just any officer on the street, he explained.

"It's possible that a lot of what happened is a violation of NYPD patrol guides,” he said. He was summoned down to Zuccotti Park himself at 1 a.m. the morning of the raid. In past demonstrations, Mr. Siegel and other civil liberties advocates cooperated with the police to counsel protesters on their rights and reduce total arrest counts. Mr. Siegel was denied access to Zuccotti Park alongside reporters that morning, when arrests totaled more than 200.

Mr. Siegel was quick to add history shows the government can not delegate fundamental rights like the First Amendment to law enforcement.

“It was unseemly for the city, through its police department, to deny journalists their right to report the news,” he said.

(It is worth nothing that it was the Mayor's office, not DCPI, that defended NYPD's arrest of reporters.)

“The reporter is not only doing his job,” Mr. Siegel said, “under the First Amendment, they’re doing their job for all of us.”

DCPI Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne reiterated Mr. Siegel’s description of NYPD’s limited mandate on The Brian Lehrer Show on NPR on Friday, when he explained that NYPD is only concerned with unlawful conduct.

“We’re not in the business of judging whether a movement has political steam or not,” Mr. Browne said.

He went on to explain that no reporters were arrested at Zuccotti Park during the raid, where reporters cooperated and were held two blocks back. As for the arrests of reporters made later that day elsewhere in lower Manhattan, they might not have happened with more oversight.

“Had we had somebody there, DCPI would probably try to accommodate a reporter getting caught up in a situation with a group pushing through police lines,” he explained. He added that the five reporters had their arrests voided.

Mr. Browne made no defense for keeping media out of the Zuccotti raid altogether, explaining that a press pass does not mean the automatic right to cross police lines.

"There are other provisions,” he said, "providing basically we allow it at that moment."

"Just like a crime scene, we’ll bring reporters in after the fact."

The lawsuit describes four requests for information which were delayed or denied: the addresses of NYC residents who had gun permits, the database on hate crimes, the database on crime incident reports and the tracking log on FOIL requests.

The New York Times vice president and general counsel general counsel David E. McCraw said these denials mark a change in the organization.

"We've become increasingly concerned over the last two years about a growing lack of transparency at the N.Y.P.D. Information that was once released is now withheld. Disclosures that could be made quickly are put on hold for months."

NYPD chief spokesperson Paul J. Browne said that none of the Times' requests were "ripe for litigation" and that the NYPD disagrees with their interpretation of FOIL in the lawsuit.

According to a September profile of Browne in The Observer, relations between the press and the NYPD have grown increasingly strained under Commissioner Ray Kelly. Some believe it has to do with NYPD's grab to earn the trust of the FBI (with whom they are partnered in the Joint Terrorism Task Force), and others believe it has to do with detectives giving reporters updates too frequently. To sever the cop-reporter ties, NYPD has reportedly punished officers with call logs to and from reporters on their NYPD-issued phones by transferring them to undesirable boroughs.

The Times points to another example of NYPD's information lockdown.

One example of the department's reluctance to give out data involved statistics for minor crimes - offenses like misdemeanor thefts and assaults, marijuana possession and sex offenses other than rape. The department acknowledged last month that it had not forwarded the data to the state since 2002. It was one of only two police agencies in the state that had not done so.

Check out Paul Browne and Ray Kelly's early years.>>

@kstoeffel | kstoeffel@observer.com

Paul Browne, who first joined the police department in 1990, is a former newspaper reporter who has become, in addition to employee, a loyal friend and an adviser to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. If you compare their resumes side by side, you will find that for most of the past two decades, wherever Mr. Kelly has gone, Mr. Browne has sat in the seat right behind him, if not next to him.

When Mayor David Dinkins appointed Mr. Kelly to his first term as police commissioner in 1992, Mr. Browne came on as his assistant commissioner; when President Bill Clinton asked Mr. Kelly to organize a police force in Haiti two years later, he brought Mr. Browne as his deputy; when six months after that, Mr. Clinton arrived in Haiti and fetched Mr. Kelly in Air Force One, Mr. Browne rode, too ("I remember asking Commissioner Kelly, I said, 'I wonder how long a flight this is.' He said, 'Who cares?'" Mr. Browne recently said during a radio program in Albany); when Mr. Clinton asked Mr. Kelly to serve as the undersecretary for enforcement at the U.S. Treasury, he named Mr. Browne his chief of staff; when Mr. Kelly became commissioner of U.S. Customs, Mr. Browne followed; and when, one year later, Mr. Kelly, after a brief time spent at Bear Stearns, where Mr. Browne did not follow him, was named police commissioner again by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Mr. Browne became his deputy commissioner for administration, and two years later, his press secretary.

