Altruism Comes with Penalty – When Good Turns Into Evil

by Susanne M. Reyto

There is such an increase of interfaith dialogue in our community lately, that it raises some concerns. While it is important to keep the doors open for dialogue, it is imperative to know who you are dialoguing with. Freedom of religion in the United States allows Islamists to encourage interfaith dialogue but in their countries there is no such freedom. Many Muslim leaders project peace and love, but beneath that is an agenda of ingratiating themselves to the American community to obtain acceptance and support for their mission.

The enormous positive response to and subsequent discussions after my recent article, “Interfaith Dialogue – Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism,” made me realize how tragically uninformed or misinformed our community leaders are.The mere fact of equating Islamophobia with Anti-Semitism is dangerous and comparing Islam with Judeo-Christian beliefs is ignorant. There are many fundamental differences. The most important one is that Judaism and Christianity do not want to kill those who believe differently than they do. Sadly, facts and consequences seem to elude our religious and political leaders.

I have always held rabbis, priests, pastors, etc. in high esteem and to a higher standard. I have come to realize that we cannot just blindly listen to them – we must hold them accountable and responsible, particularly because they are teaching our impressionable children. We need to become more knowledgeable, be prepared to debate matters and not follow blindly like a herd of sheep.

I have been a great supporter and active participant in community dialogues bringing together various religions and cultures. However, these gatherings must be conducted with ground rules, parameters and honesty from both sides, assuring that community outreach does not become community demise.

Christianity and Judaism command us to reach out to our neighbors but this spiritual outreach can only work with those who share our same basic beliefs. The Jewish community reaches out to help where aid is needed – locally or in distant lands like Darfur--seeking better understanding and working together for the common good.

The Muslim community’s purpose for outreach is to help itself, to diffuse the West, gain acceptance, tolerance and support for their goals and mission. The leaders try to convince their followers that they are victims of civil rights violations in the United States, and urge them to fight back. So far, we have given in to demands for religious observance at the work place, footbaths in public places, segregated swimming pools and gyms, halal food for cafeterias at schools and universities. There are honor killings in the United States and those communities want Sharia to supersede our laws. Sharia – Islamic law amongst other things oppresses women, calls for Jihad against infidels and is not compatible with our Constitution.

Suing companies seems to be prevalent, whereby they demand financial awards and workplace accommodations. The Swift plant in Colorado was sued recently because the company didn’t grant the demands of the Somali Muslim employees for time off to observe their holiday at the expense of other employees. Another company in Minnesota, Gold’n Plump Inc, had similar problems with Somali workers who ended up winning a court settlement to the tunes of $360,000. Qur’an:9:123 “Fight those of the disbelievers who are near to you, and let them find harshness in you.”

According to Dr. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, Omar Ahmad, the long-serving chairman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, reportedly told a crowd of California Muslims in July 1998, “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant. The Koran ... should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on earth.”

Lest we forget, Islam is not only a religion and a political ideology, but a complete system of life, dangerous to our Western existence.

Another expert, Professor Moshe Sharon, professor of Islamic studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, wrote in a major article, “Islam was born with the idea that it should rule the world.” Koran 9:33: "Allah sent Mohammed with the true religion so that it should rule over all the religions." Qur’an:8:39 “So fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief [non-Muslims]) and all submit to the religion of Allah alone (in the whole world).”

In spite of the Muslim leaders’ and imams’ rhetoric of preaching love and tolerance in our country, they go to great lengths to infiltrate and proselytize, to ‘take over the world.’ Islam teaches, to be kind to your own, all others are infidels and they should not be your friends. Koran 4:139: “Threat to those who take unbelievers (Jews and Christians) as friends. Allah does not accept other faiths.” According to the Koran, infidels are given three choices: convert, submit or die. Koran:9:29 “Fight those who do not believe until they all surrender,…”

This is part of Islamic jihad. Koran 9:38-39 says, “Duty to participate and engage in Jihad is stressed.” Therefore, we must confront jihad, whether it is the violent form, or stealth jihad which is not so obvious but is creeping into our society.

