DRUG DEALER TURNED INFORMANT WAS KEY TO UNDOING OF JFK PLOT

NEW YORK - The question was simple: "Would you like to die as a martyr?"
The informant unhesitatingly replied yes - there was no greater way to die
in Islam.

The right answer put him in the midst of a suspected terrorist plot
conceived as more devastating than the 9/11 attacks. He was soon making
surveillance trips around John F. Kennedy International Airport - the
"chicken farm," as the planners dubbed their target - and visiting the
Trinidad compound of a radical Muslim group.

The insider, a twice-convicted drug dealer who agreed to help in exchange
for a lighter sentence, was a government informant whose surreptitious work
undermined a plot to destroy the Queens airport by exploding a jet fuel
pipeline.

His help once again demonstrated the growing importance of informants in
the war on terrorism, particularly as smaller radical groups become more
aggressive.

"In most cases, you can't get from A to B without an informant," said Tom
Corrigan, a former member of the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorist Task Force. "Most
times when an informant tells you what is going on, speculation becomes
reality."

According to court papers and investigators, the informant began working
for the government in 2004, after his second drug-trafficking conviction in
New York, and he quickly proved to be a credible source.

He was sent to meet with the JFK plot's alleged mastermind Russel Defreitas
in 2006 and was introduced by an unidentified third party. Defreitas
quickly accepted the informant as legitimate saying he was sure they knew
each other through a Brooklyn mosque.

Defreitas, according to a federal complaint, believed the informant "had
been sent by Allah to be the one" to pull off the bombing.

Four Muslim men are accused of plotting to use explosives to destroy a jet
fuel pipeline that runs through populous residential neighborhoods to the
airport, which they allegedly believed would kill thousands of people and
trigger an economic catastrophe.

In an indictment, one of them is quoted as saying the bombing would "cause
greater destruction than in the Sept. 11 attacks."

Although the plotters put a great deal of time and travel into their plan,
they never managed to obtain any explosives before authorities arrested
Defreitas and foiled the JFK scheme. Experts said the plot could have
resulted in damage and fires, but nothing on the scale that the defendants
had envisioned.

The men accused in the JFK plot didn't turn to Middle Eastern extremists
for support to target the airport. Instead, investigators say the informant
and defendants Kareem Ibrahim and Defreitas visited a compound belonging to
the Jamaat al Muslimeen, a radical Muslim group based in Trinidad off
Venezuela's coast.

When Defreitas discussed his radical "brothers" with the informant, he made
it clear they were not Arabs, but from Trinidad and Guyana.

The complaint also made clear how deeply the informant had infiltrated the
small band of would-be terrorists. While Defreitas, a retired JFK airport
cargo worker, made four reconnaissance missions to the airport with the
informant, federal authorities recorded each one on audio and video.

Defreitas, 63, who immigrated to the U.S. more than 30 years ago from
Guyana, was in custody Sunday pending a bail hearing, was arrested two days
earlier in Brooklyn.

Ibrahim and another suspect, Abdul Kadir, were in custody in Trinidad
awaiting extradition hearings. Officials identified Kadir as a former mayor
of a Guyanese town and a member of the country's Parliament.

Authorities in Trinidad were still seeking a fourth suspect, Abdel Nur.

Last year, informants played a major role in two other terror cases. In
June 2006, an informant posing as an al-Qaida operative helped bring down a
plot to blow up the Sears Tower. In May 2006, an NYPD informant's testimony
led to the conviction of a man plotting to blow up the busy Herald Square
subway station in midtown Manhattan.