Some interesting news came out today regarding a home grown terrorist plot to kill hundreds of innocent people:

Four New York men were arrested Wednesday in connection with an alleged plot to blow up area Jewish centers and military targets. The plot, however, was foiled by undercover agents. 
        
Raids by the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force in the Bronx captured the suspected ringleader and three followers in what law enforcement sources are calling a homegrown terrorist plot. 

…

Agents and police watched Wednesday night as the suspects allegedly planted what they thought were bombs outside two Jewish community centers in Riverdale, a Bronx, New York neighborhood. In one case the suspected terrorists planted a bomb inside a parked car.  However, officials said the suspects were actually using fake explosives given to them in an earlier sting operation to make sure they didn’t get their hands on real bombs. 

…

Authorities said they had the plotters under surveillance since June of 2008 and there was “no chance” the alleged scheme could succeed. They credited the work of a long time informant with keeping tabs on the group.

The FBI said the Muslim suspects were angry and full of hate for America.  

…

“Hatred of the West. The leader of the group, James Cromitie was concerned about deaths at the hands of the U.S. military in Afghanistan,” and also expressed anti-Jewish sentiment, Joseph Demarest the head of the New York FBI said.

…

Cromitie was the first to approach the informant, authorities said.  He told the informant he has ties to the terrorist group Jaish-e-Mohammad.  Authorities said Cromitie had 27 past arrests and had recently been working at a nation-wide discount retailer, authorities said.

Several of the suspects have previously been arrested on drug charges and may have converted to Islam in prison, authorities said.

Emphasis mine. One has to wonder how someone tied to a terrorist group which originates inside Pakistan was steered to ‘an informant’. My speculation is Cromitie stayed in contact with his father, and his father is the one who has the ties to JeM. Again, purely speculating, I could envision people believed or known to be associated with a terrorist group outside the US were possibly in contact with Cromitie and/or others, which allowed the FBI to detect the threat and begin to lead these people to the ‘informant’ so they could keep tabs on them and direct them to these dummy weapons.

If the NSA did detect the initial threat under its surveillance of communications from outside the US to people inside the US, and if that detection allowed the FBI to investigate and – over time – trap these murderous thugs, then we may have the first example of the new FISA-NSA guidelines, implemented under Bush to hysterical Chicken Little lies from the left, of these procedures saving American lives.

I also note that there is a now established breeding ground inside our prisons for violent, radical Islam recruitment. This iadds a lot of weight to the statement made by the current head of the FBI I noted yesterday regarding the risk of bringing the GITMO detainees into our prison system. This is one case where we don’t want to keep our enemies close to us, since they are quite able to recruit Americans to do their bloody work. Mueller is right, Obama is wrong, and we don’t need to help our enemies recruit killers from inside our prisons.

Addendum: I know the stories claim there are no ties to outside terrorists organizations. Let’s just say I will not take this claim at face value for numerous reasons. First off, we don’t tip our hand on how we detect these threats. But secondly, and more importantly, I would wager a lot of people would not to taint these legal actions with even the hint the threat was detected through the dreaded NSA-FISA processes, which would bring other legal actions from the ACLU etc, into the mix. While it is completely plausible this was from an informant who freaked over something he learned, it is also plausible the reporting is not completely accurate in all details.

Tags: FISA, JEM, NSA, NY Bomb Threat, Pakistan