Laura Mansfield, a counterterrorism consultant and Arabic translator, says many of the incidents involve terrorist sympathizers hoping to divert attention from actual terrorists moving forward with real plots.

[...]

"The distractions are going well," the site reported. "The Americans are chasing those with video cameras believing them to be terrorists. That permits us to do our preparations undetected."

Last year, Miss Mansfield visited a mosque in Georgia that advertised an English and Arabic session on God and family. She attended the Arabic session where a man identified as Khaled recounted a New York flight. He and his friends acted suspicious and made simultaneous restroom runs to frighten passengers.

"He laughed when he described how several women were in tears, and one man sitting near him was praying," Miss Mansfield later wrote in an account of that meeting on her personal Web site.