Talk:2006 Sears Tower plot

Trial and story information
There's two parts to this story: the actual facts (names of the informants and hard evidence that's coming out in the trial), and the way it unfolded and was promoted by high-level government officials (Attorney-General, Director of FBI) across the media in summer of 2006 when very few of these facts were known to the public. It's difficult to know how many of these later facts to bring forward and how to report them. For example, we now know the names and very many more details about the FBI informants on account of them being cross-examined witnesses. But until now they were known to the world only as CW1 and CW2. So this issue will likely make the article less than perfect for a while.Goatchurch 00:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC) The fact is that the accused (and now convicted members of the group known as the Liberty City Seven) were a spiritually oriented group of young men helping others in the community of Liberty City by doing math and art classes, food drives and bible classes, amongst other things. They had no money and were trying to remodel an old warehouse as community center. They were offered $50,000 by the informants posing as men from Yemen,to help their "mission". They wanted the money,and never believed that the informants were members of Al Qaeda. The informant asked them to talk like radical Muslims to impress his uncle's friend (actually the second informant)who was purported to be an Al Qaeda operative. These young men should not in retrospect have gone along with a scheme to sound like radical Muslims; but they never had any intent of terrorist activity. The FBI has no surveillance tapes that show the accused talking among themselves about terrorist activity because they never did; it only took place when the FBI informants were present. This case is a travesty. The men need to be acquitted and allowed to get back to helping people in the poorest sections of Miami. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.213.203.84 (talk) 17:30, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Cleanup Tag
This article is informative and generally necessary, I believe, but there are several sections that smack of personal opinion and unverified claims. Other sections simply need rewrites for stylistic reasons. For example...

''The report made headline news around the world, and quickly disappeared. No weapons or explosive materials were found at the scene.'' (first sentence is subjective, second could use a citation)

It soon emerged that the group's only contact with outside terrorism and sources of money and materials was in fact the undercover FBI agent who infiltrated them. (citation)

After the arrests, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the men posed no actual danger because their plot had been caught in "its earliest stages." (direct quote begs for a citation) ''At these meetings he made requests for money and equipment, took delivery of military boots, and swore an oath of loyalty to al-Qaeda. Many of these incidents were captured on video.'' (stylistic rewrite)

During the press conference with the Attorney General, a US government lawyer explained that since there was no actual contact with a terrorist organization, the prosecution was being brought under 18 U.S.C 2339A rather than 18 U.S.C 2339B, since the former requires only that the accused believe they were conspiring in a terrorist act, even if this was actually false. (citation)

''The story appears similar, though might not fit, a case of entrapment. However, it could be argued that, though there may have been an immature level of intent, the group appears to have been so far below the development of any serious capability on their own that questions should be asked about why the FBI and the media reported this incident to such a high level.'' (without citations, this reads like a personal opinion)

I may just be a stickler for citations, but I believe I'm justified in asking for them here. In addition, the whole thing needs a "current event" template added. --jonny-mt 03:59, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

--

I've got the citation, but it was removed on account of being an invalid link. If you cut and past from here:

rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/ter/ter062306_gonzales.rm

into your browser, you will see the press conference as it is hosted on C-Span. I have no idea how to provide better links to that service since they appear to give no good way for people to reference the broadcasts. Do you have any ideas?

As to the first sentence about the headline news around the world; my point of reference was on a trip back from Denmark. It was also top story on the BBC international news page for a day. I'm struggling for some good way to express it, but there's a pattern here in the UK as well as in America of making a high level announcement of a terrorist incident, with the effect of getting everyone scared, but it later turning out to be a sham once it drops off the news. The notion sticks, but the facts arrive too late to correct it.

Merge proposal
I support merging 2006 Sears Tower plot with Seas of David. They are only notable for one event, so the article should be about the event, not the people. Grundle2600 (talk) 01:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

New Name?
Should we rename it "2006 Willis Tower plot"? Shark96z (talk) 00:31, 18 July 2009 (UTC)