VIEW SLIDESHOW > KELLY AND BROWNE: THE EARLY YEARS

If the commissioner has lowered crime rates and reorganized the department to tackle terror threats, it is Mr. Browne who guides the narrative of the city to reflect that. Making sure that after reading the morning papers, New Yorkers know only what they need to: that they can drop their children at school, take the subway and enter large office buildings, thinking about sharpened pencils and lunches and MetroCard fares--and not their safety.

Before Mr. Kelly officially took office, he met with Mr. Browne to outline what he essentially wanted his legacy as police commissioner to be, and, therefore, his press strategy. On a dry-erase board, Mr. Kelly sketched out the three C's: community policing, conventional crime-fighting and counterterrorism. Almost a decade later, it can be argued that Mr. Kelly's successes in all three have positioned him for a number of possibilities--future mayor? A move to D.C.? Director of the F.B.I.?--with Mr. Browne having not just helped carefully assemble the image of a man sensitive to criticism, but, judging from their history, having also been an asset that Mr. Kelly would take with him.

An especially memorable story that declared the commissioner's ambitions in counterterrorism early on was a 2005 New Yorker article in which Mr. Kelly came off looking like the terror whiz--dispatching his detectives to London, Paris, Amman, Tel Aviv, Madrid, Singapore and elsewhere to gather intel--and the F.B.I., then believed to have failed New York, the drooling toddler he happened to enjoy taunting. Part of what made the story so compelling was the remarkable access granted to the writer, William Finnegan, by Mr. Browne. (As a reporter, Mr. Browne worked with Mr. Finnegan's brother at a paper in Watertown, N.Y.)

"Paul is the most senior aide to the most powerful police commissioner in the history of the Police Department," said a police reporter that has been covering the department for more than a decade. "For Kelly to last so long in such a highly political position [is due to] law enforcement, but it's also incredible. No small part to that is Browne. He has protected him and helped nurture his career." 

"Paul has a terrific understanding of the role of the media," said Mitchell Moss, professor of urban policy at New York University. "After any major terror-related incident, it is Paul Browne who makes sure that Ray Kelly and the NYPD are not overshadowed by federal government officials."

A city official who regularly deals with the Police Department said, "As deputy he's probably more powerful than many commissioners. His counsel bleeds beyond press. Sometimes you can tell when it's the commissioner talking and when Paul is speaking through the commissioner." Another source said, "If they disagree, it's done in private."

THERE ARE MANY stories told about Mr. Browne within the Police Department, and, sometimes, mistold in the telling. That Mr. Browne pulled over a drunk driver on the Taconic State Parkway sometime last year--as a senior-level official, Mr. Browne is not authorized to make arrests--is not exactly correct. In actuality, he was driving to his home upstate when a drunk driver crashed into the median and Mr. Browne stopped to make sure he was all right. And though he stayed until the State Police arrived, it was the latter that made the arrest of the driver, who turned out to be an off-duty police officer.

That while stationed in Haiti, Mr. Browne and Mr. Kelly personally policed the streets is not entirely wrong. On their way to a daily meeting at the American embassy, they once witnessed a guy get chased to the top of a truck and surrounded by about 50 people armed with machetes. Mr. Browne and the commissioner climbed up and got him down safely. They were late to their meetings often.

It is also accurate that Mr. Browne had initially suggested the name "Tsunami" for teams of officers dispatched to high-crime zones, which he explained to Mr. Kelly would put forth the notion of "flooding the zone"--this was of course before the actual tsunami hit--which the commissioner promptly rejected. Also true: That Mr. Browne drove a cab in college; that he likes country music, Willie Nelson and bluegrass; and that before the actual contents of a news story about the department might irritate him, it is the improper usage of grammar, knocked into him by the nuns at Our Lady of Refuge, his Bronx elementary school, that really gets him going. 

The stories told about Mr. Browne among reporters who cover the department are not as favorable but equally compelling. For instance, they like to talk about an incident that occurred last year between Daily News reporter Wil Cruz and Sgt. Kevin Hayes at DCPI, the office of public information that Mr. Browne heads. According to reporters, Mr. Cruz was trying to learn the details of a subway stabbing when Sergeant Hayes said something along the lines of "I don't care what you do. Get the fuck out. I'll kick your fucking ass." According to fellow reporters, Mr. Cruz left Mr. Browne messages to complain about the sergeant, but Mr. Browne never got back to him; the matter was allegedly dealt with privately, between Mr. Browne and the Daily News. (Mr. Cruz declined to comment about the incident.)

"He knows how to do his job and he does it well," said a former One Police Plaza reporter. "But he's a little bit of a tyrant up there. He keeps the cops upstairs running scared, and the way they treat reporters is a little bit due to the tone he sets. They're just very dismissive and confrontational."

There are other stories. Such as that after Mr. Browne and the commissioner began to see details from ongoing investigations in the morning papers, the department made a habit of screening senior detectives' cell phone records for reporters' phone numbers, which Mr. Browne has committed to memory. Reporters who lost access to their sources inside the department--when, they say, detectives became increasingly fearful of demotion or transfer--have started using prepaid, untraceable cell phones to communicate with sources.

