And just because people buy this story doesn't mean they take everything at face value.

It's a shame that the present dangerous people in power in the White House have caused us as a nation to question that which is reported as fact. But I do, heck my eyes are still bleary from the blinking changing lights before the last presidential election. Yellow, then orange, then back to yellow, maybe red...anything to distract us from the truth. And our rights fall faster than Loria's payroll. It's a good thing we have the "PATRIOT ACT" right.....tell me it's right. I count the days till this international nightmare is over. And that's coming from an independant who voted republican in every presidential election since 1972. But I drew the line at Bush Junior. Unfortunately for the thousands of soldiers, my line and vote wasn't counted.

I don't see what expertise the Miami legal market has on this FBI case, if any.

 

Not expertise. But working in a local market allows people to have their ear to the ground, right? Even the feds work in the local environment.

 

And who's calling for anyone's heads? These guys will get a trial.

 

"I hope they all rot in a prison cell for the rest of their lives."

"Hope they fry these guys"

 

I don't know anything about the specifics of this case, but excuse me if I'm choosing to believe that these charges have a legitimate and factual basis behind them. I can't believe I'm actually making this argument against two people now. What the hell is going on here?

 

Also, Richard Jewel and the Duke lacrosse cases were not government conspiracies, so I don't see how those cases relate. Additionally, those charges were cleared through due process, and I'm sure these defendants will have their say as well.

 

Well, unless we lock up in Guantanamo. Look, if we toss these guys away without giving them a public hearing, then maybe I'll agree that there's some smoke here. But until that happens I have no idea why anyone is jumping on the conspiracy bandwagon.

 

I can't believe I got stuck in this stupid argument. I respectfully quit on this one. You people can have the last word.

 

I'm not jumping on the conspiracy bandwagon. I lean toward believing a legitimate basis in the case exists too and that the government isn't making it up. 99% of the time they are right on. But the government does make mistakes and they make very large mistakes. Maybe that's not what prinmemito meant, but a lot of people in this country don't think due process should even remotely occur here. If they are found not guilty, that definitely won't be the end of it, right?

 

I would put my money on these people being who we think they are(not the Bears). But the general public as a the judge, jury, and executioner scares me.

It doesn't sound like they even got too far into planning anything. It sounds like it was just an idea someone tossed around on poker night. This was probably a year away from happening.

If you want to see the truth about Guantanamo, I recommend watching "Road to Guantanamo", which is a film about three English Muslims who were captured in Afghanistan after being implicated by Northern Alliance rebels as Taliban soldiers, even though they had no evidence to back this up. The U.S. government held these students, who were between 19-23, at Guantanamo Bay's prisons for almost four years, before finally being released without any charges, or even an apology. The film shows that at least a few of the prisoners at Guantanamo may have been senile old men who suffered from dementia.

 

I also agree with FM that it's hard to trust anything coming out of the White House's mouth anymore, whether it's plausible or not.

and the Primaries are just around the corner....

Alright, here's one big reason why this isn't some drummed up nonsense intended to make someone look good (and I still haven't figured out who that would be? The President? He's nowhere near this story.)...

 

Anyway, fake news stories created to make someone look good don't break out at 2 PM on a Saturday. That's where stories go to get buried. That's when you come clean on some scandal or something. You don't fake news on a weekend afternoon. Half the country probably has no idea this even happened. You want people to notice something, you do it during the work week, when people are tuned in, when people watch the Evening News and all that jazz.

It distracts from the 14 or so American soldiers that died in Iraq this past weekend. It tells people: "the war on terror is alive and well" and "if we don't fight them over there they'll come here". It's not about making anyone look good. Rather, it's about pounding fear into our minds as we're deliberating about what to do in Iraq.

 

Look, I am not saying it is a conspiracy, but many of these "arrests" and "detentions" are purely political, in many cases just plain made up. I spoke with a US Attorney this weekend who told me we don't have a god-damn thing on 99% of the so-called terrorists we have in Guantanamo and that most of them are being held for political reasons. In other words, politics determines law enforcement. And the whole US Attorney fiasco gives credibility to my claim.

 

I am not saying this is completely made up, but I am certainly very skeptical. I'll await a fair trial to make a judgment.

