NEW YORK (AP) -- An informant who helped break up an alleged plot to bomb a fuel pipeline feeding the city's busiest airport was so convincing to the suspects that they actually thanked God he was with them, federal authorities said.
The informant made several overseas trips to discuss the plot against John F. Kennedy International Airport, even visiting a radical Muslim group's compound in Trinidad, officials said. He also joined the plotters on airport surveillance trips -- where authorities were waiting, they said.
The suspects were convinced he was guided by a higher purpose: The ringleader believed the informant "had been sent by Allah to be the one" to pull off the bombing, according to a federal complaint. (Watch how the feds allegedly foiled the plot Video)
The four-person plot, revealed Saturday, demonstrated the growing importance of informants in the government's efforts to combat terrorism, particularly as smaller radical groups become more aggressive.
Accused mastermind Russell Defreitas, 63, is now in custody in New York, where he will have a bail hearing on Wednesday.
But two other suspects, Kareem Ibrahim and Abdul Kadir, a former member of Guyana's Parliament, were in Trinidad and will fight extradition to the United States, their lawyer, Rajid Persad, told a Trinidadian court on Monday.
Officials also have identified Kadir as a former mayor of a Guyanese town.
The two made their initial court appearance there on one count each of conspiracy to commit a terrorist act against the government of the United States. The judge set a bail hearing for June 11 and an extradition hearing on August 2.
Authorities in Trinidad are still seeking a fourth suspect, Abdel Nur.
Tom Corrigan, a former member of the FBI-New York Police Department Joint Terrorism Task Force, said the Kennedy airport case and the recent plot to attack Fort Dix illustrated the need for inside information.
Six men were arrested in a plot to attack soldiers at the New Jersey military base after an FBI informant infiltrated that group. (Full story)
"These have been two significant cases back-to-back where informants were used," Corrigan said. "These terrorists are in our own backyard. They may have to reach out to people they don't necessarily trust, but they need -- for guns, explosives, whatever."
Without informants, Corrigan said, investigators are often left with little more than educated guesswork. "In most cases, you can't get from A to B without an informant," said the ex-NYPD detective.
In the Kennedy airport case, the informant was a twice-convicted drug dealer who found himself in the midst of a terrorist plot conceived as more devastating than the September 11, 2001, attacks.
"Would you like to die as a martyr?" the informant was asked, according to the indictment.
He unhesitatingly replied yes and soon was making surveillance trips around the airport -- the "chicken farm," as the planners dubbed their target.
Authorities said the JFK scheme was an example of homegrown terrorism. Defreitas immigrated to the U.S. more than 30 years ago, but he told the federal informant that his feelings of disgust toward his adopted homeland had lingered for years. (Watch a rundown on the four suspects Video)
Defreitas, in custody Sunday pending a bail hearing, was arrested Friday night outside Brooklyn's Lindenwood Diner -- a spot once bugged by federal officials tracking former Gambino family boss John A. "Junior" Gotti.
The four Muslim men accused in the JFK plot didn't turn to Pakistan, Iran or Afghanistan for support after targeting the airport, home to an average of 1,000 daily flights and 45 million passengers annually.
Instead, according to a federal complaint, the informant and defendants Ibrahim and Defreitas visited a compound belonging to Jamaat al Muslimeen, a radical Islamic group known for launching a bloody 1990 coup attempt in Trinidad that involved taking the prime minister and his Cabinet hostage. It left 24 people dead.
Though Jamaat al Muslimeen did have contact with the men accused in the Kennedy airport plot, it is not accused of offering them any support. The group, whose followers are largely black converts to Sunni Islam, has faded as a political force in Trinidad as its leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, fends off criminal charges of inciting violence.
The rebels in the 1990 raid on Parliament surrendered and were pardoned.
When Defreitas discussed his radical "brothers" with the informant, he made it clear they were not Arabs, but from Trinidad and Guyana. (Watch whether the plot was feasible Video)
The complaint made clear the informant had deeply infiltrated the group. Defreitas, a retired JFK airport cargo worker, made four reconnaissance missions to the airport, authorities said. They captured each one on audio and video equipment.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
JFK Plot foiled.
Moderators: sky's the limit, sepia, Sulako, lilfssister, North Shore, I WAS Birddog
JFK Plot foiled.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/04/jfk.plot.ap/index.html
Khaleej TimesExperts cast doubt on credibility of JFK plot
(AFP)
5 June 2007
NEW YORK - An alleged plot to blow up fuel tanks and pipelines at New York’s JFK airport had little chance of success, according to safety experts, who have questioned whether the plot ever posed a real threat.
US authorities said Saturday they had averted an attack that could have resulted in “unfathomable damage, deaths, and destruction,” and charged four alleged Islamic radicals with conspiracy to cause an explosion at the airport.
But according to the experts, it would have been next to impossible to cause an explosion in the jet fuel tanks and pipeline. Furthermore, the plotters seem to have lacked the explosives and financial backing to carry out the attack.
