Fort Dix shows homegrown threat, pitfalls

updated 7:54 p.m. ET May 9, 2007

Blowing up the Sears Tower, beheading the Canadian prime minister, unleashing a flood on lower Manhattan — homegrown radicals have dreamed up lots of horrific plots that have gone nowhere.

The alleged plan to attack Fort Dix in New Jersey is the latest in the line, and it reveals much about the challenges, and the advantages, of dealing with homegrown radicals with no direct connection to al-Qaida.

Experts say homegrown groups can be small and difficult to uncover, but they often make breathtakingly foolish mistakes, and lack funding, discipline and training.

The Fort Dix suspects were a seemingly clumsy and dithering group of young Muslim men who turned out to be their own worst enemy. They allegedly sent a jihadi videotape to a local store to be copied, prompting the clerk to tip off authorities. The FBI infiltrated the group and watched them for more than a year before moving in this week.

The purported plotters allegedly held weapons training sessions and had scoped out their target, but they also at times seemed like reluctant warriors. They asked the FBI informant if he could lead the operation because he had more experience, then said they shouldn't carry out the attack without a fatwa — a religious edict — from a Muslim cleric.

One of the men even reportedly expressed misgivings about using automatic weapons for what would have been a bloody rampage against soldiers at the Army post, noting that such weapons are illegal.

"There are a lot of different violent desires, and a lot of different fantasies out there, but most of them are not going to materialize because the moment these relatively unsophisticated people act on them, they are going to get caught," said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College. "It takes a lot of technical skills to pull something like this off in today's security environment."

Groups look for expertise
Still, a lack of al-Qaida training — and even a bit of bungling — does not always mean failure. Ranstorp and other analysts say the threat from little-known homegrown terror cells is still the most significant facing the world today.

The March 11, 2004, bombing onslaught against commuter trains in Madrid, Spain, which killed 191 people, was allegedly carried out by Muslim immigrants with long rap sheets for drug trafficking and other petty crimes, but no connection to Osama bin Laden.

And the July 7, 2005, bombings in London, which killed 52 people and the four bombers, were undertaken by British Muslims radicalized at home. In that case, however, authorities are suspicious of trips the suspects made to Pakistan before the attack and believe the men might have received al-Qaida instructions.

"From the evidence we have from the United Kingdom, it seems what appear to be spontaneous and amateur networks are far from so," said Anthony Glees, a terrorism expert who is director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies in London. "What we know is, at a critical moment somebody experienced will be wheeled on to instruct terrorists on how to make a bomb explode."

Such a person has not been identified in the Fort Dix plot, and U.S. authorities say they know of no connection between the arrested men and international terrorist groups.

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