Papers Portray Alleged JFK Plot as Mostly Talk

By MICHAEL POWELL and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

The New York Times

(June 4) - The plot as painted by law enforcement officials was cataclysmic: A home-grown Islamic terrorist had in mind detonating fuel storage tanks and pipelines and setting fire to Kennedy International Airport, not to mention a substantial swath of Queens.

 

 

'Capability Low, Intent Very High'

 

 

? Radical Group Denies Role

 

 

 

?Had the plot been carried out, it could have resulted in unfathomable damage, deaths and destruction,? Roslynn R. Mauskopf, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, said in a news release that announced charges against four men. She added at a news conference, ?The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded are just unthinkable.?

 

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly then stepped to the lectern with a vision only a bit less grim.

 

?Once again, would-be terrorists have put New York City in their crosshairs,? he said. Mr. Kelly said a disaster had been averted.

 

 

But the criminal complaint filed by the federal authorities against the four defendants in the case ? one of them, Abdel Nur, remained at large yesterday ? suggests a less than mature terror plan, a proposed effort longer on evil intent than on operational capability.

 

(Ms. Mauskopf noted in her news release that the ?public was never at risk? and told reporters that law enforcement ?had stopped this plot long before it ever had a chance to be carried out.?)

 

At its heart was a 63-year-old retired airport cargo worker, Russell M. Defreitas, who the complaint says talked of his dreams of inflicting massive harm, but who appeared to possess little money, uncertain training and no known background in planning a terror attack.

 

?Capability low, intent very high,? a law enforcement official said of the suspects.

 

Some law enforcement officials and engineers also dismissed the notion that the planned attack could have resulted in a catastrophic chain reaction; system safeguards, they said, would have stopped explosions from spreading.

 

 

 

The complaint, filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, also suggests that at least two of the suspects had some ambivalence. One of the men was game for bombing the airport but leery about killing masses of people, the complaint says. Another dropped out of the plot for a time to tend to his business.

 

The suspects had ties with a dangerous Islamic group that once engineered a deadly coup attempt in Trinidad and Tobago, which was approached about underwriting a plot, but in the end, the men decided to stop courting that group and resolved to shop elsewhere overseas for financing.

 

No one would second-guess the authorities for pursuing and arresting suspected plotters. An enduring lesson that the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have taught prosecutors and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is the danger of inaction.

 

But as with many post-9/11 terror plots, the line between terrible aspiration and reality can get lost in a murky haze.

 

In case after case, from what authorities said was a dirty bomber to the Lackawanna Six, federal prosecutors hail arrests of terrorists and disruptions of what they describe as sinister plots. But as these legal cases unfold, the true nature of the threats can come into question.

 

 

Ms. Mauskopf and Mr. Kelly declined yesterday to discuss their characterizations of the airport case. Mark J. Mershon, assistant director in charge of the F.B.I.?s New York office, also spoke at the news conference, and he said yesterday that his message was very clear:

 

?I believe I spoke the simple truth at the press conference: the ambitions were horrific, the capacities were very limited, but they kept trying. Their signature was their persistence.?

 

Neal R. Sonnett, a defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor who was chief of the criminal division in the United States attorney?s office in Miami, congratulated the F.B.I. for fine police work in what was clearly ?a prosecutable case.?

 

But he said: ?There unfortunately has been a tendency to shout too loudly about such cases.?

 

?It has a bit of the gang that couldn?t shoot straight to it,? Mr. Sonnett said. ?It would have served the federal government well to say that.?

 

The seeming gap between the rhetoric at Saturday?s news conference and the reality of the threat could reflect a change in approach among law enforcement officials.

 

By their nature, prosecutors prefer to wait until they have accumulated an overwhelming store of evidence. The characteristic tough prosecutorial language of the post-indictment news release reflects their certainty about their cases.

 

Now, prosecutors and F.B.I. agents find themselves pouncing sooner than in the past, the better to stamp out potential terror plots before there is a grave risk to life or property.

 

?The whole goal now is to get these plots at a very nascent stage ? and that means the evidence will always be more ambiguous,? said Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor who pursued terrorism cases in New York and helped investigate the Sept. 11 attacks.

 

?We now need to pay a lot more attention to people?s aspirations to commit terror and worry less about how imminent the threat is.?

