Hussain also worked as an informant in a case against Yassin M. Aref, an Albany imam convicted on money laundering and terrorism charges in 2007.

In the Aref case, the government claimed that Aref and his co-defendant sought to launder money in a plot to purchase a shoulder-fired missile that was going to be used in an attack on the Pakistani Mission to the United Nations in New York. Aref claimed, however, that he was simply helping out a friend (informant Hussain, who then owned a pizza shop) with a loan.

There is little doubt, however, that the plot was entirely fictitious--the New York Times described it as a fake missile plot --and that it was hatched by the informant and not the defendants.

Yet another reason to be skeptical of the Bronx synagogue case and yet another reason to push the Justice Department to re-asses how it conducts anti-terrorism investigations.

As an attorney for Shahawar Matin Siraj--whose case I mentioned yesterday--once told me: "It's a sham that we conduct terrorism investigations by having informants create fictional terror plots."

For more on the Aref case, go here.