Friday, October 11,
3:53 AM EST
ASHCROFT, FBI BREAK UP ANOTHER 73Rr0!$7
CELL
by Hesah McToole,
NA!P NNYKYN NewsWire
Find the "Leet"
translation here.
SAN DIEGO
-- Federal agents stormed the houses of two suspected terrorists
early yesterday morning after determining they were part of a
plot to destroy U.S. cities.
Jacob Martz and Curtis Hughes, well known
in the PC gaming community as "w@xx0r" and "l00d@|<ri$"
respectively, are now in custody and awaiting a bail hearing.
"Instead of conducting a house invasion
of some Arabs like we have in the past, we got us something solid,"
stated Attorney General John Ashcroft after the raids.
"This time, we have credible evidence
that these young Turks had something up their sleeves, by God!"
When asked to describe this evidence, Ashcroft
demurred, citing national security.
EVIDENCE IS ELITE
However, Justice Department insiders supplied The New News
with a series of emailed exchanges
between two suspects, who employed a code called "Leet"
(or "l337"), long used by hardcore PC gamers to confuse
and scare their opponents.
Leet now appears to be the language of
choice for aspiring terrorists. Often noted for poor grammar,
atrocious language and bad odors, gamers took their abuse of
English to a new level by replacing the alphabet with numbers,
symbols and slashes.
Long ignored by the intelligentsia of the
nation, Leet now appears to be the perfect conduit for instantaneous
terrorist communication.
THREAT IS CLEAR, SORTA
"No JOO 4rE NoT +EH +eRr0R1$+ I @M +Eh +3RroRi5+,"
one of the emails plainly states. It continues with the ominous
line, "i w1LL N3vEr $+0p un+1L I h@vE punI5H3D J00 To dE4TH!"
"This email alone was not enough for
us to send in our agents," said a Justice Department official
who asked to remain anonymous.
In a latter exchange, one of the would-be
terrorists explains that he would come after the other "L1Ke
4l kwaEd@ 0N Crack" ("like Al Qaeda on crack"),
which led to the response, "i'|\/| 90i|\|9 +0 9o 54DD4m
|-|U5531|\| 4LL 0\/3r yoUR 5+UpId 4S$" ("I'm going
to go Saddam Hussein all over your stupid ass").
Those statements, together with threats
to "v1ll4g3z" and "c1t13z," was enough to
get the FBI involved.
WASHINGTON SKEPTICAL
"We were just talking about 'Age of Empires,'" Martz
said from his jail cell. "He kept attacking me so I said
I'd attack him back."
"It's just a game!"
Meanwhile, Hughes refused repeated requests
for face-to-face interviews, opting instead to scrawl down his
response to the entire incident in Leet:
"1 h@\/3 n0+H!|\|G +0 $@y 3Xc3P+ 70
s/\Y |-|@XX0r$ r00L +eh W0rL|) LOLOLOLOLOL! w3 W!LL h@u|\|+ yuO
7!LL J00 d!3 LMAO LMAo! Jo() @r3 my 8!7c|-|3z @Nd I r@P3rz j00r
W0|\/|3n +00!!!"
-- King Mongo
contributed to this report
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