Here’s the NYT story on the men who have been indicted for plotting to blow up JFK. The Times story is densely packed with facts about Kennedy airport, but rather sparsely furnished with facts about the aspiring terrorists. Guess which words are missing from the Times’ version of the “news”:

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn yesterday charged that a retired cargo worker at Kennedy International Airport plotted with a former member of the Guyanese Parliament and two other men to blow up terminal buildings, fuel tanks and the network of fuel pipelines that run beneath the airport complex. Three of the four men, including the former airport worker and the former Parliament member, were arrested yesterday and Friday by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and police detectives, the authorities said. The fourth man was being sought, and officials said additional people may face charges. The airport worker, Russell Defreitas, 63, through the assistance of the member of Parliament, Abdul Kadir, was in the process of seeking the financial backing and blessing of a Trinidadian terrorist group, Jamaat Al Muslimeen. The group was behind a failed 1990 coup attempt in that country, officials said.

Several law enforcement officials said that there had been no direct threat to the airport, which handles an average of 1,000 flights a day and 45 million passengers a year, and that Mr. Defreitas, a United States citizen who was born in Guyana, and his coconspirators had yet to obtain financing or explosives. But the officials said Mr. Defreitas, who had long worked at the 4,930-acre airport, developing a thorough knowledge of its layout and its vulnerabilities, sought an attack that he said, according to secretly recorded conversations, would result in “the destruction of the whole of Kennedy,” an attack that only a few people would survive.

In addition to a huge loss of life — “even the twin towers can’t touch it,” he said of the plot — the attack would devastate the United States economy and strike a deep symbolic blow against a national icon, President John F. Kennedy. “Anytime you hit Kennedy, it is the most hurtful thing to the United States,” he said in one of dozens of conversations secretly recorded during the 18-month investigation. “To hit John F. Kennedy, wow …. They love John F. Kennedy like he’s the man … If you hit that, this whole country will be in mourning. It’s like you can kill the man twice.” The officials said that Mr. Kadir, on the other hand, emphasized the goal of causing economic damage, and seemed to seek to minimize the killing of innocent men and women.

Here’s a bit from the pdf indictment:

The NYT story and the indictment sound a little different, do they not? A number of seemingly relevant facts of the indictment appear to be missing from the New York Times story. If you only read the New York Times story, for example, you cannot begin to answer why these men were plotting to kill so many Americans. Why is that element missing from the Times story? HT:MM

UPDATE

Airport terrorism appears to be timely again. You will recall the report that France sacked 139 Muslim baggage handlers and others at Charles de Gaulle Airport last year, a group that apparently included a number of known terrorists. Please follow the practice of the NYT in looking at such events and connect no dots, however. It’s so insensitive.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 2nd, 2007 at 12:12 pm and is filed under EU, General, Religion, War, idiots!, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.