Jonah, right on — this is a huge story. Head-in-the-sanders will want to think these wannabe jihadis were an independent operation, but Frank Gaffney suggested otherwise in this piece from August 19.
Quoting Frank: “The frightening thing is that the would-be assailants were not terrorist adherents to the political ideology of Islamofascism when they went to jail. They became Islamists while in prison – thanks to the sort of recruitment opportunities afforded clerics usually selected by Saudi-backed Muslim-American organizations.”