Terrorist plot foiled!

What do folks make of this?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/24/terror.indictment/index.html

I was skeptical at first but as more details have come to light I am struck by two things. 1) This is starting to look way more legit than any of the other cases (laughably and loudly) publicized to-date, like the shoe bomber or that recent family of white guys from Virginia or wherever that was. 2) This was done with little to no fanfare, no national warnings of "imminent terrorist threat" or a change in the "terror threat level" or whatever. Obama admin has handled this very differently than Bush would have...

I wish I looked less like the guys who typically get arrested for this sort of thing (like the guy in that cnn pic). Like, this guy, a major player in the Bali bombings, looks exactly like me, like I could use it on a WDYLL thread:

http://www.steinhoefel.de/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/hambali.jpg

That guy is at Guantánamo, but it's no wonder that people stare at me at airports.

dude its cuz you're smuggling plastique in your beard DON'T LIE

yeah my beard is pretty crazy these days

but also yeah this plot looks like the real deal, and evidently it's not played out yet.

when this was first reported it just seemed like garden variety harassment - primarily because the main charge that was getting talked up was the "lying to federal agents" angle. But once they said that they had evidence of him attending a training camp in Pakistan and had bomb plans AND (this was the kicker) had made an effort to purchase specific explosive materials ... case starts to look a little more solid.

In the UK, we're even more used to terrorist plots turning out to be "terrorist plots" than you are

we're also used to people saying "oh this is all a put-on", as with the plot to blow up airliners. less used to people owning up to their troothery.

made purchases of components "necessary to produce TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide)

This essentially means "he bought drain cleaner and some bleach".

quantities of each probably relevant here but yeah point taken

i have a feeling they have more to go on than just a receipt from Home Depot

24-pg document released with the indictment details attempts to buy large quantities of explosive materials with stolen credit cards, texts/calls requesting urgent assistance, etc. If any of this turns out to be true I will be kinda impressed that the FBI did their job right for a change

This definitely doesn't feel like, say, the Bush Admin. congratulating itself for "foiling" that "very credible" threat posed by that Miami (Liberty City) terror cell.

Another interesting aspect of this story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/nyregion/24terror.html?_r=1&hpw

The investigation was disrupted two weeks ago when detectives from one of the units, the Intelligence Division, sought assistance from a Queens imam who then alerted the central suspect in the case to the inquiry.

they're gonna nail that imam if they can, I bet. Obstructing an investigation, etc.

lol this fucking imam....

he basically acted exactly any right-wing conspiracy theorist would expect him to act ie 'all muslims support terrorism, can't trust any of em'

but they make references to him having assisted/cooperated with the police in the past so I wonder what the deal was... did he really not think these guys were up to something, or was he consciously colluding with them or what?

there are a lot of details in this 24-pg thing, looks like the cops/FBI did their forensics and surveillance pretty well

I don't know all the details, but from what little I've read about it:

1. I agree with Shakey that it was handled well, without all the scare-tactic fanfaire of the previous administration.

2. Could this actually send public opinion of War in Afghanistan even lower? Question: If we're so good at busting these guys in the homeland, do we really need to be sniffin' them out in other countries? Why not end the war(s) and re-route a huge chunk of that money to beef up national security?

3. Did they bust this guy prematurely? Wouldn't have made more sense to monitor his activities over a long period of time to try to find all of his contacts?

re: 3) that was clearly their plan, but the imam tipped off their main suspect, so they had to move in and bust him before he destroyed evidence/fled the country

Ah, I see. That makes sense.

xpost - I'm not entirely confident about that, actually -- I'm assuming the reason his attorney says he feels "ill used" is that he (possibly) had a good enough relationship with law enforcement for them to seek his assistance, and he's now being charged in connection with the whole thing for making false statements, not like any kind of material involvement. (I don't really see any information here about what kind of alert was given to the central suspect; I mean we don't technically know whether it was an alert in terms of assisting him or an alert in terms of "they know what you're doing and you need to give it up and go home," which is what the guy wound up doing.)

yeah it isn't clear. This imam we're talking about is the Afzali guy, right?

yes. without getting too hypothetical here, without knowing the details, I really don't know what kind of legal or moral responsibilities a religious leader has about the knowledge that someone he's in contact with is plotting something.

legally I have no idea

but morally I don't care who you are - if you know someone close to you is up to some dirt, especially potentially murderous dirt, as a human being I think you have a moral obligation to do SOMETHING.

when it comes to his trial, pretty sure his legal responsibilities are gonna outweigh any sorta religious ones

the religious is legal, there's a clergy-penitent privilege, right? it might be waived in this kind of instance, i dunno.

