Terror alert

I resisted the urge to comment yesterday on the Fort Dix terror arrests, but having had some time to think about what happened and having heard Keith Olbermann’s comments, I thought I’d weigh in.

First, if the information released by the feds is correct, then the six men arrested should face some jail time — significant time.

Second, and this is where the Olbermann comments come in, there was a breathless quality to the reporting yesterday, taking what were a half dozen somewhat ineffectual terrorist wannabes and elevating them to mastermind status. As I said, these guys deserve jail time, but we shouldn’t turn this into more than it was.

Consider the basic facts as reported:

A suspect brings a videotape of some of the men “shooting assault weapons at a firing range, shouting in Arabic and calling for jihad, or holy war” to a South Jersey video store. The clerk reports the tape’s contents to police and the FBI becomes involved. The group spends time discussing its plot — which at various times included attacks on Fort Dix and the Army-Navy football game — and engages in a second weapons training in the Poconos.

Based on what has been reported, The FBI and police acted appropriately — they cannot afford to take chances — though the announcement was not made without the kind of hyperbole that has come to characterize the Bush administration’s approach to terrorism investigations. Consider this comment from yesterday’s press conference (above photo from New York Times):

“This is a new brand of terrorism where a small cell of people can bring enormous devastation,” Christopher J. Christie, the United States attorney for New Jersey, said at an afternoon news conference at the courthouse here.

And this:

“Today we dodged a bullet,” J. P. Weiss, special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Philadelphia office, said at the news conference. “In fact, when you look at the type of weapons that this group was trying to purchase, we may have dodged a lot of bullets.”

Mr. Weiss added: “We had a group that was forming a platoon to take on an army. They identified their target, they did their reconnaissance. They had maps. And they were in the process of buying weapons. Luckily, we were able to stop that.”

Again, I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of a potential attack, but the rhetoric here seems to be way out of proportion with the facts. The New York Times, in its front page story today, offered a glimpse at the kind of self control that the media should have shown:

The arrests came after a 15-month investigation during which the F.B.I. and two informers who had infiltrated the group taped them training with automatic weapons in rural Pennsylvania, conducting surveillance of military bases in the Northeast, watching videos of Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers and trying to buy AK-47 assault rifles.

The authorities described the suspects as Islamic extremists and said they represented the newest breed of threat: loosely organized domestic militants unconnected to — but inspired by — Al Qaeda or other international terror groups.

But the criminal complaint that details the plot describes an effort that was alternately ambitious and clumsy, with the men at turns declaring themselves eager to sacrifice their lives in the name of Allah and worrying about getting arrested or deported for buying weapons or possessing a map of a military base.

Simple, to the point, the paper encapsulates the entire affair in a few paragraphs, giving the details of the arrests and plot, without blowing the plot out of proportion.

In the end, however, I think Keith Olbermann’s comments on the media storm are probably on target:

The ultimate premise of the war in Iraq and the ultimate premise, certainly, of the Republican presidential campaign ahead, counterterrorism. The FBI claims it has broken up a plot to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey. The flaw, though, in the breathless reporting of the purported terror cell, the bureau infiltrated the six-person group after its members took video of themselves practicing with assault weapons, brought the tape to a photo store, and had it transferred to a DVD.

The details of the supposed plot don‘t seem to hold together that well either, though that did not stop extensive and entirely credulous coverage on TV, the Internet, in print today. The men supposedly had plans to gain access to the base disguised as pizza delivery guys, then cut the power somehow, they, quote, “hit four, five, or six Humvees and light the whole place, and retreat without any losses.” And take the tape of yourselves practicing and have it copied at PhotoMat. In other words, the FBI has arrested six morons.

Perhaps a bit too strong, but then these were not the 9-11 hijackers and this was not the major coup that it is being painted as. What we have is a solid piece of law enforcement.

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Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.

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