How gang of fanatics hatched mission code-named 'The Chicken Farm'BY TRACY CONNOR
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Sunday, June 3rd 2007, 4:00 AM
Click to read the bios of the JFK plotters.
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JFK plotter aimed to kill thousands
Residents rattled by JFK plot
Editorial: The terror this time
Anaylsis: As hatred grows, Al Qaeda wins
Michael Daly: His meekness masks murderous mind
Plot sends prez hopefuls rushing to mics
The met at the Gertz Plaza Mall, a small shopping center in the Jamaica section of Queens, one day last July.
Russell Defreitas was a retired cargo worker allegedly trying to put together a team to mount a terrorist attack on Kennedy Airport.
The other man was an informant, a convicted drug trafficker working undercover for the FBI, hoping to befriend Defreitas.
The first encounter went smoothly and it wasn't long before Defreitas, a Guyanese-born U.S. citizen, was confiding in his new buddy.
With dazzling speed, a discussion about the civil war in Lebanon led to talk of an audacious terrorist plot, authorities said.
It was followed by cryptic phone calls and meetings with shadowy characters and a series of trips to Guyana and Trinidad.
Month by month, the plot moved forward - with the informant recording the incriminating chatter on tape and feeding the evidence to his handlers.
That evidence, laid out in a 30-page criminal complaint detailed here, left no doubt that Defreitas, a graying 63-year-old from East New York, Brooklyn, was thirsty for the blood of Americans.
"Even the twin towers can't touch it," he is said to have boasted of his plan last month.
The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks appear to have been a benchmark for Defreitas from the start.
Last August, as the informant cozied up to him, Defreitas remarked during a chat about Lebanon that Muslims always incur the "wrath of the world" while Jews get a "pass."
The informant agreed, and Defreitas upped the ante, confessing, "He had a vision that would make the World Trade Center attack seem small."
He gave no details but when the two men met the next day, Defreitas divulged that he had vetted the informant and decided he was "the right man for the job."
He didn't say what the job was, but specifics soon trickled out.
On Aug. 7, as they ran errands, Defreitas told the informant about "brothers" from Guyana and Trinidad who would come to New York for something "bigger than the World Trade Center."
The next day, he indicated there was a "cell" of a half-dozen men targeting Kennedy Airport and looking for a New Yorker to join the nefarious scheme.
When Defreitas traveled to Guyana in mid-August, the informant kept in touch. On Sept. 10, Defreitas put him on the phone with a Guyanese national who asked a startling question:
"Would you like to die as a martyr?"
The FBI's man gave the answer he thought they wanted - that martyrdom was the greatest way to die in Islam.
A couple of weeks later, the informant joined Defreitas in Guyana and began attending meetings with some of his cronies where "jihad" was discussed.
At a session in October, one of the Guyanese men talked about his wish to attack the U.S. "where it would inflict the most harm" and discussed blowing up the fuel lines at Kennedy Airport.
Another man, a businessman from the Guyanese capital, Georgetown, readily joined the plot and even came up with code names to discuss the operation.
He also bragged of his friendship with a leader in Jamaat al Muslimeen, a violent Muslim extremist group in Trinidad. He offered to have an associate, Abdel Nur, go to Trinidad and set up a meeting with the Jamaat boss.
Throughout October, November and December, Defreitas and his accomplices continued to meet about JFK, while the informant returned to New York and was kept up to date by telephone.
At the start of the new year, Defreitas was dispatched to New York to conduct surveillance on the airport.
Back in the city, he once again confided in the informant, explaining why he was so bent on blowing up Kennedy Airport.
His hatred had been roused when he worked for Evergreen International Aviation years earlier and saw missiles being shipped to Israel that he believed would be used to kill Muslims.
He "wanted to do something to get those bastards," he said, according to the complaint.
And now he hit the ground running.
