http://www.nysun.com/article/56041

The news cycle is rapidly passing by yet another mass-murder plot against New Yorkers. This time the targets were storage tanks at JFK airport, along with the pipeline that supplies them with jet fuel. The conspirators allegedly hoped to burn the airport and destroy at least some of the Queens neighborhoods through which the pipeline runs.

After all, this is the same story yet again. New York is the target, its residents are the desired victims, and the accused are Islamist fanatics. What’s more, the story has elements that skeptics can seize upon to belittle the threat.

What we know so far comes from the formal accusation filed by the Kings County District Attorney’s Office to give cause for the arrest. The alleged plotters had no explosives, no terrorist resumes, and at this stage of their plot, little practical chance of setting Queens on fire.

But they were sufficiently driven by loathing for Americans, were persistent for over a year and a half, and had murky international connections that may have been useful enough to get them the resources they lacked.

They were snagged through a sting operation done by an FBI informant.

To reporters of the New York Times, Michael Powell and William Rashbaum, it was less a plan than a “proposed effort longer on evil intent than on operational capability.” They quote a leading criminal defense attorney saying, “there is a risk to overstating the sophistication of a terror plot.” The article states, “the risk is that drumbeating creates a climate of fear and drives public policy.” It ends with the lawyer’s warning that over-hyping will cause fear and paranoia.

I conclude very differently: the JFK pipeline plot reveals a grave risk and an essential lesson. The risk is less in its particulars than in the fact that it is one more plot on an ever-longer list.

By my count, it’s the 17th – five carried out with actual fatalities – against New York since 1993. They include the 15 listed in a previous article of mine in the Sun, plus the Fort Dix plot uncovered last month.

Without paranoia or undue fear, a prudent person must conclude that there likely are more plots in the works. Not all plots can be prevented by law enforcement and not all are run by incompetent persons.

The JFK Pipeline Plot also reinforces a critical lesson in counterterrorism – sting operations work.

Such operations felled the alleged Fort Dix plotters, helped convict Albany conspirators of material support for terrorism, foiled the alleged Miami plotters hoping to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago, undid the man trying to blow up the Herald Square subway station, and caught a New Jersey merchant who wanted to sell shoulderlaunched missiles to what he thought was a terror group.

Last summer, Canadian authorities detained over a dozen suspects near Toronto, after some of them took delivery of three tons of explosive nitrates from undercover Mounties.

Sting operations are a variation on military strategies, the kind effectively used by the Allies to confuse the Nazis about when and where the invasion of Europe would occur.

Being loosely networked, the modern terrorist groups have less ability to fend off well-planned deception. Their best option would be to work only with those they trust. But as a former member of the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force, Tom Carrigan, observed in the Sun on Monday, “They may have to reach out to people they don’t necessarily trust, but [for what] they need – for guns, explosives, whatever.”

That is the essential lesson from the JFK plot and others that have been successfully uncovered: To acquire and deploy dangerous weapons, terrorist groups have to reach out. The very decentralization and dispersion that makes them hard to fight also makes them less self-sufficient.

The lesson about sting operations can be extended worldwide. For attacks with biological weapons – perhaps the greatest threat we face – terrorists have to obtain certain chemicals and equipment. They have to deal with drug companies and laboratory suppliers. I can only hope that counterterrorism agencies have made sure that some suppliers, in say Pakistan or India or Brazil, are under our control to bait and trap the terrorists.

Let’s make sure that of the billions being spent to fight terrorism enough goes to the method that has had the clearest success record so far – carefully organized sting operations.

Mr. Sternberg is professor of urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East spme.org

This article was published originally in the New York Sun