Hunter College caved to a group of left-wing students riled up by a discredited magazine article, and booted a private, FBI-sponsored security organization that rented an auditorium for a conference yesterday, the head of the group told The Post.
“There was concern that students at the college were leafleting and were putting up fliers and there was going to be a formal protest,” said Joseph Concannon, president of New York Metro InfraGard. “The college figured that would be negative publicity they didn’t want.”
But the City University school insisted it canceled InfraGard’s agreement to use the School of Social Work auditorium because renting space there would be “unauthorized.”
New York Metro InfraGard is one of more than 80 InfraGard chapters around the country made up of more than 20,000 executives who run private firms vital to the national infrastructure – including banks, defense manufacturers, and telecom companies.
The organization works closely with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to protect their companies from potential attacks by terrorists.
The Hunter conference – which was moved to an East Side office building after InfraGard was notified Friday – was intended to discuss Internet threats.
A story in the March edition of the leftist magazine The Progressive makes the sensational claim that the feds gave InfraGard permission to “shoot to kill” anyone who threatens a business if martial law is declared.
It quotes an unidentified executive as saying federal agents told an InfraGard meeting, “When – not if – martial law is declared, it was our responsibility to protect our portion of the infrastructure, and if we had to use deadly force to protect it, we couldn’t be prosecuted.”
On Friday, the FBI called the claims “patently false,” adding that InfraGard members “have no extraordinary powers and have no greater right to ‘shoot to kill’ than other civilians.”
Michelle O’Brien, a student who had organized the planned protests, said, “We really didn’t think InfraGard reflected [School of] Social Work values.”
But a college spokeswoman insisted that had nothing to do with kicking the group out.
“Hunter does not own the building where the School of Social Work is housed,” she said. “Because of this, Hunter is not allowed to rent to any outside, private concern. Someone at Hunter discovered that this was an unauthorized rental.”
Additional reporting by Murray Weiss