"Unlike other cases we've done, there was no clear ringleader," U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie said in an interview. "They all seemed to feed off each other. They were clearly guys turning to this element for inspiration. They wanted to be jihadists."
At the same time, a 26-page indictment unsealed Tuesday indicates that the group had no rigorous military training and did not appear close to being able to pull off an attack. The arrests in the case began Monday night after two defendants arrived at a local home to buy assault weapons, which had been supplied and disabled by the FBI, officials said.
[snip]
The FBI first got wind of the alleged plot in January 2006, after an unidentified store clerk alerted police to a video that showed the men firing assault weapons, calling for jihad and yelling "God is great" in Arabic, officials said. The men had submitted the video file to the store so that it could be copied onto a DVD, authorities said.Could it be that this conveniently distracting capture was helped along by this nice old man?
Update 5/11: Josh Marshall notes:
There also seems to be more than a hint of entrapment in the role the government informant played in helping arrange the planned attack. Back in November one of the plotters called a Philly police officer and told him that he'd been approached by someone [i.e., the government informant] "who was pressuring him to obtain a map of Fort Dix, and that he feared the incident was terrorist-related."
How ... conveeeeeennient....
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