When asked whether Mr. Browne is good at his job, another crime reporter at a daily paper said, "I guess it depends. If you're the police commissioner and you can't stand any negative stories, then I guess he's good at his job. If you're the public and you want to know exactly how the Police Department is reacting to crime, then he's bad at his job."

The story former Newsday columnist Leonard Levitt likes to tell is how Mr. Browne, whom he described as a former friend, hasn't spoken to him in seven years, not since Mr. Kelly drove to Newsday in '03 to speak to Mr. Levitt's editors about what he saw as unfair coverage of the department in his columns. (Mr. Browne, for the record, says he only stopped speaking to Mr. Levitt after he left Newsday in '05, which would put it at five years.)

"The New York City police commissioner taking a day off from crime and terrorism to spend an afternoon on the Long Island Expressway to drive 60 miles to complain about a reporter?" Mr. Levitt said by phone. "It's unprecedented!

"I think Paul is the only person in the Police Department that Kelly really trusts," he continued. "Certainly in terms of his image, which is very important to Kelly...Paul sees his job as stopping and preventing criticism of the police department."

PHYSICALLY, MR. BROWNE, 61, tends to blend in at One Police Plaza. He is large and imposing, with red hair that fades to gray and a full beard. He looks like a cop or a security guard, or, if he would just smile sometimes, he might pass for a high-school principal. But his suit is much nicer, his shoes shine and he is the kind of man for whom cuff links make a difference--on the day we met, these were polished, little police commissioner shields, gifted to him by Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Browne, who at $199,946 a year, makes about five thousand less than Mr. Kelly (according to Seethroughny.net) sits in an office, located on the 13th floor of One Police Plaza where about 26 officers take media requests. If a major homicide occurs, the shack reporters get briefed by Mr. Browne personally. On an easel in his office stood a blown-up map of West 45th Street and Seventh Avenue, the corner where the attempted bombing occurred back in May. Seeing as how Mr. Browne has likely had other major briefings since then, it may be that he is the type to keep a Christmas tree up through February, or it may be that he was prepared for our meeting.

He began by explaining that the NYPD is the largest police force in the country. "One of the manifestations of that is that we have a 24-hour press operation, which is pretty unique. In addition to what you see in news media every day, New York, in many people's minds, is America--maybe not in Americans' minds but around the world. If there is a terrorist attack anywhere, we get a call about it."

Every few minutes, Mr. Browne's phone rings with inquiries from reporters seeking comment. "Excuse me," Mr. Browne said and lowered his voice for a call. "Yeah, Mike. Good. Yeah. I haven't looked at it yet. This is on the ... Yeah, yeah, O.K. I'll just say anecdotally that we see--like we did with eight ball jackets and sidekicks, when some new product is introduced--we'll see a spike in that. How's that? Yeah, right. Yep. Yeah. Oh, I know. I got an inquiry on that first thing and then he called and said he wasn't going to use it. Yeah, I know. It's pathetic. O.K. Thanks. Buh-bye."

An officer in plain clothes walked in with two cups of coffee that Mr. Browne presumably ordered before The Observer's arrival. "How do you take your coffee?" Just milk, we said. "O.K., then I'll take the other one."

Mr. Browne grew up in a small apartment in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx, one of four children of Irish immigrants. (His brother, now retired, served as a lieutenant detective squad commander in the force.) Mr. Browne attended Mount St. Michael for high school and went on to study American history and literature at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, where he edited the school paper. During summers, he drove a cab in the city, and when one day an older businessman got into the back of his cab and asked what he really wanted to be, Mr. Browne said a "newspaper reporter."

After college, Mr. Browne was accepted into Columbia Journalism School, which he couldn't afford. He reapplied and attended one year later after spending a year as a general assignment reporter at the Watertown Daily Times, which had a circulation bigger than the town it was named after. He returned to the paper after Columbia and spent about a decade in Albany covering politics and then a few years as the Albany bureau chief for the Daily News. According to Post columnist Bob McManus, who then worked for the Albany Times Union, Mr. Browne was highly regarded as a reporter. Then, in the mid-'80s, Tom Ryan, an aide to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, told him that Tim Russert was leaving his position as top aide and asked whether he might like to be his replacement. Mr. Browne took the job, and in 1990, he joined the administration of Police Commissioner Lee Brown, whose first deputy, a man named Raymond Kelly, Mr. Browne would grow to admire.

When Mr. Browne does not answer his phone, his assistant Elizabeth will pop in and announce a name in a manner of asking a question. "Sean Gardiner?" (Of The Wall Street Journal.)

"Excuse me," Mr. Browne said. "Yeah, Sean. Yeah, I'm not going to see Kelly for probably another hour or so and then I'll let you know. What does it mean? It's our baby to protect? O.K. O.K. I will. Buh-bye."

