Over the weekend, federal officials, relying on the undercover work of a convicted drug dealer, indicted four men who were allegedly plotting to destroy a airline fuel pipeline leading to JFK airport in New York City. The alleged mastermind, Russell Defreitas, an American citizen who once worked at JFK as an employee for an airline with extensive ties to the CIA, tried to get funding from a radical Islamic Trinidad and Tobago-based group called Jamaat al Muslimeen (JAM). JAM led an aborted coup in 1990 and is reported to have ties to the now-reformed Muammar al-Gaddafi.

In fact we were almost just all killed and the economy brought to its knees, according to the overblown scaremongering of the prosecuting attorney, as reported by the AP.

“The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable,” U.S. Attorney Roslynn R. Mauskopf said at a news conference, calling it “one of the most chilling plots imaginable.”

But if you actually read the supposedly indictment (.pdf), it's pretty clear these were a bunch of jackasses who would have a hard time putting together a multi-subway line trip to Yankee Stadium, let alone blowing up a fuel tank inside airport gates. It's also pretty clear that blowing up the fueltanks would have been pretty spectacular, it would not have been catastropic. Moreover, their plotting was so bad that a Guyananese parliament member told the plotters to use Google Maps instead of their own shoddy surveillance video and to stop carrying around their surveillance video on a hard drive. Add to that this Newsday profile about Defreitas – which shows that the mastermind of the alleged plot was itinerantly homeless and sold incense on street corners in New York.

It's just like nearly every other plot that has been uncovered since 9/11 in America. Basically, its yet another group of deluded losers having Walter-Mitty-Meets-Osama-bin-Laden daydreams. I'm not arguing that they shouldn't have been arrested, only that the folks in charge are blowing this story up to justify their budgets. But from what's viewable in the indictment, these losers were never a serious threat – even if every allegation in the indictment were true. Neither for that matter were the Lackawanna 6, the Miami guys who didn't have enough money for boots (let alone bring down the Sears Tower), or the Lodi, California lonely loser who got railroaded by the FBI.

The DHS threat level remains "Elevated" or yellow. It's still the new normal.