Sunday
3 Jun 2007
JFK Terror Plotter Was Airport Employee
By Annie Jacobsen in category U.S. Homeland Security, Airport Security & Screening
Federal Investigators have disrupted a plot by Islamic extremists to blow up JFK Airport as well as the airport's jet fuel storage and pipeline systems which stretch through several New York boroughs, through New Jersey and all the way to a supply point in Allentown, Pennsylvania. "The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is unthinkable," said US attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf at a press conference on Saturday.
The alleged leader of the group, Russell Defreitas, is a retired JFK cargo worker. Also arrested were a former member of Guyana's parliament and a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago.
In a recorded conversation Defreitas, 63, told a FBI informant that his, "unique knowledge of the airport" as a former cargo worker would help him to launch a terrorist attack that would surpass the magnitude of 9/11.
More at MSNBC, National Public Radio, and BBC News.