One example, Sharia banking and financing are systematically changing our accepted financial structure but we are completely unaware of its consequences. Islamic banking is problematic because instead of U.S. laws and regulators, Muslim clerics make the laws. It is important to note that the origins of Islamic banking trace back to the 1920s, the Muslim Brotherhood and its founder, Hassan al-Banna.Another troubling area is where AIG, the insurance giant, is promoting Shariah-compliant insurance products. Sharia compliant institutions pose a major concern because typically they donate 2.5%of profits to charity which ultimately may end up in the coffers of radical terrorist organizations like Hamas.

We all must wake up to the sad realization that Islam simply is not compatible with Judeo-Christian beliefs. We, Americans are a tolerant people. It is the radicals’ deeds, threats, publicly declared wars, beheadings, fatwas, mistreatment of women and their violent reactions to criticism are the reasons for our hostility and fears. Despite this we should and we do extend ourselves spiritually, but practically, we do need to protect ourselves. Knowing their goals, we must be on guard. By the time we find our neighbor to be our enemy, it may be too late.

Years ago, immigrants enriched our melting pot society but today Muslim immigrants want to control it by imposing their customs. We went from enrichment to encroachment and soon, we will be controlled by such demands.

Colleges offer an ever growing number of courses in Islamic studies and Muslim professors seize the opportunity to counsel their impressionable students about the virtues of Islam. Slowly but systematically many end up converting and becoming our enemy, like Adam Gadahn from Orange County, Califorinia, who became a terrorist and al Qaeda’s spokesman.

It is a well known fact that by practicing “taqiyya” (Islamic doctrine permitting to lie or cheat to non-Muslims as long as it advances the cause) many Muslims say one thing to the West and another story to their own people. After the Mumbai massacre, while Iranian president Ahmadinejad sent a message of condolence to the Indian president and prime minister, Hamas and Al-Jazeera Internet Sites posted congratulatory, encouraging and inciting messages for further terrorism, specifically directing such acts of violence at Israel and the United States:

“Allah, sow terror and destruction in all the infidel countries. Best wishes to the heroic jihad fighters everywhere.”

“The killing of a Jewish rabbi and his wife in the Jewish center in Mumbai is heartwarming news .”

Adding to this insanity, Qatar 's Al-Jazeera TV , the most popular channel in the Arab-Muslim world referred to the attackers not as terrorists, but as “armed men.” Until we call them terrorists and name the enemy, we cannot find a solution to the problem.

How is it possible that none of the Muslim leaders in the U.S. or elsewhere condemned these actions or comments? If the Muslim community protests the publishing of the Danish cartoons, why don’t they protest the atrocities in Mumbai or the past tragedies in London and Madrid? How can we dialogue with these people unless they renounce violence and jihad?

It is not the Muslims we need to be afraid of. It is Islam in its most violent form – unforgiving, militant, aggressive, intolerant and aiming to rule the world. Words and declarations don’t mean much. The West promotes tolerance and respect for all religions, whereas Islam teaches tolerance and respect only for Islam. Qu’ran 48:29 says: “Those who follow Mohammed are ruthless to the unbelievers but compassionate to one another.”

Rabbi Marc Schneier of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, co-creator of the “Twinning Program,” the Jewish Muslim Interfaith Dialogue, urged Jews to reclaim some of the passion they invested in the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. A similar outreach to Muslims “can serve as a paradigm for Europe,” and perhaps even for the Middle East. Doesn’t he see the problems occurring in Europe? One of the responders to my article wrote that we must educate the American public about the danger of political correctness and the difference between racism and fighting an enemy. Many people in France and Holland are leaving their homes, families, businesses because of the increased hatred of Muslims towards Jews despite the many dialogue projects.

Moderate Muslims here in the U.S. have the freedom and duty to speak out but we hear from only a handful. If moderate voices don’t cry out and fight radicals, how can the West fight this ideology? Mark Steyn, the author/columnist says, “Silence equals Acceptance.”

Rabbis, political leaders, recognize this problem with Islam and do not be misled by empty words. What will it take for you to wake up?

Is the U.S. Government Getting Sucked Into Shariah-Compliant Finance?

by Frank Gaffney, Jr.