^^^yeah I was wondering about that - I'm sure there's some Catholic precedent re: the confession box

yeah but there's a difference between not telling the gov't shit and telling the gov'ts shit

oh totally, Shakey, I'm not arguing that part, just saying I honestly don't know what kinds of duties attach in terms of cooperation with investigation, etc.! partly because of, yeah, the special legal stuff about clergy.

(part of why I'm wondering is that the imam is alleged to have alerted the guy that law enforcement was onto him, after which the guy evidently scurried back home -- i.e., there's some possibility he dissuaded the suspect? sort of impossible to tell just from news reports, but it's making me curious what the legal ramifications of that would be. or what false statements he's accused of making, or generally how this whole semi-cooperative relationship went down.)

imam let you finish, but

by "might be waived" i meant "might not apply, according to what the imam did"

xp very nice!

http://sitrep.globalsecurity.org/articles/090924481-the-beauty-parlor-supply-store-bomb.htm

I kept wondering when I read about the imam whether it was so much that he supported the plot or the goals or whether he saw a fellow countryman and coreligonist about to get swept up in the maws of the Federal Justice system and wondered whether it was all true. What if he "tipped him off" by unwisely asking if all the crazy shit he'd heard was true? Would it be blameworthy? Yes, I think, but not as much as if he helped arrange for the guy to go on the lam or something.

if you don't trust the government in that sense, you probably shouldn't have agreed to work with them

I agree but I was thinking, frankly from a more literary pov than one of jurisprdence.

From Gorge's link: "However, because such people are quite often ineffective, or arrested before they can move forward, does not in any way ameliorate the uncharitable and anti-social nature of the activity."

the cleric-penitent privilege is pretty weak, so probably would nt apply here. Its not as strong as the attorney client.

the uncharitable and anti-social nature of the activity.

lolz understatement. Altho its interesting from a legal standpoint to consider that you have to actually be good at making bombs to be considered as dangerous and not just, y'know, have attempted to make a bomb.

saw a fellow countryman and coreligonist about to get swept up in the maws of the Federal Justice system and wondered whether it was all true.

seems entirely plausible - but directly asking the subject in question doesn't strike me as the smartest way to go about confirming or denying suspicions

Hell no. You want to justify your fears of the Feds? Fuck with them a little, esp on this kind of stuff.

I'm inclined to think that they're all not terribly bright - perhaps that's what makes the present-day jihadist recruits recruitable to begin with.

^^^ding ding ding

It also makes the low lying fruit easier to catch. If there are any master-minded Al-Qaeda plans, they're far less likely to be this easy to find.

statistically speaking the percentage of the global population that is both technically, tactically, and criminally savvy AND highly suggestible to overtures from anti-modern puritanical nutjobs is really really really tiny.

I have no idea how "easy" it was to bust this guy, sounds like they had a pretty intense investigation in place fwiw. I do wonder how they caught onto this plot in the first place.

saw a fellow countryman and coreligonist about to get swept up in the maws of the Federal Justice system and wondered whether it was all true

and/or told him that his plans were already foiled so give it up and go home already -- whatever the truth, I assume we'll hear conflicting versions of this soon enough

I think what's making me really curious is, well, can it possibly be illegal for a citizen to discuss with someone else the fact that a federal investigation is going on? (or only if you've agreed to participate in some other way?) or is the "false statements" charge just a straight-up charge of false statements at some point in the investigation?

FBI: Did you tell him we were on his trail?

Imam: ME? Never!

FBI: Ummm...