 

A reading of the criminal complaint makes clear why prosecutors and F.B.I. agents grew so alarmed as they learned of the ambitions ascribed to the suspects.

 

One of the co-conspirators, identified in the complaint only as individual E, described himself as a patron of jihad and paid for some of Mr. Defreitas?s travel expenses.

 

And Mr. Defreitas, in taped statements attributed to him, was unequivocal about his desire to kill many thousands of his fellow Americans.

 

But the same papers give reason for doubt about the competence of the suspects. The details tend to suggest a distance between Mr. Defreitas?s dream and any nightmarish reality.

 

There is, too, the question of the role played by the unidentified undercover informant who befriended Mr. Defreitas.

 

The informant is a convicted drug trafficker, and his sentence is pending as part of his cooperation agreement with the federal government, said the authorities.

 

It was to this informant, according to the authorities, that Mr. Defreitas first confided his ?vision that would make the World Trade Center attack seem small.? The complaint notes that the defendant ?did not discuss the details.?

 

Mr. Defreitas and the informant drove out to the fuel tanks at night, conducting surveillance, and made video recordings of Kennedy Airport and its buildings.

 

They also ?located satellite photographs of J.F.K.,? the complaint states, ?and sought expert advice, financing and explosives.?

 

But the satellite photographs amount to images easily downloaded from Google Earth.

 

A law enforcement official characterized the surveillance videos as ?amateurish?; but he added that the material offered enough detail, taken together with the Google images, to at least help with planning.

 

The complaint also states that the men discussed ?escape routes? through local roads and highways.

 

Many of the plot?s larger details are left to the imagination.

 

According to the complaint, one suspect discussed the need to disable an airport control tower, the better to provide cover to destroy the fuel tanks.

 

Another problem is that none of the suspects appears to have planned or carried out any previous attacks.

 

Nor do the men appear to possess relevant military training.

 

One defendant, Abdul Kadir, is said to have warned the others that the Islamists in Trinidad ?had their own rules of engagement and wanted to minimize the killing of innocents such as women and children.? He suggested an early-morning assault to take out buildings rather than people, the complaint says.

 

Other planners seem to come and go, and in the end, one of the men, Kareem Ibrahim, advises that he will present their terror plan to ?contacts overseas who may be interested in purchasing or funding it.?

 

But law enforcement officials say some caution is advised here. Terror plots, particularly those planned ad hoc by freelancers, tend to be messy affairs. There is no assurance that all the plotters share the qualms of a few. Nor is there any assurance an angry plotter might discard the collective long-term planning and strike alone quickly and violently.

 

?Even if he shoots up a terminal, it?s a disaster,? said a city law enforcement official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic. ?At a certain point, once you?re sure there isn?t a larger Al Qaeda involvement, you just move.?

 

An official in the Justice Department defended the way the case was presented to the public, saying federal authorities offered a reasoned picture of the case and the threat. ?We repeatedly let people know there was not a threat to the airport and this was a plot that was nowhere near completion,? said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to address the issue. ?The documents speak for themselves.?

 

Mary Jo White, who was the United States attorney in Manhattan for nearly a decade and oversaw the successful prosecution of the first World Trade Center bombers in 1993 and the men who attacked the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, said the challenges to a prosecutor are significant.

 

?Obviously, when you speak about these plots, you don?t want to scare the public unnecessarily,? she said. ?But if we?ve learned anything from 9/11 it is we should never again fail to take seriously the lower-level terrorist or wannabe terrorist or the most seemingly apocryphal plot, because they may well occur.?

 

But Mr. Sonnett, who also is a past president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, noted that there is a broader risk in overstating the sophistication of a terror plot. At a time when many Americans live in justified fear of an attack, the risk is that drumbeating creates a climate of fear and drives public policy.

 

?To the extent that you over-hype a case, you create fear and paranoia,? he said. ?It?s very difficult for prosecutors and investigative agencies to remain calm.?

So there are 'degrees' of terrorism?

 

We shouldn't have detained them?

 

I mean seriously...

The original thing people were disagreeing with is when people started saying, "I call bulls***".

 

This article doesn't say they weren't terrorists (which people on here were implying) or not involved with a potential plot.

 

If people want to argue degrees of terrorism be my guest but they will be complete tools for doing so.

Yeah...what does that article do to call into question that these guys were plotting some kind of act of terrorism?