The insurance giant AIG has lately become the poster child for corporate risk-taking, mismanagement and greed. Its unimaginably large losses, rooted in insurance it extended to financial companies engaged in subprime mortgage-backed transactions, have destroyed both AIG's corporate reputation and balance sheet.

Indeed, but for the fact that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson – who during his days running Goldman Sachs had extensive ties to AIG – deemed the insurance firm "too large to fail," the company would surely have gone under by now. Instead, Mr. Paulson gave AIG well over $40 billion of the slush-fund Congress intended to bailout the financial sector (part of a total $150 billion the U.S. has sunk in AIG to date). As a result, you and I and our fellow taxpayers have been saddled with ownership of nearly 80% of this once high-flying and now-floundering global insurance enterprise.

Another result of AIG's nationalization is, if anything, even more worrisome.

It turns out that AIG has a subsidiary specializing in "takaful" – insurance products that are purportedly "Shariah-compliant." I say purportedly because – while they have been cynically deemed "pure" (halal) by Shariah advisers that AIG employed for the purpose of making such certifications – the Islamic code expressly prohibits business transactions that involve risk. Consequently, insurance products designed to hedge against risk are inherently "impure" or haram.

Whatever the status of AIG's "takaful" products under Islamic law, the U.S. government now has a vested interest in their financial success. Uncle Sam has become Uncle Shariah.

In so doing, Henry Paulson has acted in a manner that not only appears to smack of a conflict of interest and egregious disregard for the public's fiduciary interests. He also seems to have violated the Constitution.

The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights has long been interpreted as prohibiting the establishment of any national religion or conferring upon one religion a preference over others. By taking a massive stake in a company that explicitly promotes Islam's Shariah law, the U.S. government is acting at odds with both of these revered principles.

Fortunately, an important legal initiative has just been launched aimed at blocking Mr. Paulson and the Federal Reserve Board from engaging in this sort of unconstitutional behavior via Shariah-Compliant Finance (SCF) and other commercial transactions. A lawsuit filed December 15th in U.S. district court in Michigan by an Iraq war veteran named Kevin Murray contends that:

"The Shariah-based Islamic religious practices and activities that the government-owned AIG engages in – activities that are funded and financially supported by American taxpayers, including Plaintiff, who is forced to contribute to them – are antithetical to our Nation's values, customs, and traditions with regard to religious liberty, religious tolerance, and the proscriptions of the First Amendment. These government-funded activities not only convey a message of disfavor of and hostility toward Christians, Jews, and those who do not follow or abide by Islamic law based on the Quran or the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed, but they also embody actual commercial practices which are pervasively sectarian and which disfavor Christians, Jews, and other 'infidels,' including Americans."

The litigation seeks relief in ways that would be far-reaching at a time when the U.S. government has bought not only most of AIG but owns some 20 other financial institutions – and seems intent on encouraging their embrace of Shariah-Compliant Finance. (Notably, in November, Mr. Paulson's fellow Goldman Sachs alumnus and point-man for the financial sector bailout, Assistant Treasury Secretary Neel Kashkari, convened an "Islamic Finance 101" seminar where officials in the "policy community" were propagandized by Harvard University professors and other champions of the SCF industry.)

The court is being asked to rule that, among other things, the defendants' "policy and practice of approving, endorsing, promoting, funding, and supporting Shariah-compliant finance" and "the United States government's ownership interest in and use of taxpayer money to financially support AIG and its Takaful Insurance business, which is pervasively sectarian, violate the Establishment Clause."In addition, Murray v. Paulson seeks a permanent injunction against such practices both with respect to AIG and Shariah-Compliant Finance more generally.

Most Americans remain unaware of the menace posed by Shariah, let alone the extent to which it is being insinuated stealthily into our country. Happily, the latter is the subject of an excellent new book by the acclaimed scholar of Islam, Robert Spencer, entitled, Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America Without Guns or Bombs.

