Local Terror Threat = New Cooperation

Las Vegas is not the sort of place one would expect to find a budding homegrown terrorist cell. But Undersheriff Doug Gillespie worries they may be there nonetheless, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart.

"They're here. They've been here awhile. They have friends. They have interactions with people. They're going to let their guard down," he says.

No one is watching events unfold in the London plane plot more closely than American police chiefs like Gillespie.

For years after 9/11 they believed, as the FBI did, that the next al Qaeda attack here would involve an undercover cell that came from overseas.

Only events have proven otherwise. In the past year, five terrorist plots — from such unlikely places as Torrance Calif., and Toledo, Ohio — have been uncovered and thwarted in the U.S. and Canada.

FBI surveillance tape of the members of the alleged Miami plot illustrates the common theme: The plots did not involve al Qaeda proper, but so-called homegrown terrorists who never went to the camps and met Osama Bin Laden — but hear his message.

That's why Washington is now looking more and more to local cops as the first line of defense. Ironic, since local police have for years faulted Washington for not doing enough to aid their own fight against terror.

"A lot of the threat in the future is homegrown and intelligence there is going to come from the community-based private individuals and the responders who really get a feel for when there is something out of the ordinary that we need to worry about," said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

To help, the FBI recently went into partnership with local departments to set up so-called "fusion centers" where everyone shares the same information. For the first time in the fight against terrorism, local and state authorities are at the same table and under the same roof as federal law enforcement.

Back in Las Vegas, Gillespie's hope is that homegrown cells might be more apt to make mistakes.

"They go on the Internet. They talk to friends. They purchase books," says Gillespie. "What you see now is when people show an interest like that society, Americans now pay more attention to it."

And police would be smart to listen. Of the five alleged plots recently busted, two were based on tips from the public.