Mr. Browne's L-shaped desk has framed photos of his wife, Sarah, a librarian in Albany, and his daughter, Lacey, who was once a assistant photo editor at the New York Post and now works at Morgan Stanley. Sarah lives at the upstate home in Columbia County, and Mr. Browne, who spends his weeknights at an apartment on Wall Street, drives up every weekend. When he has a spare moment, he likes to get lost in weighty nonfiction history. The last book he read was The Rise and Fall of the British Empire by Lawrence James. He has read everything by John le Carre, the spy novelist. Mr. Browne likes to watch Law & Order because he finds it to be more accurate than other cop shows. Sometimes, he and Sarah will have brunch plans with friends that they will feel terrible about canceling last minute, and will explain, or try to explain, that the phone rang at 2 a.m. and Mr. Browne had to drive to New York to attend to a police-involved shooting. He will walk through the scene and jot down details that the detectives wouldn't care about but the reporters will surely ask--that the crime occurred across the street from a liquor store; that the color of the car the suspect hid behind was green--and then he will go to the hospital where he will meet Commissioner Kelly and maybe the mayor, too, and discuss which facts of the investigations are safe to go out with.

Ed Skyler, the former deputy mayor under Mayor Bloomberg, recalled the time when he rang Mr. Browne in the middle of the night about a shooting at his home upstate. Two hours later, he saw him at the hospital. "I said, 'I thought you were upstate,' and he said, 'I was.'"

"He understands what the department is doing and what the reporters want," added Mr. Skyler. "He tries to serve both masters as best he can, which is the trick in that job. You have two bosses in a sense and they are both demanding."

"In the two years I had that job, I never had a drink," said Michael O'Looney, who had Mr. Browne's job before him. "Things break, you run to scenes, police officers get shot at 2 a.m. You're never really off-duty." According to William Cunningham, an old friend and former communication director for the mayor, he and Mr. Browne used to get drinks after work when Mr. Browne was a reporter in Albany and Mr. Cunningham worked for Governor Hugh Carey. "I don't think he drinks anymore, and I drink a lot less than I used to," said Mr. Cunningham.

THE REPORTERS AND bureau chiefs who spend their days at One Police Plaza are confined to a room called "the shack": a crammed, odorous space on the second floor to which Mr. Browne sometimes descends to brief them on major crimes. On a regular morning, they come up to the 13th floor to fish for stories or get details on the ones that break overnight. It was on one of these occasions that the incident involving the Daily News reporter occurred.

"Wil is like the teddy bear of cop reporters," said a police reporter who has been covering the department for over a decade. "All he was doing was asking follow-up questions. It just seems like that office is completely unaccountable. I think it's now just Kelly's public-relations arm. ... Browne's job is to protect Kelly. It's not to provide public information."

According to Mr. Browne, being a former newspaperman allows him to understand the needs of reporters. According to Mr. Browne, his relationship with reporters is "good." According to reporters, their relationship with Mr. Browne is contentious.

"He would feed stories to one reporter and not another when he was mad at you," said a former shack reporter about Mr. Browne. "And he would not call back if he was mad at a reporter."

About two years ago, a meeting was called between Mr. Browne and the bureau chiefs to improve the relationship. "We felt there was a general disdain among the rank and file up there for us," said a current shack reporter. "I don't need a hug and a glass of milk and cookies when I go up there, but there is a lack of respect, which I don't even mind as long as I get what I need."

"Wow. You think I can control it?" Mr. Browne said responding to whether he attempts to manage the department's image. "Absolutely not. A reporter starts the day with a blank sheet. The notion that I control that would be great, but it's just not the case. ... I don't think the department needs protection. It does tremendous work."

That DCPI purposefully withholds information is not true, according to Mr. Browne, but he acknowledged that the constant competition among shack reporters and the shorter deadlines created by infinite Web posting have affected things. "Undoubtedly there are times when we don't provide information as quickly as some would want, and that has led to occasional conflicts. But on the other hand, the office responds to reporters' inquiries 24 hours a day, seven days a week." 

"He's not there to be Mr. Warmth," said Mr. Moss, an unofficial adviser to the mayor. "I'm glad the reporters don't like him. The crime reporters' job is to complain. If they were happy, he wouldn't be doing his job."

Outside the shack, veteran police reporters say they have been cut off from their sources inside the department after Mr. Browne and the commissioner learned that certain detectives were speaking to them. "You can't seal off a large organization as this," said Mr. Browne. "In theory, all press contacts come from me, but in reality beat reporters develop their own sources. The only time it's a concern for me is when it jeopardizes an ongoing investigation." Reporters insist the information they were getting from their sources would not have threatened open cases.

