Department of Pre-Crime: Why are citizens locked up for "un-American" thoughts?

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When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales held a press conference in the summer of 2006 announcing the arrests of seven young men for plotting to bomb Chicago's Sears Tower, he sounded defensive, his voice lingering a beat on each thing the men allegedly did. "Individuals here in America made plans to hurt Americans," he claimed. "They did request materials; they did request equipment; they did request funding." Gonzales admitted that the American and Haitian-born men posed "no immediate threat." But, he warned, "homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like Al Qaeda. Our philosophy here is that we try to identify plots in the earliest stages possible, because we don't know what we don't know about a terrorism plot." It's dangerous, Gonzales added, to make a "case by case" evaluation that "well, 'this is a really dangerous group'; 'this is not a really dangerous group.'"

From the beginning, the allegations seemed bizarre. Allegedly led by Narseal Batiste, an underemployed construction worker, the plotters were an oddball group who dubbed themselves Seas of David. Preaching an eclectic mix of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the seven men were known around their neighborhood of Liberty City, Miami, for practicing martial arts and wearing Stars of David. Mostly unemployed and with few resources, they seemed an unlikely bunch to blow up a landmark 1,200 miles away.

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