Shades of Jose Padilla.

The second problem with the claim is that the dirty bomb plot would never, ever have worked. According to a 2003 CIA e-mail, Padilla and his alleged accomplice, Binyam Mohammed, had apparently taken seriously an Internet article that offered laughable instructions for creating an "H-Bomb." That article is still easy to find online, and is clearly tongue-in-cheek. It begins with the phrase: "Making and owning an H-bomb is the kind of challenge real Americans seek." It goes on to instruct those hoping to make a bomb to fill buckets with uranium and swing them above their head "as fast as possible."

Or the Liberty City Seven.

"Hey, do you like Allah?"

"Uhm, I guess. Also Jesus."

"Yeah, but mostly Allah, right?"

"Dude, you're weird."

"Don't you hate people who trample your religious freedoms?"

"Of course!"

"Don't you want to, like, blow them up?"

"NO..."

"Not even for money?"

"No!"

"Not even for, like, a lot of money?"

"...how much money, crazy man?"

"Like how much do you want?"

"How about, I dunno, fifty grand."

"Sure!"

"You have fifty grand?"

"Absolutely, my brother in bondage! Would you like some bombs with that?"

"No!"

"You can't have the 50 grand unless you take some bombs'n'shit."

"Fer real?"

"Fer real."

"Okay, give me fifty grand and some bombs, I guess."

"FREEZE MUTHERFUCKER HOMELAND SECURITY"

"goddamn it"

It seems pretty obvious that they are just a local African-American cult which mixed Judaism, Christianity and (a little bit of) Islam. It seems to be a of vague offshoot of the Moors group founded by Dwight York. I heard on CNN that one of them talked of being Moors. And Batiste, the leader, called whites "devils" in the tradition of the original Nation of Islam and York's Moors. Now CNN is saying one member said they practiced witchcraft [likely meaning Haitian voodoo or perhaps Santería-like rituals]. One former member is called Levi-El, suggesting he might be associated with the Black Hebrew movement or an offshoot. Now a relative of one of the members, Phanor, said that they wore black uniforms with a star of David arm patch and considered themselves of the Order of Melchizadek... This Seas of David group primarily seems to have been studying the Bible. The mother of one insisted that he is a Catholic. Then there is all that Jewish symbology and terminology, even in their names. Islam was nothing more for them but a set of symbols they could pull into their syncretic local culture. The group drew on poor Haitian immigrants and local indigent African-American youth. If this were the 1960s, they'd have been Black Panthers or Communists.

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As far as The Intercept, Pando has a real hard-on against all things Omidyar and Glenn Greenwald. I would argue that Pando is, by and large, less credible than The Intercept, however.