And if the plot had been carried out, prosecutors say, the bodies of U.S. Army personnel would have been strewn across the fields of the Fort Dix military base.

Jury selection begins tomorrow for the trial of five foreign-born Muslims from the Philadelphia area charged with planning a jihad-inspired attack on the South Jersey military complex.

The government's case is built primarily around secretly recorded conversations made by two cooperating witnesses who befriended the defendants. Those conversations, prosecutors say, detail "plans to attack Fort Dix and kill American soldiers" and include "discussions of the supposed justifications for such attacks rooted in radical jihadist ideology."

But defense attorneys contend their clients talked a bigger game than they intended to play, portraying them as easily manipulated individuals led into a plot by paid FBI informants who created a conspiracy out of hollow words and empty threats.

"Any conspiracy that plots death and destruction has to be taken seriously," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert who teaches at Georgetown University and who is following the trial of the so-called Fort Dix Five.

But Hoffman said that there are no stereotypical "homegrown" terrorists and that each case has to be evaluated on its own.

Challenging the credibility of informants and arguing entrapment have been common defense strategies used in other terrorist trials, he said.

Sometimes effectively, he added.

Those are the issues jurors will have to wrestle with during the trial, which is expected to last several weeks.

The first of an estimated 1,500 potential jurors will report to U.S. District Court in Camden tomorrow morning and begin filling out questionnaires designed to determine how much they know about the case and whether that knowledge or any other inherent beliefs or biases should preclude them from the jury.

Twelve jurors and six alternates will be chosen to determine the fate of the defendants, all in their mid- to late 20s, who face potential life sentences.

Opening arguments, before Judge Robert Kugler, are expected next month.

The Fort Dix trial is one of three major prosecutions of suspected terrorists under way, or soon to begin, across the country.

In Houston, the retrial of the leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, a Texas-based Muslim charitable organization charged with funneling $12 million to Palestinian terrorists, began this month. The first trial ended with a hung jury last year.

And in Miami, prosecutors are gearing up for a third try at convicting members of the so-called Liberty City 7, who were charged with plotting to blow up the Sears Building in Chicago and several federal offices in Florida. Two earlier trials ended with hung juries. In the first, one of the defendants was found not guilty.

Six suspects were originally charged in the Fort Dix case.

One, Agron Abdullahu, 25, a baker in a ShopRite store near Williamstown, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge, admitting he had given weapons to three of the other defendants who were illegal immigrants. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

The five other defendants, charged with the more serious offense of plotting to kill soldiers, are brothers Dritan Duka, 29, Shain Duka, 27, and Eljvir Duka, 24; Mohamad Shnewer, 23; and Serdar Tatar, 24.

The Dukas and Shnewer are from Cherry Hill. Tatar is a former Cherry Hill resident who was living in Philadelphia when he and the others were arrested.