Homegrown Terrorists

For Zein Rimawi, the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, is – very simply – a place for peaceful worship.

But as correspondent Jim Stewart reports, this holy place was also the spiritual home of 22-year-old Matin Siraj, a man the FBI and New York police describe as a new breed of enemy, the homegrown terrorist.

Siraj was captured on undercover police surveillance video conspiring with cohorts about how big a backpack bomb they'll need to blow up New York City's Herald Square subway station.

"Suppose I drop it, then the train come and it stop. And then boom," Siraj could be heard saying.

According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, the significance of the case is that Al Qaeda doesn't have to plot to send killers here any more.

Asked what the definition of "homegrown" terrorism is, Mueller tells Stewart, "Homegrown terrorists, these are individuals who are inspired, motivated by al Qaeda, but we have not seen any direct connection with al Qaeda."

Police say Siraj, outraged by the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, conspired to bomb the subway with a friend and a mentor from the Bay Ridge mosque, who turned out to be a confidential informant working for the NYPD.

"I'm gonna dress like a Jew. And then I put the bomb in there," Siraj's co-conspirator could be heard saying.

In the past two years, FBI and local police say they've uncovered at least five homegrown cells around the country: most recently in Miami, where seven men were charged with plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago.

Asked if the agency had been lucky or good in stopping an attack, Mueller said: Yes, you could be fortunate, but to the extent that you are thorough, to the extent that you follow-up on every lead, you make your luck."

But if the latest homegrown cells shared bin Laden's ideology, they sorely lacked his expertise. The Miami group's revolutionary strategy bordered on delusional.

"After this, we're going to launch the ground war…," one of the suspects could be heard saying on an undercover tape.

Were these really terrorists?

"If you look at the individuals prior to September 11, several individuals with boxcutters only who had a scheme to hijack airlines and run them into buildings. We cannot risk any one of these groups could undertake a like attack, and I can assure you that where we have indications or evidence of such planning, we will investigate, we will disrupt and we will prosecute," Mueller says.

"And no apologies?" Stewart asks.

"No apologies," the director replies. `

Asked whether the U.S. is safer now, Mueller says, "Yes."

"The Patriot Act broke down the walls," he says. "And we are much more adept now at identifying pieces of information and following up on those pieces of information with all of our counterparts in the intelligence community and the law enforcement community."

"I think they're whistling past the graveyard if they think we're significantly safer than we were on 9/11," says CBS News consultant Michael Scheuer, who ran Alec Station, the former CIA unit tasked with tracking Osama bin Laden.

He says the FBI shouldn't overstate the value of taking out these homegrown cells.

"Whatever amount of resources is devoted to that particular cell, is not being devoted against the A-Team. Against al Qaeda," says Scheuer.

"Isn't the proof in the pudding, though? We haven't been attacked since 9/11," Stewart asks.

"That's one of the slickest and most cynical arguments American politicians have ever come up with," Scheuer replies.

"Well, your argument, then, is that it's not so much what the FBI has done," Stewart asks. "It's just that al Qaeda hasn't gotten around to us yet. They're busy elsewhere?"

Says Scheuer, "I think they're busy elsewhere."

Scheuer points to the recently disrupted London plane plot, which is suspected to have been approved directly by Al Qaeda's central command.

Asked if he thinks Al Qaeda is still capable of pulling off a big attack, Mueller says, "I don't believe anybody is saying that Al Qaeda proper, bin Laden and Zawahiri, do not still have the ability to undertake attacks."

That's what keeps New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly up at night. He says despite the FBI's best efforts, the city that's home to Ground Zero needs more.

"It's just common sense to realize that New York is on the top of the terrorists' target list," the commissioner tells Stewart.

Nowhere in this country is counter terrorism such an in-your-face experience as in New York, where displays of firearms and manpower called "surges" have become routine. Kelly also has permanently stationed some officers overseas.

There are some people in Washington not altogether happy with that.

"We have to do what we have to do to protect this city, a city that's been attacked twice. Five blocks from here, we had 2,700 people killed," Kelly says.

"If I was in Ray Kelly's shoes, I'd do what Ray Kelly is doing," Mueller acknowledges.

But aside from the machine guns and armed choppers, law enforcement's best weapon may be undercover operations, like the NYPD's infiltration of the Brooklyn mosque that led to the conviction of Matin Siraj in the conspiracy to bomb Herald Square.

"We got a tip," says Kelly. "And then, the confidential informant came in. He was very well-motivated, by the way. Because he felt so strongly about this case."

That motivation could be the most underreported force helping to keep America safe.

"The Muslim American community here has been tremendously helpful in terms of alerting us to individuals or groups of individuals who they believe may undertake terrorist attacks," says Mueller.

That's because, unlike their more militant counterparts in Europe, America's Muslims have been assimilated more completely.

"I came here to this country. I have never seen in my life people like the American people with an open heart," says Zein Rimawi.

And ultimately, that patriotism may turn out to be our best defense.