Gosh, I know if I were police commissioner, I would just tell every random guy who had an appointmen

In bad manners , Crime , Informants and other sophisticated means , Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence , Terrorism , Terrorism and counter-terrorism , undercover investigations on September 25, 2009 at 2:03 pm
In fact as Fairly Civil noted in the first posting on this case there was every evidence for those with eyes to see and ears to listen that this was going to be a case of good investigation and timely preemption.  [Extended excerpts from court documents follow below in this posting.]
Since in intelligence matters, people who actually know what s going on don t talk, and the people who do talk, usually don t know, the media is reduced to flailing about, looking airline tickets cheap flights for a hook to advance the story.
The general direction with a few notable and commendable exceptions, such as J.J. Green of Washington s WTOP radio station is to treat the counter-terrorism forces as overzealous, and the suspects as innocent folk (just like you and me) being viciously profiled and eavesdropped on.
Former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart said a Tuesday meeting with New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly left him doubtful that authorities have uncovered an al-Qaeda terrorist cell that was planning a major terrorist attack.
He works very closely with the FBI. If he had just uncovered any major terror conspiracy I believe he would have told me, Hart told The Denver Post on Wednesday. He met with Kelly in his role as vice chairman of the Homeland Security Council.
Gosh, I know if I were police commissioner, I would just tell every random guy who had an appointment airline tickets cheap flights with me that terrorists were plotting to blow my city up. Especially former senators who as a general rule are real good at keeping their lips sealed.
People, Can We All Get Along? The human interest angle usually pops up fairly airline tickets cheap flights early, too.  This is the part where the alleged terrorists are portrayed as brothers of all mankind, just trying to get along, airline tickets cheap flights being hassled by the profiler man.  Ode to Joy comes to mind.
The Denver Post , no doubt feeling the weight of having an actual accused terrorist right here in the mile-high city [!!] , sent a byte-stained wretch into the field to dig out this stolidly obtuse bit of gullible local color:
airline tickets cheap flights "I have nothing to do with this," said the man, Najibullah Zazi, 25, who was reached by telephone in Colorado on Monday and Tuesday. "This looks like it's going toward me, which is more shocking every hour."
Well, I know I was shocked airline tickets cheap flights .  The Times kicker (ending bit) in the same story left us fairly sobbing with outrage at the horrid conditions those mean old profiling, rights-abusing agents left in the wake of their outrageous Queens raid:
At one raid site, a fifth-floor apartment on 41st Avenue, a tenant, Naiz Khan, spoke of Mr. Zazi, who stayed overnight there on Thursday. He said that he had barely spoken with Mr. Zazi on his recent visit but that they had been closer when they were students at Flushing High School. He said he was committed to helping the F.B.I.
Any beat reporter worth his or her salt knows how to start one of these.  Find an anonymous source from the party of the first part who will likely criticize the party of the second part.  Ask that person a clever question ["Say, what do you really think about the way the Second Department handled that search?"].  Take the answer airline tickets cheap flights ["Those idiots from 2D couldn't find their ass in the dark with a flashlight in both hands!"] to another source in the party of the second part for reaction ["Hate to bother you, but I think it's only fair to get your reaction to something I heard today from an official over in 1D"].
Look, maybe mistakes were made, but my experience has been after having interviewed many, many agents and officials who work in this area is that one can always find those who will criticize airline tickets cheap flights other agencies, but over the long run those working at the point of the spear pull together and put their differences aside.  I personally doubt very much that the JTTF is riven with fissiparous tendencies.
And further by the way, precisely when would the journalistes the editors airline tickets cheap flights and reporters have moved against such a plot?  When would they interrupt bomb-makers?  And would they turn their backs on aspirational bombers, airline tickets cheap flights hoping that they would never become operational and actually blow something up?
Hmm, Maybe But Just Maybe They Have A Little Something Here. As more evidence airline tickets cheap flights emerges , the media fall back on ponderous ruminations that the plot was disrupted before the bumbling plotters were able to create a serious threat. airline tickets cheap flights Curiously, that is not a good thing.  A popular variant is that the FBI (or other agency) undercover agents who infiltrated the cell of would-be terrorists were the true motivating force who pushed a bunch of innocent clowns along the road to perdition.