 

From what I heard, they acted on this now because one of the plotters was about to relocate somewhere...but what are they supposed to do? Wait until one the guys is standing there with a ticking time bomb in his hand before they act? It sounds like these guys were legitimately planning an act of terror...whether they posed a legitimate threat YET is kind of in question. But surely, given the number of opportunists out there who would love to use these guys to meet their ends, I don't think the question of whether they posed a legitimate threat, in general, should even be open to debate. If they were truly persistent, they would have eventually acquired the means to at least make an attempt.

 

My impression from the people calling this BS is that they thought these guys weren't doing anything at all...that this was all created out of thin air. Maybe I was mistaken...but, if so, then what are you folks complaining about? So what if they were only in the planning stages?

Some people might need to learn to read critically.

Yeah...what does that article do to call into question that these guys were plotting some kind of act of terrorism?

 

From what I heard, they acted on this now because one of the plotters was about to relocate somewhere...but what are they supposed to do? Wait until one the guys is standing there with a ticking time bomb in his hand before they act? It sounds like these guys were legitimately planning an act of terror...whether they posed a legitimate threat YET is kind of in question. But surely, given the number of opportunists out there who would love to use these guys to meet their ends, I don't think the question of whether they posed a legitimate threat, in general, should even be open to debate. If they were truly persistent, they would have eventually acquired the means to at least make an attempt.

 

My impression from the people calling this BS is that they thought these guys weren't doing anything at all...that this was all created out of thin air. Maybe I was mistaken...but, if so, then what are you folks complaining about? So what if they were only in the planning stages?

 

I called bulls*** because I thought the threat was exaggerated and they took a tiny piece of evidence (which you can probably come up with against anyone) and blew it up into the next 9-11.

 

I still call bulls***. :lol

Forgive me for chiming in late here. But the best thing to do is wait for radicals to almost have their plan complete before arresting them.

I also have a problem with the immediate call for bulls*** rather than the wait and see approach. I personally have no clue whats going to happen here, but if the evidence is weak I want to see an acquittal (or dropped charges). If the evidence is strong I want a conviction.

My problem is that people have become too distracted by the Iraq war to pay attention to anything thats going on, and yes, terrorism is very real. It's always been and we ignored it for decades. So I forgive law enforcement for acting quicky on this one.

The problem like usual is the media's sensationalism, where all sides must fight for media attention to get across an agenda. IMO, the media should not have heard of this at all until after a trial was CONCLUDED. I feel the same way baout many other things.

One last note, if you survey a group of 'our peers' who would serve on a jury if selected and you ask them about people charged with child molestation, most of the time these people will be making similar statements to 'i want to see them fry', before the guys have been convicted. So, it goes outside the realm of national secuirty quite often.

 

So now we have two opinions from the local legal community, not sure to what extent prinm and I disagree or agree.

Flying Mollusk is also an attorney.

 

My position is simple: I don't trust the current administration. I think they are willing, and already have, fabricated many things for a political purpose. Furthermore, the evidence is quite clear that they are willing to intervene in the Justice Department to get what they want (see the US Attorneys controversy). I have personally talked to Assistant US Attorneys that say the same thing. So when I see an announcement such as this one I am skeptical. It could all turn out to be quite true, but I will view things skeptically until proven otherwise.

 

I agree with the media sensationalism point.

Flying Mollusk is also an attorney.

 

My position is simple: I don't trust the current administration. I think they are willing, and already have, fabricated many things for a political purpose. Furthermore, the evidence is quite clear that they are willing to intervene in the Justice Department to get what they want (see the US Attorneys controversy). I have personally talked to Assistant US Attorneys that say the same thing. So when I see an announcement such as this one I am skeptical. It could all turn out to be quite true, but I will view things skeptically until proven otherwise.

 

I agree with the media sensationalism point.

 

I share a similar view to you on skepticism. I don't trust the government, but I trust the media even less, since their only purpose is to stir the pot and get ratings. Which is why I always wait before passing judgment on anything.

 

By the way F_M, don't you live in New Orleans?

The question really is how much planning the FBI informant took part in. For example, if it was the informant who advertantly or inadvertantly got the ball rolling, we are looking at a somewhat contrived terrorist threat. It does not make terrorism itself less real, but it should make us question the tactics we use to capture them (get a plan going, get people psyched up about it and then arrest them.) I do not know enough about this case, but it is possible that no attack might have been planned without the informant.