Murray v. Paulson therefore provides not just an opportunity for an urgently needed constitutional ruling and injunctive relief with respect to the U.S. government's submission to Shariah. This lawsuit brought on Mr. Murray's behalf by one of the nation's preeminent public interest law firms, the Thomas More Law Center, and by the formidable litigator/Shariah expert David Yerushalmi, who also serves as the Center for Security Policy's general counsel, affords the American people a vital teaching moment: Official promotion of Shariah law is unconstitutional and, given Shariah's inherently seditious nature (it explicitly requires the violent overthrow of all non-Islamic governments in favor of a global theocracy), acquiescence to its insinuation in this country constitutes a felony offense known as "misprision of treason."

We cannot tolerate and must not permit Uncle Sam's morphing into Uncle Shariah. Prompt action by the courts on Murray v. Paulson may spare us that monstrous transformation.

KSM ‘Mystifies’ GITMO General

by Clare M. Lopez

Fox News ran a story on December 16, 2008 about Guantanamo Bay that featured an interview with Army Brig. Gen. Gregory Zanetti, the deputy commander of Joint Task Force Guantanamo since February 2008. Gen. Zanetti, a West Point graduate who holds advanced degrees from Boston University and a master’s degree in strategic studies from the Army War College, is a professional money management expert in civilian life. So, while it is understandable that many things about this National Guard general’s first overseas deployment might have been new and different to him, the ideology of the prison’s high profile Muslim inmates should not have been one of them. And yet, for this highly educated, superb professional soldier, the reality that al Qaeda’s top commanders are in fact devout Muslims seems to have left him completely perplexed. That this level of our national leadership in the War Against Islamic Jihad does not yet grasp the fundamental nature of the enemy threat deployed against us is, in its way, even more terrifying than what that enemy wants to do to us.

It was on a recent tour of the Guantanamo Bay maximum security cells that General Zanetti took the opportunity to talk to the Fox News reporter about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al Qaeda master planner of 9/11 and perhaps the best-known of Gitmo’s notorious inmates. The General said that KSM, as he is known, “wants to die – he wants to be a martyr for the cause.” He showed the reporter the arrow provided for maximum security cells that points towards Mecca so the Muslim prisoners know which way to orient themselves for prayer.

What Gen. Zanetti said next, though, betrayed his utter confusion about the terrorists under his guard. He said that KSM prays for hours on end in his cell – and then he blurted, “What God are you praying to? What are you thinking, what is going on up there?”

In 1998, Osama bin Laden (UBL), Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and a loose-knit association of Bangladeshi, Egyptian, and Pakistani terrorist groups (including Lashkar-e Toiba) who termed themselves the International Islamic Front Against Jews and Crusaders declared war on the United States, Jews and the State of Israel, and liberal democracy everywhere. Attacks on our Embassies in East Africa, the USS Cole, and eventually the American homeland followed. Since 9/11, Islamic Jihadis have struck in Baghdad, Bali, Glasgow, Jerusalem, Kabul, Madrid, London, Mumbai, Thailand, and elsewhere. Countless manifestos from these killer Jihadis leave no doubt about why they do what they do: they believe that Allah and the example of the Prophet Mohammed command them to fight until “religion be only for Allah.” (Q 2:193) The very excellent Middle East Media and Research Institute (MEMRI) issues a steady stream of translated fatwas, Friday sermons, and TV interviews with leading Islamic scholars that all attest to the Islamic belief system with voluminous citations from Islamic doctrine, law, and scriptures, the hadith, and scholarly consensus and interpretation.

The fact that KSM is a U.S. university-educated professional with a degree in mechanical engineering

seems not to have diminished his hatred of all things Western in the slightest, but rather actually contributed to his ability to plan the Twin Towers attack. In this, his experience is not unlike that of his Muslim Brotherhood predecessor, Sayyid Qutb, who studied at the Colorado State Teachers College in Greeley between 1948-50 but came away from that exposure to the values of the heartland appalled, horrified, and full of visceral loathing for the American way of life. Qutb’s written works, including In the Shade of the Qur’an and Milestones, remain classics of Islamic Jihadist ideology to this day.