The central airline tickets cheap flights figure in what authorities describe as a widening airline tickets cheap flights inquiry into a possible plot to detonate explosives in the United States had been trained in weapons airline tickets cheap flights and explosives in Pakistan and, according to court papers released airline tickets cheap flights Sunday, had made nine pages of handwritten notes on how to make and handle bombs.
In a sense, the case reflects the tension that has grown between airline tickets cheap flights intelligence and law enforcement agencies since the September 2001 attacks. Some intelligence officials are prepared to disrupt a group as soon as its activities are discovered, while more case-oriented law enforcement agencies seek to surreptitiously track or infiltrate a suspect group, uncovering all of its members, until there is compelling evidence airline tickets cheap flights to charge airline tickets cheap flights the plotters with a crime.
In this case, officials say, Mr. Zazi and his confederates were apparently airline tickets cheap flights deterred before any plot had a chance to take shape and before investigators were able to clearly understand what the men were planning. That left prosecutors to charge the three men with proxy offenses of making false statements rather than crimes directly involving terrorism.
This is wool-gathering pabulum. airline tickets cheap flights If you think that there have been tensions between law enforcement and intelligence agencies since the September 2001 attacks, you should recall the real Chinese Wall that existed between them before that infamous date.
Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, senior government officials have announced dozens of terrorism cases that on closer examination seemed to diminish as legitimate threats. The accumulating evidence against a Denver airport shuttle driver suggests he may be different, with some investigators calling his case the most serious in years.
Still, the paper can t resist pulling lint out of the navel of so-called aspirational cases, those where nothing went boom because undercover agents defused the plot.  Buried at the very end of this pompous airline tickets cheap flights fugue of faux journalistic expertise in terrorism investigations is a typical media J accuse! format: an agency s admission with a but qualifier.
F.B.I. officials have admitted that such cases are "aspirational" rather than operational. But they note that if the Sept. 11 hijackers — some of whom were unsophisticated recent arrivals to the United States — had been interrupted early on, they might have looked amateurish and the notion that they could turn jetliners into missiles far-fetched.
So, what evidence does the government have?  Well, keeping in mind that prosecutors are not going to put on the table more than they need to, and using a bit of common sense and understanding about how real investigations (as opposed to media imaginings) actually work, the following is a bare minimum.  And chilling.
On the point of competence, if you read these filings (and others quoted in other posts) carefully, you will see several airline tickets cheap flights junctures at which judicial authorization was obtained.  These indicate that at those points the investigators had other evidence airline tickets cheap flights not cited here which persuaded a judge to approve the investigative steps.  In other words, 1 + 1 = 3.
These excerpts come from the indictment and a memorandum of law opposing release of bail in the case of United States v. Najibullah Zazi in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Docket No. 09-CR-663:
NAJIBULLAH ZAZI, together with others, did knowingly, intentionally, and without lawful authority conspire to use one or more weapons of mass destruction, to wit: explosive bombs and other similar explosive devices, against persons and property within the United States
In furtherance of the conspiracy, Zazi received detailed bomb-making instructions in Pakistan, purchased components airline tickets cheap flights of improvised explosive devices, and traveled to New York City on September 10, 2009 in furtherance of his criminal plans .
Customs and Border Protection ( CBP ) records show that on August 28, 2008, Zazi and others flew from Newark Liberty airline tickets cheap flights International Airport to Peshawar, Pakistan via Geneva, Switzerland and Doha, Qatar.  They traveled on Qatar Airlines Flight Number 84.
Zazi is associated with three email accounts ( Email Account 1, Email Account 2, and Email Account airline tickets cheap flights 3 ) that were active during his time in Pakistan.  One of the accounts is directly subscribed to Zazi, and all three accounts contain slight variations of the same password.  The government will establish at trial that these accounts were used in furtherance of Zazi s efforts to manufacture explosive devices.  Among other things, during a consent search of two of three of the accounts, agents found jpeg images of nine pages of handwritten notes containing formulations and instructions regarding the manufacture and handling of different kinds of explosives.  Based on email header information, these images had been emailed to Email Accounts 2 and 3 in early December 2008, while Zazi was in Pakistan.  As discussed below, the same notes were transferred onto ZAZI s laptop computer in June 2009.
The notes contained specifications for, among other explosives, the explosive Triacetone Triperoxide ( TATP ), which is the explosive used in the 2005 London train bombings and intended to be used in the 2001 shoe bomb