Keeping An Ear Out For Trouble
The grandiose but poorly conceived plan of a four-man terrorist cell to blow up the fuel pipelines running into JFK Airport was recently nipped in the bud, with security consequences still rippling across airports everywhere.
The plotters included an ex-JFK cargo-handler and a former member of Guyana’s parliament.
“The plot was foiled with the help of an informant who recorded conversations with the suspects, some as recent as last month,” said a U.S. government official.
Security agents said the plot began in the United States and spread to Trinidad and Guyana. The roving “informant” and his tape recorder must have been very internationally mobile. However, it’s probably more likely that the plotters’ plans were being spied on by the covert communications intercept satellite system known as ECHELON (tinyurl.com/566hl).
ECHELON has been in use for international and U.S. domestic phone, fax and data intercepts since shortly after 9-11. Its computers grind through the cacophony of conversations; its software (called Silkworth for voice and SIRE for data) looks for key terrorist-related words from a National Security Agency (NSA) dictionary of thousands of distinctive words and giveaway phrases in different languages and dialects. Another software program searches for individual speech patterns.
Satellite ground stations in the UK, France, Australia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and Japan (and many others) pass the downloaded “trigger” intercepts for decryption, analysis and collation direct to NSA HQ in Fort Meade, VA, just outside Washington, DC.
To comply with constitution-based rules against US intelligence agencies spying on its own citizens, the “product” is sifted and further assessed for intelligence value by an FBI team using another spectral intelligence prism, before being disseminated to additional government departments, such as Homeland Security and the Pentagon.
By Executive Order, conversations recorded by ECHELON are declassified but may retain their source security. They are legally admissible and not differentiated from a conventional phone-tap or body “wire” (the official claim in this instance).
Authorities say that two suspects were taken into custody on Friday, June 1, in Trinidad and Tobago. They include Abdul Kadir, a citizen of Guyana and former member of its parliament, and Kareem Ibrahim, a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago. Their extradition was being sought. Russell Defreitas, a US citizen and native of Guyana was arrested in New York last week.
The suspects are linked to an Islamist extremist group in Trinidad. A fourth suspect in what US authorities said was a plot to blow up New York’s JFK Airport surrendered to police last week, proclaiming his innocence. Abdel Nur of Guyana, the only one of four suspects still at large, turned himself in shortly after midday at a police station in Diego Martin in western Trinidad, a senior Trinidad and Tobago police official said.
“I am an innocent man and this is all a setup,” Nur told reporters. US authorities have said Nur and at least one other suspect in the alleged plot belonged to Jamaat al Muslimeen, a Muslim group behind a 1990 coup attempt in Trinidad.
Their known affiliations are as good as a noose around their necks. The case follows one last month in which US authorities arrested six Muslims, aged 22 to 28, on suspicion of planning to attack the military base at Fort Dix, New Jersey. A federal grand jury on Tuesday indicted the six who’d also been found in possession of an extensive arsenal of military style weapons.
The US attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Roslynn Mauskopf, at a news conference in New York, stated: “The devastation that would be caused at JFK … is just unthinkable.” However, experts say that the plot to blow up the 64km pipeline from New Jersey to JFK Airport would have failed dismally, as any explosion would have been localized and not propagated along the pipe to “on airport” fuel farms.
Nevertheless, a virtual fence with state-of-the-art heat, movement and video sensors to detect and deter terrorists is being installed around Kennedy and three other New York- area airports modeled on systems at Israel’s Ben-Gurion and Baghdad’s airports. The 57-mile system, expected to be in operation early next year, is designed to tip off police to a plot like the one unveiled last week.
Strategically placed sensors, including radar, video motion detectors, thermal imagers and closed-circuit television, will send round-the-clock information to a central Port Authority Police station, as well as to a command post at each airport. The system will also be able to send instant video to first responders to stop an intruder in real time. Welcome to Fortress America.
The fact is, the plot bore no connection to al Qaeda. Despite doubts that the plot would have proceeded, let alone succeeded, attention is once again being drawn to the involvement of airport “insiders” in such a plan. It’s also a warning to all against playful plotting, even in claimed vindictive fantasy or jest.
When it comes down to petulant, make-believe or posturing incitement of sedition and conspiracy, Uncle Sam has no sense of humor whatsoever. ECHELON doesn’t know the difference, the legal system just doesn’t care to make the distinction, and politicians will shamelessly play it for mileage.