Movie-Plot Threat Described as Movie-Plot Threat

The plot was like something from a Hollywood blockbuster: dozens of foreign terrorists working with a Mexican drug cartel to attack a Southern Arizona Army post with anti-tank missiles and grenade launchers.

Paying one of Mexico’s most ruthless drug cartels $20,000 apiece, 60 Afghan and Iraqi terrorists would be smuggled into Texas and hole up at a safe house.

Their weapons, Soviet-made and easily acquired on the black market, were funneled through Arizona and New Mexico in hand-dug tunnels that cut across the border.
Their target: 13,500 military personnel and civilians working at Fort Huachuca, roughly 75 miles southeast of Tucson.

But (no surprise):

But the plot, widely reported by local stations and national TV networks and The Washington Times, turned out to be nothing more than fiction, an FBI spokesman said Monday.

Tags: drug trade, FBI, military, movie-plot threats, terrorism, weapons

Posted on November 29, 2007 at 1:44 PM • 24 Comments

Comments

Tangerine Blue • November 29, 2007 1:55 PM

I could immediately tell it was fiction.

Real terrorists would have attacked a Tupperware Party.

Quercus • November 29, 2007 2:21 PM

No, real terrorists would have targeted, oh, I know, the national spelling bee finals (someone think of the children!). Real terrorists would also have somehow let their plans slip to a young but square-jawed FBI agent who was out of favor with his bosses and therefore not believed about the upcoming attack. Real terrorists would also have in some unexplained manner, arranged to have one of the finalists be a child from the classroom of the FBI agent’s fiancee, putting the child and the fiancee in the danger zone.
Real terrorists would also have killed/tortured a member of their own team just to show how heartless and evil they are, and would have arranged a car chase at some point.

Either that or real terrorists would have saved the (60 x $20,000 = $1.2 million) to smuggle rockets into the country and just attacked an Army post in Iraq, Afghanistan, Qatar, etc.

cjc • November 29, 2007 2:33 PM

If it’s a military target, how is that terrorism?

joey • November 29, 2007 2:54 PM

@cjc – Right on.

Al • November 29, 2007 2:57 PM

Reference to Mexican drug cartel. Check.
Reference to Soviet-made weapons. Check.
Reference to Afghan terrorists. Check.
Reference to Iraqi terrorists. Check.

Hold it, I can’t green-light this script unless you work in Cuban evil-doers and Chinese communists. Throw in some innuendo about how they also want to take our jobs and women, or make us learn a foreign language. Add some lasers and ‘splosions and we’ll be good to go.

Anonymous • November 29, 2007 3:07 PM

@Al,

Work in quercus’ script with the square-jawed hero, a female love interest, and a cute precocious kid.

That should make up for the lack of lasers.

There’s a hole in the plot though – our new border fence will stop them
…oh yeah. Tunnels. Who could possibly have imagined that.

dragonfrog • November 29, 2007 3:11 PM

Boy, that’s a lot of work to go to, to obtain firearms in the States.

Maybe in the UK or something, where there aren’t already guns all over the freaking place… But then a hand-dug tunnel under the Channel, Spain, and the Mediterranean all the way to Morocco might take a while.

ARM • November 29, 2007 3:27 PM

I loved this part:

“In the last fiscal year, which ended in October, post officials caught 961 illegal entrants, according to records kept by Fort Huachuca military police. Of those, 684 were of Mexican descent while 277 came from elsewhere — though a further breakdown wasn’t available.”

While the implication is that the 277 non-Mexicans could have been from anywhere in the world (since everyone knows that the best route from Saudi Arabia to the United States is through Mexico), Honduras and El Salvador and other Central American nations are the likely culprits.

derf • November 29, 2007 4:35 PM

Sorry, this one is just unpossible and completely absurd according to current Boston Police counter-terrorism operating procedure. There’s absolutely no mention of LED lights, giant clocks, some device counting down to zero, unattended backpacks, or bricks of putty that were carefully marked in bold letters with “C4”, “Explosives”, or “Dynamite”.

OldGuy • November 29, 2007 4:39 PM

Chuck Norris is still alive.

I’m not scared.

Roy • November 29, 2007 5:43 PM

Lucky for Fox News that they’re slow and stupid or they would have scooped all the other news media when somebody spoonfed this to them.

Illegal Teddy Bear • November 29, 2007 5:47 PM

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/transport/article2963671.ece

Filias Cupio • November 29, 2007 8:39 PM

“Even though unfounded, the plot speaks to the continued threat of weapons, drugs and possibly even terrorists coming across the border, he [Stephen Flanagan, director of the international security program at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies] said.”

Can someone decode this? It seems to me to be saying “the existence of false rumours of a plot increases the chance that there is a real plot.” If so, this is one think tank which is clearly empty of think.

Mark J. • November 29, 2007 9:26 PM

“empty of think”

Rich. I have to write that one down. 🙂

Anonymous • November 30, 2007 1:39 AM

Wow… fiction as evidence! That’s cool.

“Even though unfounded, the plot of Independence Day speaks to the continued threat of alien laser beams, mind control, and possibly even huge spaceships blowing up all major cities.”

Helge • November 30, 2007 5:11 AM

That part is great too:

“[T]he terrorists — who would shave their beards to fit in — planned to strike last May.”

Oh my god! They’re so damn clever! Now we must be afraid even of people without beards! Eeek! Panic, everybody!

bob • November 30, 2007 6:50 AM

@dragonfrog: Yeah they sell “anti-tank missiles and grenade launchers” at Wal Mart all the time. Dont forget to slip in that the profit somehow makes it to Dick Cheney.

js • November 30, 2007 7:16 AM

@helge: I think I’ll shave half of my beard so that people will see my good intentions.

jack c lipton • November 30, 2007 8:01 AM

“Empty of Think”…

(laughs manaiacally)

“While Duhbya was President, none of the government think tanks were far from ‘E’.”

Grumpy Physicist • November 30, 2007 8:14 AM

I think I read that novel.

It sucked. Big time.

hapsburg • November 30, 2007 9:46 AM

Let’s not forget Orsen Welles and his radio production of The War of the Worlds back in the 1930’s.

Alarmed citizens jumped off bridges.