The “Shoe Bomber,” the buffonish Richard Reid, is serving life in prison alongside fellow terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in a Colorado supermax dubbed the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”

You can thank Reid for forcing air travelers to take off their shoes at TSA checkpoints since his failed mid-flight bombing attempt in 2001.

That requirement is now history, as we report today.

That story had me digging back into our archives and checking his federal court case, where I discovered his latest lament. Reid, a letter from 2021 reveals, still isn’t happy with his legal defense (that taxpayers picked up) and wants a second shot at freedom.

Here’s his letter from the U.S. District Court file in Boston:

Shoe bomber Richard Reid’s letter seeking a do-over in his life sentence. (DOJ file)

The key passage is Reid’s contention that “his lawyer at the time failed to defend me properly.” That appeal has since been denied.

Reid, a British-born al-Qaeda terrorist, tried to blow up a Miami-bound American Airlines flight from Paris on Dec. 22, 2001, by igniting a fuse connected to powerful explosives stashed in his left shoe. Two courageous flight attendants and fellow passengers pounced and tragedy was averted.

The flight was diverted to Boston, where Reid was tried and convicted in federal court.

Anthony Amore, director of security and chief investigator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, was the lead agent for the FAA who responded to the attempted bombing that day.

“It was incredibly frightening,” Amore told the Herald today about that case. “A lot of people don’t realize it, but Richard Reid was huge. I’m 6′, 2″ and he was bigger than me. He was a big, strong guy, and two female flight attendants and a European pro basketball player took him on.”

Amore, who has his own historic tale trying to bring back priceless stolen artwork ripped off the walls of the Gardner in 1990, said the spirit of the Flight 93 passengers played a major part of the Reid case.

Many credit the Flight 93 heroes who took back control of their United Airlines jet on 9/11 and drove it into the ground in Shanksville, Penn., likely saving the U.S. Capitol from a fourth attack by al-Qaeda terrorists who had already slammed two jets into the World Trade Center in Manhattan and another into the Pentagon killing nearly 3,000.

“It was only months after 9/11 and Flight 93 taught everyone you had to intervene. It was a whole new world after Flight 93,” said Amore, who added that some speculated Reid’s shoelaces were wet, making it difficult for him to ignite them as a fuse for his shoe bomb.

“That’s when the two flight attendants struggled with him and the basketball player and other passengers jumped in to help,” he said.

Amore said he was on with NORAD and then the White House Situation Room during that day and participated in having all the passengers remove their shoes for inspection before boarding a connecting flight after Reid was hauled away. “It was the craziest thing ever,” he told the Herald.

If Reid had succeeded, if Flight 93 “Let’s Roll!” heroes hadn’t stood up to terror, if fellow passengers cowered that December, our world would have changed dramatically.

We can keep our shoes on, but we must never forget why we once gave up that freedom.

RICHARD REID (DOJ mug shot)