Terrorism charges against seven Florida men whose plans to blow up the Sears Tower and other targets barely extended beyond the talking stage represent a strategy of fighting terror by pre-empting possible attacks rather than allowing them to incubate into more concrete plots, federal authorities said Friday.
The turn to early intervention comes as law-enforcement officials increasingly worry about the involvement of “homegrown terrorists,” suspects who are not members of Al Qaeda but are inspired by its violent message and may be exceedingly difficult to detect because they do not stand out the way foreigners might.
Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales said train bombers in London last July and in Madrid in 2004, as well as a ring of 17 alleged Canadian terrorists arrested three weeks ago, “were not sleeper operatives sent on suicide missions. They were students and business people and members of the community . . . who, for whatever reason, came to view their home country as the enemy. And it’s a problem we face here in the United States as well.”
Five of the men arrested in the Sears Tower case–Stanley Grant “Brother Sunni” Phanor, Naudimar “Brother Naudy” Herrera, Burson “Brother B” Augustin, Rotschild “Brother Rot” Augustine and the alleged ringleader, Narseal “Prince Manna” Batiste, a Chicago native, are U.S. citizens.
A sixth man, Lyglenson “Brother Levi” Lemorin, is a legal resident in the U.S., while the seventh man, Patrick “Brother Pat” Abraham, is an illegal immigrant from Haiti, officials said. The group, whose members’ ages range from 22 to 32, operated out of a warehouse in the impoverished Liberty City neighborhood in Miami, where most of the arrests occurred.
Five of the men were arraigned Friday before a federal judge in Miami and were questioned by U.S. Magistrate Judge Patrick White about their employment and ability to hire attorneys. All replied that they could not afford lawyers and were assigned public defenders.
Batiste, the first to appear, told the court he has four children, was self-employed and earned $30,000 a year but had no personal property and no current means of support. The five are scheduled to appear in court again next Friday.
A sixth defendant, Lemorin, was arrested in Atlanta and made a court appearance there. Phanor is in jail on what authorities said is an unrelated state charge and has not made a court appearance.
If convicted, each man faces a maximum of 70 years in prison.
While Gonzales and other officials heralded the arrests as a win for proactive law enforcement, there also were signs that the timing and content of the announcement was calibrated for maximum political benefit.
The announcement of the arrests eclipsed reports by major newspapers that the government was secretly tapping a database of confidential international bank transactions in order to track terrorist financing. Unlike many other anti-terrorism surveillance measures, the clandestine monitoring program is controversial because it is not overseen by a judge.
At the same time, Republicans in recent days have renewed their embrace of national security as an issue to emphasize in midterm congressional elections this fall.
In Chicago, Cheney cites threat
Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking Friday in Chicago, told an audience during a political fundraiser that the plot against the Sears Tower was evidence the nation needs to remain vigilant, especially at home.
“Unless somebody thinks that the threat has gone away and does not exist, they ought to look at their morning newspaper,” Cheney said at the Chicago Hilton and Towers. “It is a very real threat. There are still people out there who are doing everything they can to kill Americans.”
Gonzales said the decision to arrest the men Thursday was made “by the folks in Miami, by the career folks, the career investigators, the career prosecutors” and not by political appointees in Washington.
According to officials and the indictment in the Florida case, the accused men were “separatists” who did not believe that the U.S. government had legal authority over them and sought to work with Al Qaeda. They allegedly swore an oath of allegiance to the terrorist organization but wound up conspiring with an FBI informant.
Authorities alleged that the plot began in December when Batiste met with a man he thought was an Al Qaeda operative and declared his desire to wage war against the U.S. government. Batiste presented the purported operative with a list of needed supplies, including boots, bulletproof vests, radios, machine guns and $50,000 in cash, and received the boots, according to the indictment.
Authorities said he also received a digital video camera to take reconnaissance video of targeted buildings, which included the FBI building in North Miami Beach, federal court buildings and the Federal Detention Center, all in Miami-Dade County.
Batiste included the Sears Tower on his list of targets because of his familiarity with Chicago, officials said.
`Kill all the devils we can’
Batiste said he wanted to wage “a full ground war” against the United States and wanted to “kill all the devils we can” in a mission that would “be just as good or greater than 9/11,” beginning with the destruction of the Sears Tower, the indictment states.
The last activity in the plot occurred May 24, when, according to the indictment, Batiste told the “Al Qaeda representative” that “he was experiencing delays because of various problems within his organization but that he wanted to continue his mission and maintain his relationship with Al Qaeda.”
Gonzales said he is confident authorities have “sufficient facts to support this prosecution,” but he acknowledged that Batiste’s group did not have the means to carry out an attack and that targets in Chicago and Miami never were in danger.
“Our philosophy is that we try to identify plots in the earliest stages possible, because we don’t know what we don’t know about a terrorism plot, and that once we have sufficient information to move forward with the prosecution, that’s what we do,” Gonzales said.
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The men had no ties to Jose Padilla, the former Chicago gang member who was influenced by radical Islamic clerics in South Florida, a senior law-enforcement official said.
Padilla, who authorities once alleged planned to set off a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the U.S., faces a September trial in Miami on terrorism charges.
Officials declined to discuss any ties between the accused men and mosques or Islamic groups in South Florida. But Muslim leaders denounced the seven men as members of a religious cult and implored the news media not to refer to them as Muslims.
Officials also declined to discuss how the informant came to infiltrate the group, although FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said the first meeting “occurred as a result of Batiste disclosing his intent to commit an attack.”
`Searching for the way’
In Miami, U.S. Atty. Alexander Acosta said “there is and has not been any immediate threat” but that the suspects “certainly had the will. They were searching for the way.”
In Washington and Miami, officials faced skeptical questioning from reporters about the plotters’ apparent lack of sophistication and about why the government waited nearly a month before making the arrests.
Word of the arrests leaked Thursday night just as FBI Director Robert Mueller appeared on “Larry King Live” on CNN television and confirmed them.
On Friday, Deputy Atty. Gen. Paul McNulty held a briefing to discuss the Justice Department’s terrorism prosecution strategy.
McNulty rejected the notion that the case against the Florida men was somehow less significant because of the suspects’ apparent lack of skill.
In a recent speech, McNulty emphasized the need to identify plots “at the earliest possible stage and to respond with forward-leaning–preventative–prosecutions.”
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