Word: circuitousness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...early 2006, the Duka brothers went to a local Circuit City to get an 8-mm video converted into a DVD. They were greeted by Brian Morgenstern, a clerk at the store who answered their questions about the cost of the service. "Everything was normal, really," says Morgenstern, a very serious 26-year-old with sideburns, bright blue eyes and two diamond stud earrings...
...Circuit City, Morgenstern copied the video out on the floor. He was paying no attention to the images flashing by until he glanced up and noticed bearded men in camouflage shooting guns and shouting in a foreign tongue. He took the tape to a back office and watched all 90 minutes of it. That night he went home and told his parents what he'd seen. Then he weighed what to do. What if this was nothing? he thought. What if I hurt people's lives when it was nothing...
...next day Morgenstern went back to Circuit City and called the police. They arrived within an hour. Two officers watched the video with Morgenstern, and when they heard the word jihad (which can refer to a holy war or a personal struggle of any kind), they said, "Stop it. That's enough." With that, the Fort Dix case file was opened. The officers made a copy of the video and left...
...Fort Dix case, the Circuit City clerk's suspicion was reasonable. He had no experience with guns and thought what he had seen were illegal, fully automatic weapons (they were not). It made sense to be cautious. The police, too, did everything right. They saw what might or might not have been a sign of terrorism, and they took the tip seriously...
...Circuit City video is far from conclusive. It features a group of friends and relatives vacationing in the Poconos in Pennsylvania and speaking mostly English. It includes shots of the men skiing, hiking and joking around, according to multiple people who have seen it. "I know how to burn DVDs," says Burim Duka, the youngest Duka brother, who had gone on the first Circuit City errand but has not been charged in the case. "We dropped it off because it's easier. We didn't think anything of it. If it was [a terrorism training video], why would...