JFK plot had little chance of success
Terror: Documents show suspects were long on evil intent, short on capability.
By Michael Powell and William K. Rashbaum, The New York Times
06/03/2007 10:31:10 PM PDT
http://www.presstelegram.com/news/ci_6054832 NEW YORK - 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 U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said in a news release that announced charges against four men.
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But a reading of the criminal complaint filed by the federal authorities against the four defendants in the case - one of them remained at large Sunday - suggests a less than mature terror plan, a proposed effort longer on evil intent than on operational capability.
At its heart was a 63-year-old retired airport cargo worker, Russell 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 conceptualizing or planning a terror attack.
"Capability low, intent very high," a law enforcement official said of the plotters.
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Neal R. Sonnett, a defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor who was chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney's office in Miami, congratulated the FBI 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," he said. "It would have served the federal government well to say that."