John Eterno, associate dean of graduate studies in criminal justice at Molloy College and a retired police captain, said that as a sergeant, he was encouraged to speak to the press, but by the time he left, in 2003, that had changed. "As the chief spokesperson, Paul hasn't been as transparent as we would have hoped," said Mr. Eterno. "Particularly in a democracy, when we're trying to show other countries how to run their police departments in Afghanistan and Iraq." 

The speculations about why the department has become harder to penetrate are many. Some reporters believe it has something to do with the interviews the commissioner gave early in his term that reflected poorly on the F.B.I.'s counterterrorism efforts.

Here is how one veteran crime reporter told it: "He was happy to take them on, but it created problems for the department. The F.B.I. got increasingly combative with NYPD, and Ray would say things like, 'You fuckers don't ever share things with us.' Which is true. The F.B.I. didn't want to share. And the JTTF"--Joint Terrorism Task Force--"was essentially an F.B.I. operation. But when Kelly said you don't share with us, they said, 'Well yeah, because every time we tell you something, it's in the fucking paper. You guys leak like sieves.' And Ray couldn't say anything to that because they were right, so it was embarrassing to him because he couldn't control his own cops. The older Ray got, the more his political ambitions came to the fore, and the more he demanded that Paul stop the leaks. The more that happened, the more Paul was willing to take unusual measures. That was the beginning of this deep divide and distrust between DCPI and the press corps."

That is one theory. Others believe it all began with the murder of Imette St. Guillen at The Falls bar on Lafayette Street by Darryl Littlejohn in 2006. According to sources, certain veteran reporters were getting regular updates from detectives working the case; meanwhile, Mr. Littlejohn had not yet been arrested. When an arrest was finally made, police arrived to discover reporters already on the scene.

"Kelly went completely ballistic. Browne went proactive and dumped"--i.e., traced--"phones, which I believe is routine now," said a police captain who retired from the force two years ago and used to speak to reporters. "That was the beginning of the end for the relationships between reporters and detectives." The former captain said he believed some officers were threatened with being transferred. "If you live in Long Island, they'll put you in Staten Island," said the former captain. "For detectives, one of the worst things that can happen is you get transferred to a borough where you have to pay a toll to get there. They're so frightened now it's like the Kremlin." According to sources, there are three experienced reporters known to communicate with detectives through disposable phones, or so-called "source-phones."

The veteran reporter said, "They basically say, 'Your NYPD-issued cell phone received four calls from this reporter two days before the publication of this article, and you called this reporter five different times. So now we're going to transfer you out of this job that you like so much to some shit job somewhere.'"

According to other sources, if the department suspects officers of talking to reporters, they may order what is called a GO-15 (General Order 15)--an interview during which officers must tell the truth or they face termination of employment.

"I know of no instance in which a member of the service was transferred because of talking to reporters," said Mr. Browne. "I certainly never recommended such a transfer, and to my knowledge, none has occurred. However, the department has the obligation to prevent a member of the service from jeopardizing an ongoing investigation and that may include checking police phone records when appropriate."

"Yes, when information came from detectives, the consequences were harsh for those detectives," said someone who used to work for the Kelly administration. "But I think Ray would make no apologies for that. If you are leaking sensitive information to the press and you are a detective, what are you thinking?"

The latest trouble for Mr. Browne has been the Adrian Schoolcraft case, the story of an officer who made secret recordings at Brooklyn's 81st Precinct that point to corruption. Mr. Schoolcraft has filed a $50 million lawsuit against the NYPD for, as he alleges, retaliating against him by confining him against his will to Jamaica Hospital Center's psychiatric ward. According to a recent report in The Village Voice, the lawsuit alleges that Mr. Browne was on the scene when Mr. Schoolcraft was taken away.

"Cops generally don't do anything without being told or without approval from above," said a police reporter. "So if he was in the street that night, it suggests Kelly knew what was going on." According to Mr. Browne, the story is a complete fabrication.

WHEN THE OBSERVER asked Mr. Browne what was the biggest difference between being a reporter and being a press secretary, he said that he now understands something he didn't as a reporter: "I think I was guilty of viewing people in two-dimensional terms. They're not sitting around trying to figure out how not to give you information. They're flesh-and-blood human beings. There were some reporters who got that someone like Pat Moynihan is a human being--he's worried about his family, it's not all about his public position and who he is in the media."

Commissioner Kelly recently turned 69. If he were to make a political leap, sources say, it would have to be soon, and in part, Mr. Browne's future depends on it.

"There are rumors that he was being considered for the F.B.I. because [Director Robert] Mueller was going to step down," said the veteran crime reporter who spoke with The Observer. "And there are rumors he would go to Washington because Obama really likes Kelly. But he's older. There is talk that his wife doesn't want to move. The idea that he would become a political player is interesting but is becoming less of a possibility. Browne probably thinks constantly about what is Ray Kelly's political future.  If he becomes mayor, if he moves to Washington, what would happen to Browne? If Kelly retired, what would happen to Browne?"

