On the surface, Tuesday’s page-one headline looks as if it heralds bad news: “Effort against terror lagging.” The article notes that more than a month ago the FBI was to embark on a wave of urgent interviews to head off another terror attack on U.S. soil, but that the effort was still in the planning stages.

That can be read two ways: The feds are not taking terrorist threats seriously enough, or they are calibrating a more thoughtful and precise method for conducting terrorism investigations without trampling on individual rights and exacerbating fears in the Muslim community. Given the fruitless and somewhat embarrassing pursuit of three Muslims in the Northwest, we hope it is the latter.

Recently, the feds decided to drop the case against Sami Al-Hussayen after a Boise jury acquitted him on all of the terrorism-related charges. They could have pursued some possible immigration violations but worked out an arrangement whereby the doctoral candidate at the University of Idaho would agree to return to Saudi Arabia. Al-Hussayen was arrested in the heat of the 9-11 terrorism attacks and was accused of fund raising and promoting terrorism via a Web site he maintained. Long after the situation cooled, a jury, in effect, said the government overreacted.

In another case, the FBI set its sights on a Muslim attorney from Portland after the terrorist attacks in Madrid. The agency claimed that Brandon Mayfield’s fingerprints were found on a bag of detonators found at the scene of the Madrid bombings. Almost immediately, Spanish law enforcement officials disputed the fingerprint match, but the FBI clung to its story for more than a month. Meanwhile, Mayfield was arrested and confined. Ultimately, the FBI had to admit that the fingerprint claim was false and apologized to Mayfield.

In still another case, Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain from Olympia, was jailed for 76 days after being accused of aiding and abetting an escape plan at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where al Qaeda and Taliban detainees are held. The evidence quickly turned flimsy, so the Army hit Yee with a different charge: downloading pornography from his government-issued computer. That charge was ultimately dropped, too.

If the FBI’s reluctance to attempt an aggressive sweep is anyway related to those three cases, then that should be viewed as a positive development. Nobody wants another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. If the government has specific information that terrorists are planning to strike again, then law enforcement should aggressively respond. But after several warnings of possible imminent danger, it’s reasonable to ask whether there can be a more measured approach.

Five weeks ago, Attorney General John Ashcroft said that terrorists’ plans to strike the United States this summer were 90 percent completed, and that’s why the FBI needed to respond with a new round of interviews. Five weeks later, the FBI is still weeks away from beginning those interviews.

An unidentified law enforcement official said that the agency wanted to be meticulous in determining who it would interview after upsetting civil rights groups and the Muslim community with the first go-round. That’s good news.