Well might Gen. Zanetti puzzle at how this could possibly be. As a military professional with constitutional responsibility to command the front lines of the U.S.’s war with Islamic Jihad, though, he is required to know how educated professionals (including medical doctors such as al Qa’eda’s second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri) can yet place their allegiance to Islam above all considerations for human dignity, individual liberty, or pluralistic tolerance. The reason, as anyone who does his homework with the Islamic texts would know, is that these concepts are Western concepts, born of a civic, philosophical, and theological tradition out of Athens, Jerusalem, and Rome. They have nothing whatsoever to do with the Islam of such as KSM or UBL.

That Islam, the Islam of Jihad against all unbelievers, is nonetheless sacred to its adherents. The mindset of a KSM was formed from childhood in the unshakeable belief that Islam and Muslims are truly and morally superior to all other people and faiths. Islamic supremacism holds that Allah commands the subjugation of all the world to Islam and that Paradise awaits those who follow his orders. This is not a devotion that would be easily recognizable to Gen. Zanetti – and yet he is bound by his oath of service to comprehend it. Because if he does not, then he cannot effectively confront and defeat either the enmity or the strategy of those like his prisoner KSM who would convert, subjugate, or kill us all.

A text message will be sent to 20,000 families living near a nuclear facility in the event of a radioactive disaster or emergency.

A deal was signed by two U.S. government agencies Wednesday to conduct new research on the effects of a dirty-bomb explosion in the United States. ....

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A text message will be sent to 20,000 families living near a nuclear facility in the event of a radioactive disaster or emergency.....

Bioterrorism Threat Reappears

DR. DOUG HANSON

It's been a while since we have heard much about it, but, bioterrorism has once aging reared it ugly head. On December 3rd the Commission on Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism released its report: World at Risk. While the report deals a lot with the threat of a nuclear attack it also presents the conclusions of the expert panel on the threat of a bioterrorism attack on U.S. soil. The major conclusion of the study is that the World faces the likelihood of a bioterrorist attack sometime between now and the year 2013. It is quite likely that such an attack would occur somewhere in this country or at a U.S. facility in some other country.

The recent episode of letters sent thru the mail with white powder in them reaffirmed how easy such an attack might be carried out. While these envelopes were a hoax the episode in 2001 where envelopes laced with anthrax were sent to various Congressman and news commentators demonstrates that a biological agent can be transmitted in a relatively unsophisticated manner.

We think of biological warfare as something that the military carries out with organisms genetically groomed to do a specific, deadly job. These organisms are combined with a very sophisticated system for delivery a process called weaponization. Indeed, the U.S. Military, and the militaries of many countries, have had programs to develop biological weapons. The U.S. Military presumably abandoned it program in 1969 because these weapons were too hard to handle and deliver safely. However, for a terrorist group like Al-Qaeda or others personal safety is not necessarily a major issue.

Anthrax:
The U.S. Government has focused a great deal of time and money on developing a defense system against an attack using the bacteria, Bacillus anthracis. Training programs for medical personnel and first responders have stressed how to recognize and treat anthrax infections. The Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) of Drugs (mainly Cipro) and other medical supplies for an anthrax attack is maintained at the CDC in Atlanta, GA. It is set up to be able to deliver drugs and supplies to any state in the country within 12 hours of an attack. The problem with this program is that an attack might not come from anthrax but from any one of a number of other organisms listed on the CDC's rostrum of Potential Bioterrorism organisms. These include organisms producing diseases like Plague, Tularemia, hemorrhagic fever, Brucellosis, Psittacosis and others. The bacteria and viruses causing these diseases vary widely in species and properties.

But What If It's Not Anthrax?
With so much emphasis placed on anthrax it is not unlikely that a terrorism group would choose to develop one of these other agents to use in an attack. The problem with any biological attack is that unlike a suicide bomber or car bomb the effects of the attack will not be apparent for some period of time after the initial events. This period called the incubation period can be as short as 24 hours or as long as a week to 10 days depending on the organism and the route of exposure. The most likely route of exposure would be by inhalation of an aerosol of the organism.