"They have now worked together for so long that they are truly a team," said Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Browne's friend and former colleague. "It's been that way for a while, and it's like a Warner Brothers old movie. They're the cast, whether it's a pirate movie or a cowboy movie, they're the cast." 

Asked whether they would move on as a pair, Mr. Browne, who happens to enjoy pictures from the '30s and '40s, said, "He and his spouse are a pair."

A couple of weeks ago, Commissioner Kelly was due to give a speech at the New York City Police Museum downtown at an exhibition of drawings depicting responders to 9/11, to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the tragedy. Mr. Browne, wearing a red tie under a black suit, arrived before the commissioner and was shifting around the Roosevelt room on the second floor. Mr. Browne has a forward-leaning gait that makes his movements deliberate and a bit anxious--waiting around looks awkward on him. 

"You here for the boss?" asked a man popping a cheese cube into his mouth.

"Yup," replied Mr. Browne.

When Mr. Kelly arrived, he joined Mr. Browne in conversation with two other official-looking gentlemen. Standing side by side, Mr. Kelly is about half the size of Mr. Brown.

A female photographer approached the four men and lifted her camera. Mr. Browne immediately stepped out of the frame. "No, no, you too," the woman seemed to signal with her enthusiastic smiling and gesturing. Mr. Browne resisted. But then Mr. Kelly, whose face had already spread into a friendly, doughy smile for the camera, signaled him in. Mr. Browne, whose smile is less practiced, with an awkward showing of teeth, finally submitted and stepped into the frame.

ialeksander@observer.com

VIEW SLIDESHOW > KELLY AND BROWNE: THE EARLY YEARS

That's the who (the NYPD), what (a document-destroying truck), when (anytime, it's mobile), where (anywhere, it's mobile) and how (shredding) sorted, so only one question remains: why? Why does the NYPD have a document-destroying truck that can be used anytime and anywhere?

The department's chief spokesman Paul Browne was happy to indentify the truck, and even slipped a charming pun into his answer to The Times: "I can shred light on it: It was there to shred N.Y.P.D. documents at that location." He did not respond to their, and our, natural follow-up.

The police have been known to shred things in that neighborhood before, so it's possible that the truck was there for similar reasons. Or perhaps it was destroying no-longer-legal stop-and-frisk records. Take-out menus? The possibilities are endless!

I came across the video on the blog run by Rafael Martinez-Alequin (who has his own press pass issues). It says it was filmed during a September 14, 2007 conference where Browne was speaking.

Here’s what Browne said:

He goes on to say, “What would you think of our just getting out of the business entirely?”

The effect, Browne explains:

Thoughts?

While the killing of Sean Bell has attracted nationwide media coverage and drawn major figures like the Reverend Jesse Jackson to New York, a lawsuit recently filed in a Manhattan federal court has so far received relatively scant attention. But it too has the potential to detonate the NYPD’s efforts to build effective relations with a skeptical minority community, in this case Arab-Americans.

Lawyers for an analyst in the NYPD’s intelligence division filed the suit against the city eight days ago. The plaintiff, who still works for the department, is referred to as “John Doe Anti-Terrorism Officer,” because he fears reprisals against family members still living in the Middle East if his identity becomes public.

The man is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Egypt. He is also a Muslim. He alleges that a key counterterrorism advisor to the NYPD sent hundreds of e-mails containing blatant anti-Muslim and anti-Arab comments to him and others in the intelligence division over a period of three and a half years.

According to the suit, the e-mails included comments like “a good Muslim … can’t be a good American” and “Burning the hate-filled Koran should be viewed as a public service at the least.”

The advisor, Bruce Tefft, also purportedly enjoyed adding his own footnotes to material. To one article headlined “1 in 4 Hold Anti-Muslim Views”, he is said to have appended the comment “Then 1 in 4 is well-informed.” To another article, entitled “Has U.S. threatened to vaporize Mecca?”, he allegedly noted, “Excellent idea, if true.”

Mr. Tefft was no low-level rookie who might plead naïveté as an excuse for his words. A retired 21-year veteran of the C.I.A., Mr. Tefft was “a founding member of the C.I.A.’s Counter Terrorism Center in 1985,” according to the biography posted on the Web site of one company in which he was involved.

One of the key issues in the case is the NYPD’s responsibility for the e-mails.

The NYPD’s deputy commissioner for public information, Paul Browne, took issue with the idea that the police are culpable for Mr. Tefft’s behavior. He said that Mr. Tefft “was never an employee of the Police Department—he came with the package, so to speak, with an outside consulting firm.”

Mr. Browne also asserted that action was taken to block Mr. Tefft’s e-mails after they came to the attention of “senior managers” in 2005; that similar moves were made after Mr. Tefft found a way to circumvent the blockage earlier this year; and that cease-and-desist letters were issued.

The version of events provided by Mr. Browne doesn’t tally with the plaintiff’s allegations.

