Info ties him to bomb-making

Senft, who retired in 2008 and lives on Long Island, calls the lionization of Lopez Rivera the worst kind of politics.

“I’m absolutely appalled,” he said. “We’re making a folk hero out of him. He’s a terrorist.”

He said the ex-con is getting his freedom back while those killed or maimed get nothing.

“No one’s giving me my eyesight back. But this is not about me. I’m talking for the other people who are blind, who lost their legs, who were killed. I was lucky. I survived.”

Knox said he finds Mark-Viverito’s position puzzling.

“Everybody should turn their back on this guy after this thing that happened in England,” he said, referring to the Manchester pop concert bombing on Monday that killed 22. “I still don’t get it why this woman (Mark-Viverito) would support it.”

Knox worked in a period when bombings were frequent and fires raged across the city. The FALN, the Weathermen and the Black Liberation Army were all active.

“The social dynamics of all of these things happening at the same time were incredible,” Knox says. “It seemed like every night there was a bombing or a serious fire, and it was almost always one of these groups involved.”

Knox also responded to the Queens apartment where FALN member William Morales was seriously injured when a pipe bomb he was building exploded on July 12, 1978. He blew off all of his fingers.

“He looked like a piece of rare roast beef,” he said. “Part of his face was gone. He was bleeding right through everything.”

Morales somehow survived and escaped from the hospital. He has lived in Cuba, away from extradition, for decades.

Knox, and Senft, don’t believe the majority of Puerto Ricans support Lopez Rivera’s beliefs.

“I don’t think he’s a freedom fighter, and I don’t think most Puerto Ricans do, either,” Knox said. “If you talk to them, more than half want to stay as a commonwealth.”

Connor followed his dad into finance and worked at his late father’s company.

“I want someone to take ownership of what they did. If Lopez Rivera is so innocent, tell us, Oscar, who did the Fraunces Tavern bombing? I never asked for any of this. My father didn’t ask for any of this.”