John Goglia, a former member of National Transportation Safety Board, said that if the plot had ever been carried out, it would likely have sparked a fire but little else, and certainly not the mass carnage authorities described.
“You could definitely reach the tank, definitely start the fire, but to get the kind of explosion that they were thinking that they were going to get... this is virtually impossible to do,” he told AFP.
The fuel pipelines around the airport would similarly burn, rather than explode, because they are a full of fuel and unable to mix with enough oxygen.
“We had a number of fires in the US. All that happens is a big fire,” he said. “It won’t blow up, it will only burn.”
Even if the attackers had managed to blow up a fuel tank, the impact would be limited, he said, citing the example of North Vietnamese forces attacking US fuel dumps during the Vietnam war.
“They hit the fuel tanks with pretty big rockets. You would get a big fire but not a big explosion other than the rocket.”
“There is a difference between just exploding the tank and a huge explosion. The tank may explode and blow up some metal, but that certainly wouldn’t go very far,” he said.
His comments contrasted with those of US Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf, who insisted at the weekend that “the devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable.”
Jake Magish, an engineer with Supersafe Tank Systems, also cast doubt on the credibility of the plot, saying: “The fantasy that I’ve heard about the people saying “they will blow the tank and destroy the airport,’ is nonsense.”
“There are people there responding to hysteria, I think. But from an engineering point of view, if someone is successful in blowing a hole into a tank, they will just have a fire from one tank.
“There is no way for the fire to go from tank to tank, that is nonsense. It just won’t happen.”
Besides the alleged plotters’ capability, other questions have focused on the main source in the probe — a convicted drug dealer who infiltrated the group and whose sentence was pending as part of his cooperation with police.
Neal Sonnett, a former federal prosecutor, told the New York Times there was also a danger in overstating how serious or sophisticated a plot really was.
“There unfortunately has been a tendency to shout too loudly about such cases,” he said. “To the extent that you over-hype a case, you create fear and paranoia,” he said.
The New York Times on Sunday pointedly avoided giving much coverage to the alleged plot, devoting only a brief on its front page continued on the local section, despite the story breaking in the early afternoon on Saturday.
Former Advocate for Floatplane Safety
[quote]
How to Foil a Terrorist Plot in Seven Simple Steps
Norah Ephron
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. In order to foil a terrorist plot, you must first find a terrorist plot. This is not easy.
2. Not just anyone can find and then foil a terrorist plot. You must have an incentive. The best incentive is to be an accused felon, looking at a long prison term. Under such circumstances, your lawyer will explain to you, you may be able to reduce your sentence by acting as an informant in a criminal case, preferably one involving terrorists.
3. The fact that you do not know any actual terrorists should not in any way deter you. Necessity is the mother of invention: if you can find the right raw material -- a sad, sick, lonely, drunk, deranged, disgruntled or just plain anti-American Muslim somewhere in the United States -- you can make your very own terrorist.
4. Now the good part begins. Money! The FBI will give you lots of money to take your very own terrorist out to lots of dinners where you, wearing a wire, can record yourself making recommendations to him about possible targets and weapons that might be used in the impending terrorist attack that your very own terrorist is going to mastermind, with your help. It will even buy you a computer so you can go to Google Earth in order to show your very own terrorist a "top secret" aerial image of the target you have suggested.
5. More money!! The FBI will give you even more money to travel to foreign countries with your very own terrorist, and it will make suggestions about terrorist groups you can meet while in said foreign countries.
6. Months and even years will pass in this fashion, while you essentially get the FBI to pay for everything you do. (Incidentally, be sure your lawyer negotiates your expense account well in advance, or you may be forced -- as the informant was in the Buffalo terrorist case -- to protest your inadequate remuneration by setting yourself on fire in front of the White House.)
7. At a certain point, something will go wrong. You may have trouble recruiting other people to collaborate with your very own terrorist, who is, as you yourself know, just an ordinary guy in a really bad mood. Or, alternatively, the terrorist cell you have carefully cobbled together may malfunction and fail to move forward -- probably as a result of sheer incompetence or of simply not having been genuinely serious about the acts of terrorism you were urging it to commit. At this point, you may worry that the FBI is going to realize that there isn't much of a terrorist plot going on here at all, just a case of entrapment. Do not despair: the FBI is way ahead of you. The FBI knows perfectly well what's going on. The FBI has as much at stake as you do. So before it can be obvious to the world that there's no case, the FBI will arrest your very own terrorist, hold a press conference and announce that a huge terrorist plot has been foiled. It will of course be forced to admit that this plot did not proceed beyond the pre-planning stage, that no actual weapons or money were involved, and that the plot itself was "not technically feasible," but that will not stop the story from becoming a front-page episode all over America and, within hours, boilerplate for all the Republican politicians who believe that you need to arrest a "homegrown" terrorist now and then to justify the continuing war in Iraq. Everyone will be happy, except for the schmuck you shmikeled into becoming a terrorist, and no one really cares about him anyway.