According to the suit, “Tefft’s hate-filled and humiliating email briefings were distributed to virtually all City employees who worked in the NYPD’s Intelligence Division, including the highest-ranking members of that division and Plaintiff’s supervisors. Despite Plaintiff’s repeated complaints—over a period of three years—to his supervisors about Tefft’s discriminatory emails, the City failed to do anything to stop it.”

The man’s attorney, Ilann Maazel, told The Observer: “It is very disturbing that so many hundreds of e-mails were sent to so many people for so many years.”

Arguably even more disturbing are the broader attitudes to which the man claims he was subjected. These include allegations that a high-ranking lieutenant in the intelligence division stated that “all Arabs are animals”; that other employees stated that Muslims should be driving hot-dog carts; and that Muslim and Arab-American employees of the intelligence unit were, on one occasion, asked to leave the room after giving a presentation, while other employees were allowed to stay.

Such allegations, if proven, suggest that a deep anti-Arab racism festers in the NYPD that could gravely undermine its anti-terrorism efforts.

Linda Sarsour of the Arab-American Association of New York points out that the NYPD “needs us” if it is to be effective. Ms. Sarsour added that the allegations in the current case will not only “surely kill their recruitment,” but will also have a corrosive effect on broader community relations.

“They tell us they respect us—and people understand we need the police for our own safety. But then we get this kind of disgusting language against Arabs.”

The NYPD understandably makes much of its efforts to reach out to minorities.

But the department’s own history renders those efforts an uphill struggle. Tolerance of the sort of bigotry to which “John Doe” was allegedly subjected only makes the hill steeper.

But the controversy is far from dead, as this video that has been making the rounds in Borough Park shows.

Partisans of the ultra-Orthodox community see the video, allegedly shot during the riots, as evidence of police misconduct and even brutality against both rioters and bystanders.

But police department spokesperson, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne, saw a different scene. "The civilian in the video tried to push past a Police Captain and was restrained from doing so and he was then allowed to go on his way," said Deputy Commissioner Browne. "Nothing in the video depicts any unnecessary use of force."

For his part, Assemblyman Hikind, who represents Borough Park in Albany, said that he has both seen videos and heard reports of officers using their nightsticks against innocent bystanders as well as rioting car-burners.

"What was done by the community was absolutely outrageous, inexcusable," the Assemblyman said. "But any police officer who violated the rules and was involved in any kind of brutality, that's a separate issue and that has to be addressed. There is no excuse for that either. They are supposed to be disciplined. They are supposed to be professionals."

- Lizzy Ratner

Sure, the Vietnam War is being refought in the press, with Senator John Kerry returning fire on his tormentors from Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Long-dormant battles are opening up in the culture wars. Norman Mailer is in New York magazine, talking to his son John Buffalo Mailer about the Movement.

But the Weathermen? In 2004?

Reporter Stefan C. Friedman, citing a single nameless source, wrote that the danger stems from "the release 'over the last two years' of anarchists tied to the Underground-and their apparent willingness to return to their old ways." As the veteran radicals prepare for "orchestrating operations," Mr. Friedman wrote, the NYPD is "tracking their every move."

If the cops are back on the anti-radical beat, it's a covert operation-a very, very covert operation. "Well, it was news to me," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne. " … I wasn't aware of any of the information in that article."

There could be a few old radicals holding court with the younger generation, Mr. Browne said, but the NYPD isn't tailing them. What about the Post 's "top-level source with extensive knowledge of police plans"?

"There you go-an oxymoron right there," Mr. Browne said.

In a sidebar, the Post listed the Weather Underground's various misdeeds-most recently, a trio of bombings in, um, 1971. The Post also named "Some known leaders*" of the group.

"*The NYPD has not identified any of these former members as 'people of interest,'" a footnote added in small type.

"Find out who the source is," said ex-Weatherman Brian Flanagan, reached on the phone at his Upper West Side bar, the Night Cafe. Mr. Flanagan, one of the figures named-but not accused!-in the Post , was not in a mood to discuss the alleged Weather Underground revival any further. "It's ridiculous," Mr. Flanagan added, ringing abruptly off.

A Post spokesperson said that the paper's informant was "a great source," but declined to name or characterize the source in any way.

"We stand by the story," the spokesperson said. "It's a legitimate story."

It's "strange and made-up," said writer and activist Laura Whitehorn, a Weather Underground member convicted of bombing the U.S. Capitol. "And perhaps libelous," she added. Of the five people named in the Post , Ms. Whitehorn said, "the only one who was in prison at all to be released is me."

The number of Weather Underground members who fit the Post 's description-freed from prison in the last two years-is "less than a handful," said Sam Green, director of the 2002 documentary The Weather Underground . There are three or four of them at most, Mr. Green estimates, and these days they're inclined to quietly follow the terms of their parole.

"They're all women, and they're all very law-abiding," Mr. Green said.

