It Turns Out It is a Possible ‘Hoax’:

‘Three men reportedly overheard talking about a terrorist plot were pulled over and detained for 17 hours Friday before authorities said the men were apparently kidding around and released them.

“If this was a hoax, they will be charged,” Collier County Sheriff Don Hunter said angrily after an all-day search of the men’s two cars turned up no sign of explosives.’Yahoo!

So the ‘terrorists’ are damned if they are and damned if they aren’t ; this seems to indicate that the intention to ‘hoax’ comes from them. However, Plastic‘s take on the issue

, unfortunately without much attribution, is that the dissembling comes from the supposed informant:

‘…Several people who went to High School with Eunice Stone, the woman who reported the trio to the FBI, were quoted as saying ‘Oh yeah, Eunice always was a gossipy bitch, trying to start trouble and get attention with her lies.’ Neighbors also reported that Mrs Stone was ‘Overly intrusive into other people’s lives…with a tendency to excite the situation at someone else’s expense.”

“CNN, Fox News, and Yahoo somehow all managed to quote the same person, but not quite with the same quote. After reading several ‘quotes’ carefully I can say with some conviction that there is enough variation in what she ‘heard’ that I would feel safe in saying she didn’t hear it at all. Perhaps even more vindictively filling in information that she thought she heard, and then passing that along without mentioning that maybe she didn’t hear it so well, and maybe didn’t hear it at all but just made it all up in her head.’

I have wondered for a year why we haven’t heard more irresponsible hoaxing and tattletale tales. The boy-who-cries-wolf hysteria of the current administration’s repeated terror alerts certainly guarantees such attention-getting maneuvers will get what their perpetrators’ hearts desire…