A balding, 40-something man caught on camera is the subject of an intense manhunt in connection with the botched but terrifying attempt to bomb Times Square.
In a chilling surveillance video released late last night, the man is seen at the end of Shubert Alley peeling off a sweatshirt he’d been wearing over a short-sleeved red shirt, furtively glancing over his shoulder, then stuffing the sweatshirt into a bag.
Abandoned “in close proximity” was the dark-green,1993 Nissan Pathfinder loaded with explosives meant to blow a hole through the heart of New York, a source said.
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The footage was the most dramatic to emerge from a series of frightening images released by the NYPD yesterday, showing the SUV snaking through thousands of unsuspecting bystanders at the corner of 45th and Broadway at around 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
Moments later, its driver leaped out — leaving the motor running and the hazard lights on. And within minutes, two vendors heard the pop-pop-pop of M88s and saw smoke seeping out of the SUV.
They alerted a mounted cop, and a massive evacuation began at the Crossroads of the World.
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Yesterday, officials said the SUV was carrying a propane-and-fertilizer bomb powerful enough to trigger a “significant fireball” and hurl shrapnel through the tens of thousands of people in the vicinity, killing or maiming hundreds.
“The vehicle itself would have been cut in half” by the explosion, said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. “Clearly, it was the intent of whoever did this to cause mayhem, to create casualties.”
But the fertilizer — eight bags, totaling 100 pounds, purchased at a grocery store — was not “explosive grade” and wouldn’t have produced “the kind of devastation associated with ammonium nitrate bombs” like the kind that demolished the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
“Had [the propane and gas] gone off, it would have . . . produced a fireball” that likely would have “resulted in people being killed, windows being shattered, but not resulted in a building collapse or major structural damage,” he said.
Mayor Bloomberg said the planned mayhem did not appear to be the work of al Qaeda or any other large terror network.
There was different information coming from Pakistan, where a Taliban group claimed responsibility.
A source connected with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency told The Post that just 24 hours before the failed attack, the Pakistani Taliban’s top bombmaker, Qari Hussain Mehsud, recorded an audiotape taking “full responsibility for the recent attack in the USA” and promising “a jaw-breaking blow to Satan USA.”
He also promised attacks on major US cities, in a video apparently dated in early April.
But the NYPD discounted the Pakistan Taliban link, and Sen. Charles Schumer said it appeared the suspect was “a lone wolf.”
Authorities also weren’t discounting a possible connection between the bomb attempt and Islamic fanatics who threatened Comedy Central after an episode of “South Park” depicted Mohammed dressed in a bear suit.
The headquarters of Viacom, which owns Comedy Central, is near where the SUV was parked.
Kelly — answering a question about a 911 call that had supposedly been made at around 4 a.m. yesterday by someone claiming responsibility for the bomb bid — insisted there was no record of the call in the system.
But The New York Times, quoting unidentified officials, said the call had been placed by someone who warned that the Times Square event was only a diversion for a much more devastating explosion to come. The call was made from a pay phone at West 53rd Street and Seventh Avenue.
Cops are even looking into whether the planned attack was related to a May Day-type anarchist event or, possibly, the bicyclist bombing of the Times Square military recruiting station in 2008.
The NYPD review included:
* “Hundreds” of hours of video footage. Kelly said there are 82 cameras in the area from 34th to 51st streets between Sixth and Eighth avenues. Thirty had been reviewed, but only three “have some value,” he said.
* Footage from the PA Bus Terminal and Penn Station to determine if the perp fled on a train or bus.
* A forensics search of the SUV to find possible DNA, hair fibers and fingerprints.
Kelly said investigators know who the owner of the SUV is but they had yet to talk to him. The commissioner refused to say whether the man was on the lam.
Sources said investigators have traced him to Connecticut, where the stolen license plates on the vehicle were issued.
Meanwhile, investigators found that inside the abandoned SUV were all the makings of disaster fashioned from everyday, hardware-store staples.
They included three barbecue-grill-size propane tanks, fireworks, two filled 5-gallon gasoline containers and two small clocks with batteries, electrical wires and other components.
Timers were connected to a 16-ounce can filled with the fireworks, which apparently were meant to ignite the gas cans and propane.
“It wasn’t an accident,” Kelly said. “It was somebody who brought this to the location to send a message to terrorize people in the area.”
Sources said that at least one vehicle-identification number on the SUV had been burned off by acid but that cops discovered the VIN printed on the engine block.
Kelly said the license plates on the SUV belong to a truck being repaired at a shop called Kramer’s Recycling in Stratford, Conn.
Its owner, Wayne LeBlanc, said the plates were apparently taken from a Ford truck in his junk yard.
“[The FBI] wanted to find out how the plate got from point A to point B,” he said.
President Obama vowed, “We are going to do what is necessary to protect the American people, to determine who is behind this potentially deadly act and to see that justice is done.”
With S.A. Miller in Washington and Larry Celona, Linda Stasi, Sally Goldenberg, Edmund DeMarche, Murray Weiss, Joe Mollica and James Fanelli in New York