So congratulations. You have foiled a terrorist plot. Way to go.
How to Foil a Terrorist Plot in Seven Simple Steps
Norah Ephron
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. In order to foil a terrorist plot, you must first find a terrorist plot. This is not easy.
2. Not just anyone can find and then foil a terrorist plot. You must have an incentive. The best incentive is to be an accused felon, looking at a long prison term. Under such circumstances, your lawyer will explain to you, you may be able to reduce your sentence by acting as an informant in a criminal case, preferably one involving terrorists.
3. The fact that you do not know any actual terrorists should not in any way deter you. Necessity is the mother of invention: if you can find the right raw material -- a sad, sick, lonely, drunk, deranged, disgruntled or just plain anti-American Muslim somewhere in the United States -- you can make your very own terrorist.
4. Now the good part begins. Money! The FBI will give you lots of money to take your very own terrorist out to lots of dinners where you, wearing a wire, can record yourself making recommendations to him about possible targets and weapons that might be used in the impending terrorist attack that your very own terrorist is going to mastermind, with your help. It will even buy you a computer so you can go to Google Earth in order to show your very own terrorist a "top secret" aerial image of the target you have suggested.
5. More money!! The FBI will give you even more money to travel to foreign countries with your very own terrorist, and it will make suggestions about terrorist groups you can meet while in said foreign countries.
6. Months and even years will pass in this fashion, while you essentially get the FBI to pay for everything you do. (Incidentally, be sure your lawyer negotiates your expense account well in advance, or you may be forced -- as the informant was in the Buffalo terrorist case -- to protest your inadequate remuneration by setting yourself on fire in front of the White House.)
7. At a certain point, something will go wrong. You may have trouble recruiting other people to collaborate with your very own terrorist, who is, as you yourself know, just an ordinary guy in a really bad mood. Or, alternatively, the terrorist cell you have carefully cobbled together may malfunction and fail to move forward -- probably as a result of sheer incompetence or of simply not having been genuinely serious about the acts of terrorism you were urging it to commit. At this point, you may worry that the FBI is going to realize that there isn't much of a terrorist plot going on here at all, just a case of entrapment. Do not despair: the FBI is way ahead of you. The FBI knows perfectly well what's going on. The FBI has as much at stake as you do. So before it can be obvious to the world that there's no case, the FBI will arrest your very own terrorist, hold a press conference and announce that a huge terrorist plot has been foiled. It will of course be forced to admit that this plot did not proceed beyond the pre-planning stage, that no actual weapons or money were involved, and that the plot itself was "not technically feasible," but that will not stop the story from becoming a front-page episode all over America and, within hours, boilerplate for all the Republican politicians who believe that you need to arrest a "homegrown" terrorist now and then to justify the continuing war in Iraq. Everyone will be happy, except for the schmuck you shmikeled into becoming a terrorist, and no one really cares about him anyway.
So congratulations. You have foiled a terrorist plot. Way to go.
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No shit, eh?
Here's another scenario.
I get all boozed up at a bar and some undercover guy says, "You're a machinist? Can you make a bomb?"
I become cocky, "Oh yeah buddy, for free beer, show me a print, gimme a mill and a lathe and I can make anything you want. I've made all kinds of stuff. I don't know @#$! all about electrical stuff though. Don't even know how to use a volt meter. I got one for Christmas once, put the ends in a socket after a few barley pops because I was bored, and blew up the outlet. Totally melted those metal parts on the thing. You know at the ends of the wires. After that, I threw it in the garbage. By the way, I'm a pilot too."
BAM! In comes the RCMP and I'm fucked.
The news reports that- "An undercover officer foiled a plot by a mastermind machinist who had a history of destroying electrical devices and could have potentially made parts for a weapon of mass destruction. The suspect also had completed flight training."
If they need a patsy, they'll make one.
-istp
Here's another scenario.
I get all boozed up at a bar and some undercover guy says, "You're a machinist? Can you make a bomb?"
I become cocky, "Oh yeah buddy, for free beer, show me a print, gimme a mill and a lathe and I can make anything you want. I've made all kinds of stuff. I don't know @#$! all about electrical stuff though. Don't even know how to use a volt meter. I got one for Christmas once, put the ends in a socket after a few barley pops because I was bored, and blew up the outlet. Totally melted those metal parts on the thing. You know at the ends of the wires. After that, I threw it in the garbage. By the way, I'm a pilot too."
BAM! In comes the RCMP and I'm fucked.
The news reports that- "An undercover officer foiled a plot by a mastermind machinist who had a history of destroying electrical devices and could have potentially made parts for a weapon of mass destruction. The suspect also had completed flight training."
If they need a patsy, they'll make one.
-istp
