JFK Terror Plot More Talk Than Action

By MICHAEL POWELL and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM
June 4, 2007
NYTimes

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.

“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...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.

...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.

...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...

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.

...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.”

...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.

...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.”