War on Terror

Sometimes we don’t know the price of safety

March 2008

The Terror Nobody Knows: Thwarted Attacks on the U.S.

A story by Joseph Abrams of FoxNews.com claims that in July 2005, the Los Angeles Police Department caught a group of men who had been robbing gas stations in the area. While investigating, police uncovered something far worse: The gas station hits were bankrolling a terrorist plot to attack National Guard facilities, synagogues, the Israeli consulate and Los Angeles International Airport.

• Deputy Chief of Police Michael Downing says the group was "closer to going operational at the time than anyone since 9/11."
• Thomas P. O'Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, says, "An untold number of lives may have been saved when this terrorist cell was dismantled."
• This story is hardly unique: Since Sept. 11, authorities have disrupted more than 20 publicly known plots against domestic U.S. targets, involving dozens of arrests at home and abroad.
• Some of these plots are well-known, such as Richard Reid's failed "shoe bombing" in December 2001 and the liquid explosives plot of 2006, when British investigators uncovered a plan to carry bombs on airliners bound for the U.S. Each of those incidents permanently changed airport security protocols.
• Then there was the plot to kill U.S. soldiers using assault rifles and grenades at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and the so-called "Lackawanna Six," who pleaded guilty to providing support to Al Qaeda.
• But others have passed by with little notice from the general public, as well as critics of government efforts to protect the U.S. from homegrown terror attacks.
• Take, for example, Iyman Faris, of Columbus, Ohio, who plotted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and was convicted of conspiracy and providing material support for Al Qaeda in 2003.
• Later that year 11 men with connections to Al Qaeda were discovered training for jihad in Virginia, using paintball games to simulate battlefield situations.
• In 2004, James Elshafay and Shahawar Matin Siraj were convicted of planning to bomb New York's Penn Station during the Republican National Convention.
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a household name in the United States because of his role as mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, is also known to have prepared little-known strikes against America's tallest building, the Sears Tower in Chicago, as well as the Empire State Building in New York and the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles.
• In contrast, Dhiren Barot may not be a familiar name, although some security experts say he should be. An Indian convert to Islam, the Pakistan-based Barot planned a series of ruinous attacks on the U.S. and U.K, including the New York Stock Exchange and the IMF building in Washington, D.C. Barot was caught by British authorities in 2004 and sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiracy to commit murder.
• Andrew McCarthy, director of the Center for Law and Counterterrorism at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, credits much of the success in preventing terrorist attacks at home to the pursuit of enemies overseas.
• "There have been days in Iraq and Afghanistan," he says, "where we have killed or captured more terrorists than we did between 1993, when the World Trade Center was attacked, and 2001, when the World Trade Center was destroyed."
• "But," McCarthy cautions, "once you get them over here, the rules of the justice system apply."

Get The Full Scoop

FoxNews.com

The Terror Nobody Knows: Thwarted Attacks on the U.S.
By Joseph Abrams

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Our Take

Too often we don’t get enough media coverage of those that actually fight hard – and successfully – to keep us safe. Usually, the heroes are unheralded because it’s not a story until something dastardly happens. But let’s take a moment now to applaud such men as those of the Los Angeles Police Department, who continue to fight and win the War on Terror day in and day out by doing their part at home. The mass media may be uninterested, but you have all our appreciation. Great work!