Dina Temple-Raston, superb chronicler of the real life of America, examines Lackawanna, New York, home of the first al-Qaeda terrorist cell in America. Or was it?

The "Lackawanna Six" were young men, born of Yemeni families long-settled in upstate New York, who journeyed to Pakistan where they spent time in an al-Qaeda training camp long before the specter of 9/11, before the existence of the Homeland Security Act, before most people had heard of Osama Bin Laden.

This is a story of pre-emptive imprisonment for an act of terrorism never committed, a terrorist cell that may not even have been a cell, and a mysterious contact with an al-Qaeda operative who was supposedly killed but whose remains were never found.