"Look," says Brown, Mosed's attorney, "there was an executive order by President Clinton saying they were not supposed to go, so they ought to take their lumps for it. But that doesn't make them terrorists."

Alwan pleaded guilty on April 8. He also admitted having delivered two videotapes about the bombing of the Cole from the Kandahar guesthouse to an al-Qaida associate in Pakistan

Taher pleaded guilty on May 12. Al-Bakri -- the one whose confession set the dominoes in motion -- will be the last one to fall, as he's scheduled to plead guilty today. All should receive sentences between seven and 10 years in prison.

Recruiter Kamal Derwish might be able to shed light on exactly what the Lackawanna Six were planning, if anything, but his testimony won't be forthcoming. On Nov. 3, 2002, he was on a remote Yemen highway with the head of al-Qaida's Yemen operations, long wanted in connection with the attack on the USS Cole.

An unmanned CIA Predator aircraft took aim. A Hellfire missile was fired. Direct hit. Everyone was killed.

Rumors swirl that Juma was arrested in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom and is currently being held in Guatánamo Bay, which the Defense Department will not confirm. Mohamed Albanna -- uncle of Jaber Elbaneh, the seventh man -- says that he hasn't heard from his nephew since he left for the camp in 2001. (Mohamed Albanna has his own troubles, of course. In December he and two relatives were arrested as part of "Operation Green Quest," the federal crackdown on the illegal money-transfer systems in the Muslim world known as hawalas. The three are alleged to have sent almost $500,000 illegally to Yemen.)

After all this probing and confession, it seems nothing short of remarkable that the question still stands: Were the Lackawanna Six an al-Qaida cell? "You can see that they were not an immediate and a direct threat to the United States because they were not 'missioned,'" al-Qaida expert Gunaratna says after reviewing their case for Salon. "But the very fact that they have been trained and the very fact that they have been in that environment would make them a potential risk."

"There are several thousands of people like this," Gunaratna says. "They have come to the West and they have not been given a mission." But that doesn't necessarily matter, he says. "There need not be a direct order. The environment itself could motivate any one of them to go and do something."

"These guys couldn't even organize a picnic," counters Noman, Taher's uncle.

Even with all the plea agreements, defense attorneys point out that the 1996 law in question that their clients violated -- providing material support by providing "personnel" in the form of their own person -- has yet to be reconciled by the courts. It was ruled unconstitutional in California but passed muster in a Virginia courtroom during the trial of Walker Lindh. The law could be tested, but that would require years and a client willing to put himself through an extended period of uncertainty.

In his plea agreement, Alwan told the government that a second group from Lackawanna was considering a trip to al-Farooq. The government has yet to name any in this second group, though Alwan's attorney says that they didn't actually make the trip. Still, prosecutors made sure to point out this second group; could they be charged with planning to go? "I certainly don't think so," Harrington says, "but who knows with this administration."

A Justice Department source says that unsatisfying resolutions like that of the Six are the future of terrorism prosecutions. "There is a predisposition not to wait a build a case the way it used to be done," the source says. Now there's a "prevention paradigm -- it's Ashcroft specific and Ashcroft driven."

The moment law enforcement has enough evidence to arrest and detain, it will. "What that means is sometimes the cases aren't as strong as if we had waited another five and six months to gather other types of evidence, particularly electronic evidence," the source says. "We really don't want to wait until these people are about to fly a plane into a building."

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