So unless there is an eye witness to someone releasing a biological agent the results would not become evident until large numbers of people begin showing up at hospital ERs or walk-in clinics exhibiting the signs of some unusual infection. One positive result of the Development of the Office of Homeland Security is an initiative that has lead to better reporting between hospitals of the occurrence of unusual cases. This will lead to a quicker realization that something unusual has occurred. For many of the potential biological agents the initial symptoms are hard to distinguish from other more common conditions like the flu. This can add one or more days until a definite diagnosis of and agent infection might occur. The exceptions are diseases like those caused by RNA viruses like the viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) viruses. In these cases the patient often shows sign of bleeding under the skin or from body orifices at very early stages.

Home Grown Bugs
It is widely believed that production of biological agents requires very sophisticated equipment and expertise to develop. While this is true if you want to develop military grade, weaponized material it is not quite so true if you simply want to develop some material that can be delivered to and kill a large number of people. Terrorist would rarely be too concerned about the purity of a culture used for a biological attack if they were to initiate one. After all, the suicide bomber rarely dress up in their best Sunday suit and tie (or more likely Thobe or Jibab) and goes out to bomb a market.

Any facility that has the means to grow a bacterial organism could be capable of growing a biological agent. This could include an abandoned bakery, a brewery including a small micro-brewery, pharmaceutical or biotechnology company, and many food processing plants. You simply need a means to culture a large quantity of the organism in some type of metal chamber that can be kept relatively sterile while the temperature and aeration process can be controlled. Once the large volume of culture is grown you simply need a way to concentrate it and then a delivery system that will produce an aerosol.

Delivering the Goods
A crude aerosol spray could be delivered into the air conditioning system of an office building or a large shopping mall or even released at some sporting or entertainment event where a large group of people are assembled. Once infected these individual would not show symptoms until the incubation period was complete. In the mean time they would have left the site of exposure and traveled to their homes in different parts of the city or different surrounding town. There if the biological agent was capable of being transmitted to others they might spread the disease to other members of their family, friends or even people at a drug store or local super market.

Mass Panic
When it is realized that a biological attack has taken place either by official announcement or more likely by a leak to the press it is likely that there will be a wide spread panic on the part of the public. While police will have to work with other responders to ensure any potential attack site is secure law enforcements biggest problem will be with crowd control. As news account of the attack spread across the city potentially thousands of people will descend on hospitals all believing they have been exposed. As they try to get medical help and antibiotics the hospitals and clinics will be overwhelmed. Fights will break out in crowds and pharmacies and even veterinary hospitals will be broken into as people attempt to get antibiotics.

For the first several days it may not be possible to determine who is actually infected and who is not. Everyone will believe that they have been exposed and this can lead to mass hysteria. In the 1995 Sarin chemical agent attack on a Tokyo subway over five thousand people descended on medical facilities claiming to have been exposed. In reality, only twelve people died and about five hundred suffered some non-lasting affects from the attack. Keeping order in a mass situation like this will be a daunting task for law enforcement officers.

US cybersecurity defences fail to thwart mock cyberattack

Critical US electronic systems have failed to withstand a simulated cyberattack. Participants in a recent cyber-warfare exercise told Reuters that the exercise highlighted problems in leadership, communications and readiness. The two-day exercise brought together 230 government agencies, private firms and other participants. Participants were split into two groups - attackers and defenders - before each developed tactics for attacking and defending critical infrastructure systems, such as those controlling banking, telecommunications and utilities.....

Five found guilty of plotting to kill Fort Dix soldiers

A jury has found five men guilty of conspiring to kill soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office said Monday.....

Survey: Workers facing layoffs could be security threat

Fifty eight percent of Wall Street office workers surveyed say they would take valuable company data with them if faced with a layoff, if they knew could get away with it. The survey on the recession and its effects on work ethics was conducted among 226 office workers on New York Citys Wall Street by IT security firm Cyber-Ark. ....

Bomb case highlights FBI with new priorities

By BRENDAN J. LYONS

ALBANY — Before 9/11, information that young men were making large homemade firecrackers might have resulted in a knock on their door and a clunk on the head from a town cop telling them to cut it out.

But since Sept. 11, 2001, things have changed drastically, and a refocused FBI was never more evident than in a recent counterterrorism case that ensnared three Capital Region men on charges of making and trafficking in "destructive devices."

