Drug dealer role in JFK plot

A convicted drug dealer who agreed to pose as a wannabe terrorist among a shadowy group now accused of plotting to blow up John F. Kennedy International Airport secretly fed information to federal investigators in exchange for a lighter sentence. His surveillance trips to the airport with the suspects, travels abroad to meet with supporters and assurances he wanted to die as a martyr in an attack on an underground jet fuel pipeline gave counterterrorism agents insight and evidence that experts say was otherwise unattainable. And his help once again demonstrated the growing importance of informants in the war on terrorism, particularly as smaller radical groups become more aggressive.

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. 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.