Sears Tower Plot Uncovered

The Sears Tower never captured the imagination like the Empire State building, but it did catch the eye of some bad guys.

From the Sun-Sentinel's AP story:

Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings in the United States, a federal law enforcement official said.

The official told The Associated Press the alleged plotters were mainly Americans with no apparent ties to al-Qaida or other foreign terrorist organizations. He spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt news conferences planned for Friday in Washington and Miami.

From the Herald:

Five of those arrested are U.S. residents, one is a resident alien and one is an illegal alien, the source told the Miami Herald on condition of anonymity.

Citing an investigation before Thursday's raid, the source said the group talked about an attack on the Sears Tower in Chicago and the FBI building in Miami -- but that they had no ``overt explosives or other things.''

The group thought that they ''were doing (the attacks) in conjunction with al Qaeda'' but were really dealing with'' undercover law enforcement, the official said.

There's local video on the story here.

The FBI conducted several raids in Liberty City, including swarming a warehouse there. For those of you not from here, it's an area where people set their own buildings on fire when irritated.
Maybe it's the gentle ocean breeze that makes southeast Florida such a good place to hatch terroristic plots.

The Associated Press write-ups on the raid contain quite a bit of extraneous editorializing on behalf of terrorist Jose Padilla, as well as conflicting with the Herald in regards to al-Qaeda and other things. Being an American is just a little bit different from being a "U.S. resident."
We'll see how this develops.

UPDATE:
From CNN:

Law enforcement sources told CNN that some of the suspects are members of a radical African-American Muslim group and that at least one had taken "an al Qaeda oath." They had carried out surveillance on the Sears Tower and FBI building in Miami, the sources said.

Sources told CNN that the arrests culminated a monthslong undercover operation. The suspects believed they were dealing with an al Qaeda operative, but the person was actually a government informant, the sources said.

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