Ms. Whitehorn was released in 1999, so she doesn't quite qualify as one of the Post 's "very bad people" who have been "trained in kidnapping techniques, bombmaking, and building improvised munitions." Still, is she planning to blow anything up next week?

"No, no," she said. "I think George Bush is doing a pretty good job of that himself. He doesn't need any help."

The NYPD's Mr. Browne shared the estimation that the present-day Weathermen are roughly as much of a menace to New York City as Al Roker. When the department talks about people with a history of disruption, he said, it means "history" in the sense of maybe 1999. "The individuals … that we'd be concerned about tend to be younger than that," Mr. Browne said.

That would mean the NYPD is ignoring the likes of the Symbionese Liberation Army and the Black Panthers, too. That's not a problem, right? The Black Panthers aren't coming to town?

"Why do I need to show up?" asked Panther co-founder Bobby Seale from his home in Oakland, Calif. "I might write an editorial."

The veterans of the Black Panthers have moved on to other things, Mr. Seale said: teaching, writing and sympathizing with the much younger generation of protesters. And so have the Weathermen. "The Weather Underground doesn't even exist," Mr. Seale said. "I would know. They would call me."

But the Weather Underground is an effective symbol, said Jeremy Varon, a professor of history at Drew University and author of Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies .

"They're anything from cause célèbre to bête noire ," Mr. Varon said. With the convention coming, Mr. Varon added, the invocation of the Weathermen looks like "an effort to put the specter of violence out there." Naming the Weathermen means "plucking out in the conservative mind the worst of the worst of the worst."

As a practical matter, Mr. Varon said, the Post 's vision of the Weathermen as masterminds of unrest doesn't jibe with reality. Younger generations have managed to protest on their own.

"Nobody needs the knowledge of the Weathermen," Mr. Varon said. "They're not necessary as consultants."

"It is time for President Hugo Chavez's opponents to stop pretending that they speak for most Venezuelans," the New York Times editorial page intoned Aug. 18, after Mr. Chavez's victory in his nation's recall balloting.

The Times wouldn't be The Times if it didn't issue diktats to various participants in international politics. But The Times is in a rare position of rate authority to tell the Venezuelan opposition what to do: It was a charter member itself.

When the Times editorial page writes of Mr. Chavez's foes, "who backed a briefly successful military coup attempt in 2002," it could have been referring to the Times editorial page. Back then, an editorial hailed Mr. Chavez's temporary overthrow as news that "Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator."

But soon after the coup petered out, The Times rediscovered the importance of what it now calls "broadly respect[ing] constitutional norms."

In lieu of a retraction, the paper offered a single clause in a follow-up editorial when Mr. Chavez returned to power. The joy at Mr. Chavez's overthrow, "which we shared," the paper confessed, "overlooked the undemocratic manner in which he was removed."

Editorial-page chief Gail Collins said that she publicly conceded at the time that "we dropped the ball." Does that mean that no further disclosures are in order?

"The editorials speak for themselves, and that's all I have to say, really," Ms. Collins said.

Ms. Collins' page has evidently decided to make its atonement by thumping the drum for Venezuelan democracy. Four editorials this year have addressed the Venezuelan recall movement-four more than The Times offered on this summer's more nearby (and more closely contested) Canadian election.

"Of course, buttocks are the new breasts," Mary Tannen declares in the debut issue of T magazine. Elsewhere, Mark Jacobs notes that Dakota Fanning is "the new Gwyneth Paltrow" and Grace Mugabe is "the new Imelda Marcos."

And as of this Sunday, T will be the new Women's Fashions of the Times . What's the difference, besides 23 fewer letters?

The point of T is to consolidate the various separate Part 2's that The New York Times had been publishing alongside its Sunday magazine ( Women's Fashions of the Times , Men's Fashions of the Times , Very Expensively Decorated Houses of the Times ) under a single title-albeit a single title comprising special theme issues on women's fashion, men's fashion, decorating et al.

"The ultimate goal is to create a monthly style magazine where even the individual themes of the magazine blur a little bit," New York Times Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati said. Unlike the previous freestanding titles, the various editions of T magazine will share writers and designers with each other-and with the main Sunday magazine. Times Magazine mainstay Lynn Hirschberg, for instance, has contributed a piece on Hollywood fashion to this Sunday's T .

Another difference is that the shorter title is attached to a longer magazine-290 pages, of which 167 are ads, according to a Times announcement this week. That's 29 percent more ad pages than the previous Women's Fashions issue, according to The Times , and the fattest Times fashion magazine since 1985.

Part of the charm of the old Part 2 magazines was that each fell out of the Sunday paper at infrequent intervals. With the new T brand, is The Times in danger of turning the former lagniappes into yet another regular Sunday obligation for the readers?

The readers will always pick and choose, Mr. Marzorati said. "We're giving them another entry point into the Sunday Times , which I think is a good thing."