A more unusual review of the Zazi case:http://www.juancole.com/2009/11/muel...his-is-it.html

Zazi allegedly spent the better part of a year trying to concoct the bomb he had supposedly learned how to make.
Mueller also cites an academic whose work I recommend:
It follows that any terrorism problem within the United States principally derives from homegrown people like Zazi, often isolated from each other, who fantasize about performing dire deeds. Penn State’s Michael Kenney has interviewed dozens of officials and intelligence agents and analyzed court documents, and finds homegrown Islamic militants to be operationally unsophisticated, short on know-how, prone to make mistakes, poor at planning, and severely hampered by a limited capacity to learn.
The cited work of Kenney's is around a hundred pages, so yet to read fully: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/226808.pdf

Yes, I know Juan Cole and Mueller are not universally loved.

From one of my favourite blogsites:http://www.schneier.com/blog/

(Note written in 2007)Terrorism is a real threat, and one that needs to be addressed by appropriate means. But allowing ourselves to be terrorized by wannabe terrorists and unrealistic plots -- and worse, allowing our essential freedoms to be lost by using them as an excuse -- is wrong.

I'll be the first to admit that I don't have all the facts in any of these cases. None of us do. So let's have some healthy skepticism. Skepticism when we read about these terrorist masterminds who were poised to kill thousands of people and do incalculable damage. Skepticism when we're told that their arrest proves that we need to give away our own freedoms and liberties. And skepticism that those arrested are even guilty in the first place.
davidbfpo