He and the informant made four trips to JFK in January. Defreitas showed him fuel tanks that could be blown up, escape routes and holes in security. They taped some of the locations.
During the forays, the retiree also revealed that the Georgetown businessman they had met was firmly on board.
"[He] really wants to get this thing going," he said. "He's very sincere about it...but he wants to get it done the right way. He doesn't want to regret starting something that we can't finish."
One night, the pair called the businessman to give him a status report. Defreitas commented that he had seen televangelist Pat Robertson on TV predicting disaster would hit the U.S.
"So he's probably not too far off, huh?" Defreitas devilishly cracked. On the other end of the line, the businessman laughed.
By now, the informant had completely ingratiated himself with Defreitas, who bared his twisted soul.
He confided that he fantasized about attacking Kennedy Airport long before 9/11, when he was an employee at the cargo company.
"These things used to come into my brain - well, I could blow this place up," he said. "I could make a bomb. I could knock this place...
"I would sit and see a plane taxiing up the runway and I would say, if I could get a rocket, then I could do a hit....But I had no connections with no Arabs or nobody."
But now Defreitas had a whole team behind him and on Jan. 14, he and the informant returned to Guyana to show off their handiwork - the JFK videos.
But cracks in the coalition were beginning to show.
One of the conspirators began to suspect another was a spy for the Guyanese government. The Georgetown businessman tried to back out after an argument with Defreitas and the informant.
Defreitas was undeterred and pressed his goal of getting to Trinidad to meet with the Jamaat extremist leader.
He contacted associates in Guyana and in February, one of them put him in touch with Abdul Kadir - a member of parliament with purported ties to Middle East militants.
After viewing the Kennedy Airport videos, Kadir was so enthusiastic about the plan, he code-named it "The Chicken Farm" so they could continue to discuss it, the feds said.
But he also had concerns.
He explained "that his associates had their own rules of engagement and wanted to minimize the killing of innocents, such as women and children," the criminal complaint said.
The attack should take place in the early morning and focus on infrastructure, he suggested.
Kadir also revealed he knew the Jamaat leader - so Defreitas decided that he, not Abdel Nur, should make the introduction.
In April - after Defreitas and the informant had come back to New York - Kadir agreed on the phone to travel with them to Trinidad to meet the big man.
The New Yorkers went back to Guyana last month for more meetings with Kadir, who viewed their videos and satellite photos.
He was an engineer by training, and he believed that it would take two explosions to blow up the tanks in the photos because they were insulated.
Although he backed out of going to Trinidad with them and Nur, Kadir said he phoned his "brothers" there about the Jamaat powwow.
"They've arranged meetings for when you go there," he told them, authorities said.
At the same time, he warned that the Trinidadian militant was "hot" and under surveillance because of his ties to Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy.
"If you get to meet, be very careful what you tell him," Kadir cautioned. "He's not going to open up to you."
As it turned out, Defreitas and the informant never got to meet the Jamaat leader.
They did fly to Trinidad on May 20 and were put up by an associate of Kadir, Kareem Ibrahim, who took them to the Jamaat compound two days later.
When they arrived, they were met by Nur, who said he had been there for two days and had already presented the terror plan. The organization wanted to talk more about it.
But Defreitas was starting to get cold feet, worried that Jamaat might turn on them. And Ibrahim, their new contact in Trinidad, agreed. He told them to leave the plan in his hands to present to other fanatics he knew.
Defreitas and the informant returned to New York - and there was one more phone call with their new contact.
Last Sunday, Ibrahim spoke with Defreitas and the informant and said things were progressing, that he was sending an emissary to his overseas contacts to present the plan.
Defreitas said he was happy.
But that didn't last long.
After 10 months of eavesdropping on the plotters as they moved ever closer to the sinister goal, the feds were ready to make their move.
On Friday, as he and the informant met at the Lindenwood Diner in Brooklyn, the authorities arrested him. His carefully laid plans had crumbled.
tconnor@nydailynews.com
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