WASHINGTON, June 5 (UPI) -- The recent foiled terrorist attack in New York raised questions about radicalization in American prisons but it doesn’t indicate a trend, said James Jay Carafano, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation.

On Tuesday, four men were indicted in New York on charges of allegedly planting 37 pounds of inactive C-4 explosives in two cars parked outside two different synagogues. They had also allegedly planned to travel to the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. to shoot down planes with what they thought was a surface-to-air Stinger missile. Undercover law enforcement agents supplied all the fake weapons and monitored the alleged plot. Numerous reports indicate that the four men -- James Cromitie, 55, David Williams, 28, Onta Williams, 32, and Laguerre Payen, 27 -- converted to a radicalized form of Islam during previous prison sentences and expressed a desire to wage jihad.

None have links to international terrorist groups and all but Payen, a Haitian citizen, were born and raised in the United States. This revelation has highlighted fears of a new kind of homegrown terrorism.

“One data point doesn’t make a trend,” Carafano said in a telephone interview. “Prison populations often don’t make good terrorists. They’re in prison because they have lots of problems. Being a disciplined, committed fanatic is not one of them.”

The men were arrested on May 20 in the Bronx. This is the most recently publicized threat to shake America following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, speaking Wednesday on the subject of Islam at the release party of the documentary “Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think,” noted that religions are often poorly understood even by their followers.

“When thinking about Islam and Muslims, we should be guided by facts, not fear,” said Albright, in her keynote address at the release party. “Fear is a powerful emotion and often more so than reason.”

Tom Sanderson, a senior fellow for the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that depending on the facts, it would be reasonable to expect some future oversight over prison ministry.

“If it’s shown that this threat came from links formed in prison, there’s a decent argument to keep this from happening again,” Sanderson said. “I think it’s good to have religion in prisons. But its important to know what sort of information is being brought into prison. When you’re in prison you lose certain rights.”

“If people are being radicalized in prison or if there’s evidence that violence on the outside was borne of links in prison, it’s reasonable to expect some degree of oversight in the prison system.”

But Carafano said that while this terrorist plot is worthy of attention, it doesn’t amount to a “crisis.”

“We recently did a study on radicalism in U.S.,” Carafano said. “The trend is that there is no trend. You’re talking about a couple dozen people in a country of several million.” He added, “Terrorists in the U.S. tend to be about revenue generation, they don’t want to do terrorists attacks and jeopardize fundraising.”

He noted that organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah have extensive networks in Latin America but they organize few attacks. He reasoned that they would have a financial disincentive to destabilize the countries, since criminal activity there provides income -- militants in the United States face the same scenario.

And, Sanderson said, the failed terrorist attack may have stirred up some fears in New York but this operation showcases how security functions in the United States.

“The U.S. is far better off than Europe and the rest of the world in terms of radicalization from Muslims and other extremists in this case,” Sanderson said. But, “there remain individuals who want to join the fight against the west and are capable in some degree of undertaking the fight.”

He added, “In the best of societies you’re always going to have people who want to take up arms.”

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