The Miami Seven: How Serious Was the Threat?
The group indicted for terror plans appears to have had more in common with homegrown cults than al-Qaeda terrorists. Which doesn't mean they weren't dangerous
By TONY KARON
Posted Friday, Jun. 23, 2006
The Federal government has indicted seven men arrested in Miami on charges of conspiring with al-Qaeda to conduct terror attacks inside the U.S. Among the ostensible targets named in the indictment was Chicago's Sears Tower. But was this a credible terror conspiracy? As the story unfolds, here are four skeptical questions worth pondering.
Was this an al-Qaeda-linked plot, or were these men simply wannabes?
From initial reports and the contents of the indictment, the latter seems most likely. The arrested men appear to be part of a cult organization proclaiming itself to be Muslim — although a member of the same religious group says it is, in fact, based on a homebrew of Islam and Christianity, and calls itself "Seas of David." Its members, mainly Americans and Haitan immigrants, clearly have an enthusiasm for emulating and following al-Qaeda. But their only "connection" with al-Qaeda appears to have been the fact that a government informant who had infiltrated their ranks had apparently convinced the alleged conspirators that he was, in fact, a Qaeda operative. The oaths of allegiance to the organization alleged by the indictment to have been taken by the accused were administered not by any representative of the organization, but to a U.S. government agent posing as a Qaeda operative.
Were they behaving as professional terrorists?
No, at least not according to the initial flood of reports that portayed them as strutting around a poor black neighborhood in military-style uniforms, wearing turbans, standing guard around the abandoned warehouse in which they lived and conducting late-night exercise drills, while telling neighbors that they had "given their lives to Allah." The basic habit of trained terrorists is secrecy and stealth; they do their utmost to fit in with their surroundings rather than stand out. The Miami seven, according to reports thus far, seemed to have been doing the exact opposite, behaving more like a Hollywood B-movie version of terrorists than the real thing....
***
Fevered minds can be very dangerous, of course. But the threat they present is quite different from that of transnational terror groups. After all, the government appears to have had no problem infiltrating and exposing this group, which was hardly making itself inconspicuous or impregnable — unlike the New York subway plot reported in TIME this week, whose perpetrators slipped into the U.S., conducted their surveillance, prepared the operational details of poison gas attacks, then aborted them on instructions from al-Qaeda leaders and departed America, all with U.S. security none the wiser.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1207412,00.html?cnn=yes 
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