NYTimes:

A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected the 11th-hour appeal of Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

WWJBD? What Would Jack Bauer Do?

In Sunday night's Democratic debate, Senator Hillary Clinton said:

“I believe we are safer than we were,” Mrs. Clinton said. “We are not yet safe enough, and I have proposed over the last year a number of policies that I think we should be following.”

I believe Senator Clinton misspoke. I think what she meant to say is that the United States has done much more since 9/11 to provide against terrorist attacks on our transportation systems and other domesic targets, but that does not translate into being "safer." Indeed, we could be doing everything possible and still be less safe. But, in fact, we are not doing everything possible. Rather, as many have argued, the MAIN thing we are doing, the Iraq Debacle, has made us less safe.

The Associated Press reports on the inducements the drug-trafficker snitch received in the JFK Terror case. But it missed one.

As I pointed out the other day, not only is he getting a reduced sentence for his own misdeeds, according to a footnote in the criminal Complaint (pdf) filed against him, he also got money -- on an ongoing basis.

It's not that I don't believe the defendants were working on a plot to economically damage the U.S. (the complaint also stresses they wanted to do economic harm and avoid to any extent possible the deaths of innocent persons.) It's that I don't believe they had the capability of pulling it off -- without the assistance promised by our federal government through the snitch.

Terror wannabes, bumbling holy warriors again.

Update: DOJ press release here. The criminal complaint is here.

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An FBI - Joint Terrorism Task Force news conference will be underway within minutes.

Three people have been arrested, including a U.S. citizen in connection with an alleged terror plot at JFK airport. Another of those arrested served in the Guyana Parliament. A fourth suspect is being sought.

This was a long-term investigation. The suspects allegedly targeted the infrastructure around the airport (fuel tanks and gas pipe lines), not airplanes.

The plan was aspirational, not operational. It was a preventive bust. It appears the group tried to recruit an FBI agent.

Russell Defreitas, the airport worker, will be arraigned this afternoon. The FBI has released wiretaps to the media.

Here's the main conversation the media is focusing on:

Apparently, evoking the Gestapo is not an effective interrogation method:

As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.

Illegal, immoral, ineffective. Why do it? Revenge? Sadism?

Meet Osama Eldawoody. He's an informant for the FBI. He goes to mosques and tries to figure out who might view Osama bin Laden favorably and who might, with the right direction, support and supplies, engage in an act of terrorism against the U.S. While working for the FBI, he attended 575 services, sometimes as often as four or five a day. He's now in the witness protection program.

Meet Shahawar Matin Siraj, 24, from Pakistan. With Eldawoody's help, the U.S. convicted him of plotting to blow up a New York subway station and he is serving 30 years in prison.

Siraj's family and supporters say he was simply an angry, foolish young man with no connection to actual terrorists or capacity to obtain bombs, playing along -- for a while -- with a man who he believed was his closest friend. They say Eldawoody effectively goaded Siraj into plotting to plant explosives -- to be supplied by Eldawoody -- in the subway station, just below the Macy's store in midtown Manhattan, and then recorded those conversations.

Here's Eldawoody's role in the plot:

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On the Fox post-GOP Debate fest, Alan Colmes asked John McCain how will the terrorists follow us home from Iraq? His answer? Like the Fort Dix "terrorists." I see. So like those guys followed us home 23 years ago?

Three brothers [Dritan "Anthony" or "Tony" Duka, 28; Shain Duka, 26; and Eljvir "Elvis" Duka, 23] charged in the alleged Fort Dix terror plot have been living illegally in the U.S. for more than 23 years and were accepted as Americans by neighbors and friends who had no idea they would scheme to attack military bases and slaughter GIs.

So they "followed us home" at the ages of 5, 2 and newborn? Um,"[t]he brothers entered the United States near Brownsville, Texas, in 1984, the source said, which would put their ages at 1 to 6 when they crossed the border. . ."

Precocious, these "terrorists."

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Marcy Wheeler live-blogged it over at Firedoglake.

The MSM is reporting on Comey's testimony regarding Alberto Gonzales' and Andrew Cards' 2004 hospital visit to former Attorney General John Ashcroft to get him to sign off on an extension of Bush's warrantless NSA electronic surveillance program.

I covered that extensively here and here in January, 2006, including reporting from the New York Times and Newsweek.

Think Progress has the transcript of today's Comey testimony.

Did Comey add anything today to the story that wasn't previously known? Is it really as shocking as Charles Schumer makes it sound? Or should Schumer have done something about it back in 2006 when the story was widely reported and we were all complaining about it?

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Board was created as a result of the 9/11 Commission Report. First, President Bush dragged his feet and waited a year to name any members to the Board. Then, he named the members, including former Clinton official Lanny Davis.

Last week, the Board submitted its first report which was vetted by the White House.

Yesterday, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reports that Lanny Davis resigned from the Board.

More...

It's good to see a headline recognizing this reality:

Civilian Deaths Undermine Allies’ War on Taliban

From the story:

What angers Afghans are not just the bombings, but also the raids of homes, the shootings of civilians in the streets and at checkpoints, and the failure to address those issues over the five years of war. Afghan patience is wearing dangerously thin, officials warn.

The New York Times reports on the role of the informers used in the Fort Dix case. Did they merely facilitate plans already in the minds of the defendants? Or, did they engineer and create the crimes?

Entrapment is likely to be a defense raised by those charged. As in all entrapment cases, the critical issue will be whether those charged were predisposed to commit the crime.

It seems from the article like one of the informers kept jump-starting the plan.

Indeed, over the months that followed, as the targets of the investigation spoke with a sometimes unfocused zeal about waging holy war, the informer, one of two used in the investigation, would tell them that he could get them the sophisticated weapons they wanted. He would accompany them on surveillance missions to military installations, debating the risks, and when the men looked ready to purchase the weapons, it was the informer who seemed to be pushing the idea of buying the deadliest items, startling at least one of the suspects.

....As the case goes forward, the role of the main informer will almost surely be contested. Over the years, informers in terror cases have become the focus of efforts by defense lawyers and others to call into question the legitimacy of the investigations. They have often sought to show that informers engaged in entrapment.

One of the informers in the Fort Dix case presents another problem for the Government:

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Yesterday I wrote about the FBI's acknowledgment that there was no known connection between those charged in the Fort Dix case and al-Qaida.

After all, they trained not in Afghanistan but in the Poconos.

Wonkette makes a good point:

Ok. So, the plot was: six dudes from New Jersey buy some guns and storm Fort Dix. The Fort Dix that is full of lots and lots of Army reservists with way, way more guns. And, like, extensive military training and sh*t. Yes, thank god these terrorists have been caught and locked up before they could be killed within minutes of deciding to carry out the dumbest f*cking terrorist plot we’ve ever heard of.

TRex at Firedoglake also has some thoughts well worth reading.