Suspected Threat Shakes S. Florida
Three Men Released After Day-Long Alert

MIAMI, Sept. 13 -- Bomb squads scrambled. One of Florida's busiest roads was closed for 16 hours, and everyone from the media to law enforcement to managers of downtown Miami high-rises kicked into crisis mode.

But it all might have been because of a bad joke.

A police robot searches one of the two cars stopped on Alligator Alley, the main east-west highway through the Florida Everglades, early Friday. (J.Pat Carter - AP)

At least, that's what federal investigators said they think might be responsible for a supercharged sequence of events today that seemingly could only happen in the post-Sept. 11 world.

The jangled saga began shortly after midnight this morning, when a car sped through a toll booth outside Naples, Fla., without paying the required 75 cents. The car matched a description provided the night before by a woman in northern Georgia. She had called police to report overhearing a chilling conversation during breakfast Thursday at a Shoney's restaurant.

The woman -- a nurse named Eunice Stone -- had told officers that she listened to three young men in the restaurant laugh about people mourning the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and discuss plans to launch an attack of their own in Miami. Stone gave police license plate numbers and descriptions of two cars, and law enforcement agencies soon issued an interstate BOLO, the shorthand for a warning to "be on the lookout."

An officer stationed at a toll booth on Interstate 75, a major east-west artery nicknamed Alligator Alley because it cuts through the Everglades, spotted the cars described in the BOLO as one of them blew through and pulled them over. A bomb squad was called and the road was shut down. That caused a huge snarl as the day's traffic began to pour onto the roadway, which runs from Naples to Fort Lauderdale.

Soon, news helicopters hovered overhead and South Florida television stations swept into nonstop coverage.

It was a full-fledged frenzy.

Stone was at the center of it. She spoke on radio and television, recounting -- during an interview on Tampa radio station WFLZ -- the precise words that she remembered hearing the men say: "If people thought September 11 was something, wait till September 13th."

She said the men were of Middle Eastern descent, but expressed some surprise that they spoke English without accents. She also remembered the men talking about needing to get to Miami in a big hurry and alluding to what she said she presumed was a plot to "blow up something."

"Do you think that will bring it down?" Stone recalled one of the men saying.

She said another responded: "If that don't bring it down, I have contacts. I'll get enough to bring it down."

While Stone talked, patrols increased at Miami government buildings and high-rises tightened security. Law enforcement vehicles and personnel lined Alligator Alley. The FBI was there, along with sheriff's deputies, police officers, even the Salvation Army and the American Red Cross. Camera crews captured footage of police detonating a suspicious package and the image was replayed throughout the day.

Law enforcement officials were careful to call the three men -- held in a police van -- detainees, rather than suspects. Don Hunter, the Collier County sheriff, said they were not cooperating.

The narrative of their lives emerged: They were medical students headed to Larkin Hospital in Miami for a practical studies course, after studying at Ross University on the island of Dominica in the Caribbean. Two were U.S. citizens, the other was in the country on a legal student visa.

But so much didn't add up.

If they were terrorists, why speak so loudly about their plans in a public place? Why pay for their meal with a credit card? Why blow through a toll booth?

Some things Stone had said earlier in the day also seemed to resonate more as doubts began to emerge in the afternoon. She told Fox News that her son had speculated that the men were "playing them," rather than telling the truth. "I hope I haven't done something wrong," Stone had told Fox News. "I hope I haven't caused someone problems that really didn't do anything. . . . At the same time, I thought, 'What if they really are doing something and I stopped them?' "

By late afternoon, the doubts were intensifying. First, one car was cleared for explosives.

News agencies began reporting that law enforcement sources were exploring a theory that the men were playing a hoax on Stone, perhaps because they thought she was staring at them because one wore a Muslim kufi cap.

Then the other car was cleared for explosives and suddenly, the whole day's events took on a new perspective. Relatives of the men who were being held called a news conference in Illinois where they live, lambasting the media and law enforcement.

"Just because of the way we look or the way we choose to live our lives, we're persecuted," said Hana Gheith, a sister of one of the men.

Not long after the news conference, police reopened Alligator Alley. The men who had spent the day in a police van were released and everyone was left to wonder just what had happened there and why.