The investigation broke open on Dec. 5 when the men were arrested in a federal anti-terrorism task force raid of several homes in Watervliet and Troy. Police seized mail-order chemicals and materials used to make explosives, cannon fuses, rifles, BBs, a computer and a small amount of marijuana.

News coverage trumpeted the arrests, and at least one local television station reported the suspects had been charged with "terrorist acts," which was false.

The three-month investigation was headed by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force in Albany. Its intensive probe of the bomb-making tip appeared to cut no corners, using several agents for surveillance, telephone wiretaps and a carefully planned strategy to see how far the group would go.

Still, there are no terrorism allegations and no proof the suspects — Aaron A. Scorsone, Jonathan D. Plunkett and Scott A. Monroe, all in their 20s — intended to harm anyone, destroy property or attack the government.

For its part, the FBI contends it may be criticized for proactive investigations that involve informants nudging suspects to engage in crimes, but agents would be faulted if they ignored a lead and someone ended up dead or injured or the participants were later tied to terrorist acts.

"It is the FBI's obligation to investigate any potential act of terrorism in a timely fashion. Whether it is al-Qaeda or individuals with potential domestic terrorism intentions, the citizens of our country demand that the FBI dedicate the appropriate resources to address terrorism matters," Special Agent Paul Holstein, chief division counsel in the FBI's Albany office, said in a prepared statement. "In this particular investigation, the NYPD Intelligence Division obtained information from a cooperating witness that individuals were looking to sell bombs in exchange for money. ... This was a proactive investigation in which the threat was neutralized before an incident could occur."

Before their arrests, Plunkett had two misdemeanor convictions for driving while ability impaired while Monroe and Scorsone had clean criminal histories, records show.

According to a federal complaint, Monroe told investigators that last summer he lost his job and "to ease his boredom" he began exploring how to make home-made explosive devices.

"Monroe downloaded bomb recipes from the Internet and ordered the bomb-making chemicals," the complaint states. He sold some of the devices to his buddies, they occasionally smoked pot, and they liked to shoot rifles, according to federal prosecutors.

There are no indications the men were on a path to become the next Timothy McVeigh, a ringleader in the Oklahoma City bombing. Their attorneys cast them as having a fascination with guns — legal rifles — and as young men who simply liked to build large firecrackers and blow them up in fields.

The FBI turned its attention to the group in September on a tip from a New York Police Department, which had an informant, it turned out, who was a former schoolmate of Plunkett's at Hudson Valley Community College and who knew the men allegedly were willing to make and sell explosive devices.

The devices, according to defense attorneys in the case, were a little larger than an M-80, a powerful firecracker that has been sold in the United States for decades, even if illegally.

Over the past several months, the informant began buying explosives from the group for $10 each, records show. It's unclear whether the suspects knew what the informant would do with the devices. But the sting grew more serious in October when records show the informant asked Plunkett if they could add "fragmentation" to the devices.

Plunkett apparently had never done that before, but he went to a local pharmacy and purchased glue that he used to stick BBs on the devices, which have fuses and cardboard exteriors. The addition of the fragments elevated the seriousness of the charges under federal law. Now, rather than the worst-case prospect of under two years behind bars, the three men could face more than eight years in prison if convicted on the top counts of manufacturing and trafficking destructive devices.

Another idea by the FBI also added fuel to the case when, on Dec. 4, the day before the arrests, the informant met Scorsone in a K-mart parking lot in Latham and allegedly gave him an AR-15 assault rifle in exchange for 50 explosive devices. Scorsone, a gun enthusiast, was "very excited" by the prospect of obtaining the gun, according to the complaint.

At a recent detention hearing, when a judge released the men on bond, their attorneys seized on the actions of the government informant, suggesting that the bombs became more dangerous and an illegal machine gun was made part of the deals largely because of the FBI's actions.

In court two weeks ago, Scorsone's attorney, Gene V. Primomo, questioned whether the three-month investigation was worth the result.

"I think it's prudent police work to utilize confidential informants ... in an attempt to catch sharks," Primomo told U.S. Magistrate Judge David R. Homer on Dec. 9. "What we have, your honor, are minnows. These devices are homemade fireworks."