JOIN USTop advisers of Bush including then vice-president Dick Cheney in 2002 strongly urged that the military be used to apprehend men who were suspected of plotting with al-Qaeda. The terror suspects who were hiding in Buffalo, a New York suburb, later came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, The New York Times reported.
The decision to dispatch troops into the streets has few precedents in US history, as both the Constitution and the laws restrict the use of military within the country.
The paper said the proposal reached an advanced stage before president Bush shot it down.
Six young Yemeni-American men from Lackawanna were arrested in September 2002 after investigators learned they received military-type training at Osama bin Laden’s al-Farooq training camp in Afghanistan. All pleaded guilty and received sentences between seven and 10 years.
Cheney in a memo gave broad presidential authority to allow the use of military domestically to tackle al-Qaeda men.