I imagine that w/ something as important as this, the feds do more than say "btw plz don't tell anyone this is top secret"

xp

M White's one-act play probably not too far from the truth

Interfering or obstructing an FBI investigation is probably highly frowned upon legally.

lolz understatement

Employment of a bit of dry gallows humor.

There is a fine line to be drawn between dissuasive behavior on the part of law enforcement and actual police tyranny by terrorizing the populace. Even at the local level, and largely due to the fact that we've criminalized everything we can think of (/libertarian rant), they tase dudes in wheelchairs and generally act like cocks a lot of the time, but there is a point where visibly showing that fucking with them, when they have the law on their side, or rather a shitolad of little laws, if necessary, that they can use on you like arrows in St Sebastian, IS dissuasive and probably should be used in cases like these.

haha does ILX have any lawyers knowledgeable enough to say anything about what your rights w/r/t discussing an investigation that's engaged you?

NB based on the NYT article about the firing, we have two separate things here -- if I'm understanding right, the federal investigation is charging him with false statements, but it was the NYC division that mistakenly "approached" him for info, leading to tip-off / firing. so I guess the above question isn't really the question; he may have been more cooperative with one than the other, or trusted by one and targeted by the other, or whatever.

Not in the US; but the UK has an all-purpose offence of 'perverting the course of justice' which covers things like derailing an investigation, making false allegations, even perjury. Don't see why your being previously engaged in the investigation would make any difference.

For avoidance of doubt: 'Not in the US' means 'I'm not knowledgeable about the position in the US'

Well, there are potentially a number of other things which come into play once one establishes the pursuit of peroxide, acetone, and a couple of other materials had no practical application except in
bomb-making. And in the US practice has shown it isn't difficult to get a jury to buy that.

This probably falls under conspiracy to produce a weapon of mass destruction -- which is an overreach, but which has been the law.

See here:

http://armchairgeneralist.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/09/here-we-go-again.html

and then there's these jokers

And now a teenage terrorist in Texas has attempted to blow up a skyscraper with a fake bomb sold to him by undercover agents. Big week for terror plots, I guess.

After receiving what he thought was an explosive from an undercover agent, Smadi drove a car with the fake bomb into a parking garage under the skyscraper, authorities said. Smadi thought he could detonate the bomb by dialing his cell phone.

When he dialed, the number rang a phone in authorities' possession, the affidavit says.

That's a pretty impressive sting, tbh.

hahahahahahaaaa

It's a neat skyscraper too! I had never heard of this one before.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/31/Fountain_place.jpg

oh man, that's huge.

ZAZI

Justice Department officials said Michael Finton, also known as Talib Islam, 29, of Decatur, Illinois, drove a vehicle he believed contained a ton of explosives to the Paul Findley Federal Building and Courthouse in Springfield. He got out of the truck, got into a waiting car with an undercover agent, and then, when he was a few blocks away, attempted to detonate the bomb with a remote-control device.

^^^there's a good film comedy script in there somewhere

Google Analytics dig down shows logins and searches for peroxide bomb posts prior to Zazi's permanent detention by the FBI. The peroxide bomb entries have, in the past, been flypaper for Internet searchers of his nature.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2009/09/tracking-zazi-and-beauty-parlor-supply.html

One might presume the hits were him or a very small number of accomplices trawling the Internet from late August through September.

wow that's... kinda amazing. the power of the internet!

I thought this was a peroxide bomb???

http://javasbachelorpad.com/jm01.jpg

xpost

Well, it's somewhat good news. It points toward the number of people doing the searching being small, or a single person. And to me it would indicate there s--- was not wired too well.

It doesn't rule out someone getting lucky but it does show a pattern of following old methods. I would think the FBI will be able to make a small number of additional arrests, eventually. They've been handling it pretty well.

Truly hoping that the next terrorist bust involves one of these:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v646/bunchoffives/8130.jpg

That Google dig down thing is good. It also reminds me a bit of this.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47604000/gif/_47604480_usa_map6649.gif

This is what the bbc was using this morning to illustrate foiling of the 'qatari diplomat having a crafty ciggie' plot.

haha noticed they used that for the last disgruntled shooting too