By Brigitte L. Nacos
In today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports under the headline "FBI Role in Terror Probe Questioned" about the seven Floridians who were arrestred a few months ago for conspiring to aid a terrorist organization (Al Qaeda) and for plotting to bomb a federal building. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales led an army of officials who used press conferences to praise the administration's commitment and success to prevent terrorist attacks. But now Pincus learned from court records that the "deadly plot" described by Gonzales was "virtually the pipe dream" of a bunch of unsophisticated men who had virtually no ability to achieve their alleged goal of bombing and toppling the Sears Tower in Chicago. Instead, these men may have been sucked deeper into their illusionary plot by questionable FBI informers.
Contrary to their British colleagues who have fingered real terrorist cells and plotters, Gonzales (like his predecessor Ashcroft) and the law enforcement agency he presides over seem less adapt in distinguishing between serious plotters and delusional would-be terrorists. The multiple terror attacks on London's transit system last year, the similar but failed follow-up strikes two weeks later, the foiled plot last month, and perhaps the new arrests by the Metropolitican Police today point to the different situations in the United Kingdom (and other European countries) and the United States: whereas there is evidence of a small number of dangerous homegrown Muslim extremists at the other side of the Atlantic, the same is not the case in the United States. The fact that the FBI so far has not discovered one plot even close to the potency of those found in the United Kingdom speaks to the different conditions here and there.
This does not mean that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies should not look out for homegrown plotters or newscomers going down that path. There is always the chance of such developments. But in the absence of such serious threats and plots, it does not make sense to stage "breaking news" by hyping the fantastic dreams of down-on-their-luck souls into deadly terrorist plots. In the case of the Floridians, the Attorney General's eagerness to showcase his department's counterterrorism record was transparent from the outset--for reporters and probably for the public as well. For precisely that reason I doubt that the publicity effort bolstered the public's trust in their government's ability to prevent real terrorist plots.
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