Let's set the scene shall we?
When 20-year-old Hamid Hayat left his home in California a little more than two years ago, he was like a lot of young Americans"aimless and a bit unsure about his future. Rail-thin and addicted to videogames, he lived with his parents in Lodi, Calif., a small farming town south of Sacramento.
See? He's just a good ole American boy.
An amiable ice-cream vendor, his father, Umer Hayat, was known around the neighborhood as Homer, after the "Simpsons" sticker on the back of his truck. But the younger Hayat had trouble finding steady work.
Aw, come on man, you don't get any more American than good old Homey, do you?
But all is not as it seems.
He [Hamid] was no stranger to Pakistan. Though born in California, he'd spent his teen years in Behboodi and Rawalpindi, living with relatives and attending religious schools.
Uh oh. Religious schools as in Madrass no doubt.
Don't worry, Newsweek is quick to put the blame for all of this back on the FBI.
The arrest of the Hayats, followed the next day with the arrests of two local imams on immigration charges, was portrayed by the FBI as a demonstration of how far the bureau's efforts to thwart domestic terror have come since September 11. It didn't hurt that the success was announced the same week that the Justice Department released a damning report detailing the FBI's failed attempts to catch the 9/11 hijackers. The FBI clearly hopes the Hayat case will help reassure the public that things at the bureau have changed.
Ah, so even though in an earlier paragraph we are told by Newsweek, that these arrests are "...the first arrests in what officials called a long-running investigation into a suspected terror network in the area" and Hamid was arrested on his return from Pakistan, Newsweek would have us believe it's all a PR stunt! In fact, as Newsweek tells you, but buried in the story on page two, is that the investigation has been ongoing for two years!
Now that Newsweek has planted the seed of doubt, they move in to cement the idea.
Yet last week there were already questions about how strong the case against Hamid Hayat really is, especially after the Justice Department mistakenly released a draft of the affidavit in the case, only to change it a few hours later. The original document contained alarming allegations: that Hayat had admitted that "hundreds of attendees" from around the world had been at the camp, and that he had been trained to attack "hospitals and large food stores" in the United States. In the new affidavit presented at a press conference last Wednesday, those details had been removed. FBI Special Agent John Cauthen says the reference to "hundreds of attendees" was not deemed to be "relevant" to the Feds' case. As for the hospitals and food stores, Cauthen says the agent who interviewed the younger Hayat wasn't "comfortable" that there was any "specific threat" against such targets.
Questions by whom? Newsweek does not tell us. How many attended the camp is not relevant to the case and in light of any specific target the FBI downplays the hospitals and food stores reference. So what?
Now that you are firmly in doubt about the FBI's case, let's turn the tables and make it look like the FBI are up to no good. And what better way to do that than use the Newsweeks tried and tested weapon - the anonymous source!
Despite the early snafus, the case against Hayat cannot be easily dismissed. FBI officials said the probe began two years ago with suspicions about a radical presence in the Islamic community around Lodi. One former law-enforcement official, who asked not be identified because the case is still underway, said the Lodi probe was an early test of the FBI's post-9/11 focus on suspected radical mosques,a practice that caused controversy three years ago, when federal agents were given more leeway to work undercover in religious institutions.
Why, those bumbling, sneaky FBI agents. How dare they? Well, actually they were tipped off but never mind the small details.
But the case took on new urgency at the end of last month, when Hamid Hayat, now 22, decided to return home from Pakistan. According to his cousin Ismail, Hayat had married and wanted to raise a family back in California.
Now hang on just a cotton picking darn minute there, Newsweek. You told us on page one that "... the younger Hayat had trouble finding steady work." You mind telling us how increasing the size of his family was going to help his unemployment situation? Isn't it more likely that a married Muslim with a family wouldn't arouse as much suspicion as a young single male Pakistani Muslim?
The Newsweek article goes on to detail their confessions including how "he and others at the camp were being trained on how to kill Americans," and he "specifically requested to come back to the United States to carry out his jihadi mission,". But none of that means anything to Newsweek and they close schilling for the terrorists.
For now, the Hayats sit in a California jail. The FBI knows that the case, and the bureau's credibility, will be under scrutiny. Since 9/11, the FBI has chased "an incredible number of allegations," says Dennis Lormel, a senior FBI counterterrorism official until December 2003. Yet Lormel says he's "not aware of any specific [Qaeda] cells" that have been found, only individual operatives. Now it's up to the Feds to prove that Hamid Hayat was a would-be Qaeda killer, and not just another unwitting bumbler tangled in the dragnet.
Under scrutiny by whom? And isn't it always up to the prosecution to prove guilt?
Proving someone is a member of a cell is extremely difficult. By definition they remain asleep until activated. In other words, they won't get their targeting orders until just prior to execution of their plan. It's much easier to get them to cop to a plea of supplying material support to terrorists. Here is a look at the problem.
But do you see? Despite the fact that he confessed, Hayat is just "another unwitting bumbler" tangled in the FBI's dragnet.
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