Tools needed to connect the dots

Date published: 7/18/2006

To connect them, anti-terrorism authorities first have to collect them

"AFAILURE to connect the dots." That was the diagnosis of the malady that helped bring on the Sept. 11 attacks on America nearly five years ago as delivered by the 9/11 Commission.

Some of those dots were the size of manhole covers. Flight-school lessons whose students had no interest in landing procedures. At least six reports warning of chatter about an impending al-Qaida attack. A man (Zacarias Moussaoui) with jihadist beliefs arranging flight lessons in Minnesota so he could "learn how to fly a Boeing 747." All pieces of a puzzle that fell into place only after the toppling of the World Trade Center and kindred horrors made 9/11 one of America's worst days.

One consequence of Bloody Tuesday was a massive overhaul of U.S. intelligence, particularly the FBI. Policymakers leaned on the agency to turn from its traditional criminal-investigation mode to a get-'em-before-they-light-the-fuse M.O. So now the question is, how quickly should prosecutors move against possible threats? Three cases in point have emerged in North America this summer.

On June 2-3, Canadian authorities arrested and charged 17 people in Toronto with participating in a terrorist group, importing weapons, and planning to bomb the Canadian Stock Exchange and a Canadian security office. The busted radical-Muslim gang had obtained 3 tons of ammonium nitrate, a component of bombs like the one that 11 years ago destroyed the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Four hundred investigators labored more than two years to nail these plotters, whom the police first identified by monitoring Internet chat rooms.

Later in June, the FBI announced it had arrested seven men in Miami who planned an assault on the Sears Tower in Chicago as well as sundry FBI offices. The ringleader, Narseal Batiste, had lived in the Windy City. Investigators say he told an informant he was raising an Islamic army to wage jihad within the United States. While Deputy FBI Director John Pistole called the plan "more aspirational than inspirational," Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said, "We felt that the combination of planning and the overt acts taken were sufficient to support the prosecution."

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Date published: 7/18/2006