Cornflakes of Mass Destruction

Wash Post:

More than a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the FBI nabbed two Arab grocers loading boxes onto a tractor-trailer outside a drab gray apartment building here. The cargo: stolen Kellogg's cereal.

Agents did not charge the men that day, and set them free. But 16 months later, soon after hijacked planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FBI was back. This time, agents arrested the pair and a third Arab grocer. After they were grilled about the terrorist attacks, the men were charged and pleaded guilty -- to conspiracy to possess the pilfered cornflakes.

To this day, the three grocers remain on the federal government's list of terrorism cases, although they never were charged with a terrorism-related crime. Often cited to emphasize the government's success fighting terrorism, the list that includes Nasser Abuali, Hussein Abuali and Rabi Ahmed is made up in large part of men caught up in the post-Sept. 11 dragnet that targeted Middle Easterners.

It also includes a Sudanese actor released after his name was mixed up with that of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, as well as four Jordanians convicted in an immigrant-marriage scam in Florida. Neither the actor nor the Jordanians were linked to terrorism.