Jun 3, 2007 11:22 pm US/Eastern
Drug Dealer Becomes Hero For Exposing Terror Plot
CBS 2's Dave Carlin contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (CBS/AP) ―
The question was simple: "Would you like to die as a martyr?" The putative terrorist unhesitatingly replied yes—there was no greater way to die in Islam.
The right answer put the man in the midst of a terrorist plot conceived as more devastating than the 9/11 attacks. He was soon making surveillance trips around John F. Kennedy International Airport—the "chicken farm," as the planners dubbed their target -- and visiting the Trinidad compound of a radical Muslim group.
On Saturday, the insider—a twice-convicted drug dealer—was revealed as a government informant whose surreptitious work undermined a plot to destroy the Queens airport by exploding a jet fuel pipeline. The case demonstrated the growing importance of informants in the war on terrorism, particularly as smaller radical groups become more aggressive.
"Al Qaeda is a philosophy now," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Sunday on CBS' "Face The Nation," explaining the spread of terrorism beyond geographic boundaries. "It's a movement. It's a philosophy. And they're motivated by the same hatred that motivates al-Qaida."
As in last month's plot at Fort Dix, N.J., authorities said the JFK scheme was a demonstration of homegrown terrorism. Mastermind Russell Defreitas, 63, immigrated to the U.S. more than 30 years ago, but he told the federal informant that his feelings of disgust toward his adopted homeland had lingered for years.
"Before terrorism started in this country," he said in one secretly recorded conversation. Defreitas, in custody Sunday pending a bail hearing, was arrested Friday night outside Brooklyn's Lindenwood Diner—a spot once bugged by federal officials tracking former Gambino family boss John A. "Junior" Gotti.
Tom Corrigan, a former member of the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force, said the JFK and Fort Dix cases illustrated the need for inside information. Six men were arrested in a plot to attack soldiers at the New Jersey military base after an FBI informant infiltrated that group.
"These have been two significant cases back-to-back where informants were used," Corrigan said. "These terrorists are in our own backyard. They may have to reach out to people they don't necessarily trust, but they need—for guns, explosives, whatever."
Without informants, Corrigan said, investigators are often left with little more than educated guesswork.
"In most cases, you can't get from A to B without an informant," said the ex-NYPD detective. "Most times when an informant tells you what is going on, speculation becomes reality. What an investigator thought or presumed is happening is (often) really happening."
The four Muslim men accused in the JFK plot didn't turn to Pakistan, Iran or Afghanistan for support after targeting the airport, home to an average 1,000 daily flights and 45 million passengers annually.
Instead, according to a federal complaint, the informant and defendants Kareem Ibrahim and Defreitas visited a compound belonging to Jamaat al Muslimeen, a radical Islamic group known for launching a bloody 1990 coup attempt in Trinidad that involved taking the prime minister and his Cabinet hostage and left 24 people dead.
Though Jamaat al Muslimeen did have contact with the men accused in the Kennedy airport plot, it is not accused of offering them any support. The group, whose followers are largely black converts to Sunni Islam, has faded as a political force in Trinidad as its leader, Yasin Abu Bakr, fends off criminal charges of inciting violence. The rebels in the 1990 raid on Parliament surrendered and were pardoned.
When Defreitas discussed his radical "brothers" with the informant, he made it clear they were not Arabs, but from Trinidad and Guyana.
The complaint made clear how deeply the informant had infiltrated the small band of would-be terrorists. While Defreitas, a retired JFK airport cargo worker, made four reconnaissance missions to the airport with the informant, federal authorities captured each one on audio and video equipment.
Ibrahim and another suspect, Abdul Kadir, were in custody in Trinidad awaiting extradition hearings. Officials identified Kadir as a former mayor of a Guyanese town and a member of the country's Parliament.
Authorities in Trinidad were still seeking a fourth suspect, Abdel Nur.
The informant, while convincing in his role, had something else on his side: God. Defreitas, according to a federal complaint, believed the informant "had been sent by Allah to be the one" to pull off the bombing.
In a strange twist, Defreitas also invoked the name of televangelist Pat Robertson during a Jan. 3 phone conversation. The terror suspect mentioned hearing Robertson predicting a tsunami would strike the U.S. coastline in 2006, causing major damage.
"So he's probably not too far off, eh?" said the unidentified other man on the call, laughing.
Last year, informants played a major role in two other terror cases. In June 2006, an informant posing as an al-Qaida operative helped bring down a plot to blow up the Sears Tower. Five of the seven men arrested in that alleged terrorist group were U.S. citizens.
And in May 2006, an NYPD informant's testimony led to the conviction of a man plotting to blow up the busy Herald Square subway station in midtown Manhattan.
Some defense attorneys are calling the use of informants to investigate terror plots "entrapment," but Police Commissioner Kelly said that is for the courts to decide.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