 

It is worth considering that even though real terrorists attacked the WTC the first time, they were given significant help by the FBI in a failed sting operation. Emad Salem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emad_Salem) was a FBI informant/ex egyptian military officer who recorded his conversations with the FBI in fear he would be nailed as part of the plot instead of part of the failed sting. Apparently, Salem even tried supplying the terrorists with fake explosives given to him by the FBI, but the FBI called off such an attempt (http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b3c830e34de.htm). Thereby the terrorists got themselves real explosives.

 

Salem said the following in a recorded conversation:

 

Salem: Okay. Alright. I don't think it was. If that's what you think guys, fine, but I don't think that because we was start already building the bomb which is went off in the World Trade Center. It [the bomb] was built by supervising supervision from the Bureau and the D.A. and we was all informed about it and we know that the bomb start to be built. By who? By your confidential informant. What a wonderful, great case!

 

The FBI provocteur (Salem) apparently helped build the bomb with supervision from our government, and was not given permission to the switch the explosives with fake ones.

 

 

The point of bringing this up is that men like Salem may help bring further along terrorist attacks that might have not got off the ground. I am not saying the government is complicit. Instead, I am saying that infilitrating terror cells is a dangerous game like penetrating the mafia or anything else. Ineptness, as was the case in 1993, can cost many lives. Thus, we cannot be confident in such domestic security to keep us safe while we continue to embark on a foreign policy that helps encourage muslim extremeists to attack us.

It just seems to me like they were making this out to be a really devastating plot, which is very doubtful. Clearly this was overhyped by Justice (which isn't exactly having their best days lately, thanks to the genius we have as AG)....

Flying Mollusk is also an attorney.

 

My position is simple: I don't trust the current administration. I think they are willing, and already have, fabricated many things for a political purpose. Furthermore, the evidence is quite clear that they are willing to intervene in the Justice Department to get what they want (see the US Attorneys controversy). I have personally talked to Assistant US Attorneys that say the same thing. So when I see an announcement such as this one I am skeptical. It could all turn out to be quite true, but I will view things skeptically until proven otherwise.

 

I agree with the media sensationalism point.

 

I share a similar view to you on skepticism. I don't trust the government, but I trust the media even less, since their only purpose is to stir the pot and get ratings. Which is why I always wait before passing judgment on anything.

 

By the way F_M, don't you live in New Orleans?

 

DC. Arlington, Virginia to be more specific. Finished law school in 06 and I am barred in Maryland right now. Doing a judicial clerkship here in DC.

 

In terms of the point made earlier by someone regarding the degrees of terrorism, I think there has to be. If our civil liberties could be altered based on potential plots, then should the plots have to be serious and have some major legit basis?

DC. Arlington, Virginia to be more specific. Finished law school in 06 and I am barred in Maryland right now. Doing a judicial clerkship here in DC.

 

In terms of the point made earlier by someone regarding the degrees of terrorism, I think there has to be. If our civil liberties could be altered based on potential plots, then should the plots have to be serious and have some major legit basis?

When it comes down to who we arrest, no.

 

Terrorism is terrorism.

 

(The rest of this is not directed directly at F_M)

 

I'm having trouble grasping who some of you are referring to when you talk about 'they are making this out to be a devastating plot'.

 

Who is 'they'?

 

The media?

 

The administration?

 

I think some of you are almost disappointed when someone connected with a plot, someone hoping to commit an act of terrorism, etc. is detained because it goes against your political beliefs.

 

Should we only corral people on the cusp of committing a murder (i.e. on the person's doorstep with a gun) or should we also detain those that make legitimate threats to the person they could potentially murder?

I said that Justice was overblowing this.

I said that Justice was overblowing this.

 

If anything I think NYC and the media is overhyping this.

I said that Justice was overblowing this.

 

If anything I think NYC and the media is overhyping this.

Oh, you mean the "lib'rul media"?

I said that Justice was overblowing this.

 

If anything I think NYC and the media is overhyping this.

Oh, you mean the "lib'rul media"?

 

Is it your argument that the media did not overhype this? and that the media is not sensationalist?