I’m not sure if you have been following the story of the Bronx bombing plot that was broken up the other day, but I finally got around to reading up about it, and these four clowns sound like something out of a movie starring William H. Macy:
David Williams, who lately had grown a beard and taken to reading the Koran on slow nights at a steakhouse job, was described as particularly violent by prosecutors on Thursday. When the plan to buy guns from a woman in Newburgh fell through, it was David Williams who quickly improvised, arranging to buy a gun from a man he described as a “supreme Blood gang leader” in Brooklyn, Mr. Snyder said. After buying the gun in the company of the informant, David Williams said he would have shot the gang leader if he were alone with him, and kept his $700.
Mr. Payen, described as a nervous, quiet sort who took medication for schizophrenia or a bi-polar disorder, was unemployed and living in squalor in Newburgh. His last arrest, in 2002, was for assault, after he drove around the Rockland County village of Monsey, firing a BB gun out of the window — striking two teens — and snatching two purses. A friend who visited Mr. Payen’s apartment on Thursday said it contained bottles of urine, and raw chicken on the stovetop.
Onta Williams had been addicted to cocaine since he was a teenager, according to his lawyer, Sol Lesser, at his sentencing in 2003. Mr. Cromitie has spent 12 years in prison, most recently for selling drugs to undercover officers behind a school.
If you read the story, it becomes pretty obvious that we are dealing with a bunch of degenerate losers, people of lower than average intelligence with substance abuse issues and long rap sheets and other issues related to their mental stability. Probably not very nice people, but definitely not supervillains. Enter the informant:
Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, the imam at the mosque where the authorities say the confidential informant first encountered the men, said none of the men were active in the mosque. An assistant imam, Hamin Rashada, said Mr. Cromitie and Mr. Payen occasionally attended services.
***The stranger’s behavior aroused the imam’s suspicions. He invited other worshipers to meals, and spoke of violence and jihad, so the imam said he steered clear of him.
“There was just something fishy about him,” Mr. Muhammad said. Members “believed he was a government agent.”
Mr. Muhammad said members of his congregation told him the man he believed was the informant offered at least one of them a substantial amount of money to join his “team.”
The informant met Mr. Cromitie, and it quickly appeared that Mr. Cromitie was of a like mind with the apparent radical before him, according to the complaint. Mr. Cromitie said his parents had lived in Afghanistan before he was born and that he was angry at the killing of Muslims there.
***Beginning in October, the informant began meeting Mr. Cromitie at a home in Newburgh that was wired with hidden cameras and microphones, the criminal complaint said. David Williams, Onta Williams and Mr. Payen attended these meetings, and the group discussed Mr. Cromitie’s desire to strike a synagogue in the Bronx and military aircraft at the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, according to the complaint.
In December, the plan began to take shape in the Newburgh house. On Dec. 5, Mr. Cromitie asked the informant whether he could acquire “rockets” and “devices” for attacks, and the informant said he could provide C-4 plastic explosives to fashion improvised bombs. On Dec. 17, Mr. Cromitie said he wanted to case the air base later that week, and that he would remove his traditional Muslim attire — a white jalabiya and cap — so as not to draw suspicion. David Williams suggested they refer to the synagogues as “joints.”
I’m glad these guys are behind bars, but I find it really hard to believe that any of this would have taken place without the prodding of the informant. There is no chance in hell that a coke addict, a schizo with bottles of urine in his house, and a low-life knuckle-dragger like Cromitie would have managed to get surface to air missiles without the aid and assistance of the FBI. Hell, even getting a handgun was a difficult task for these guys, and any 15 year old in any city in America can get a gun in an hour or two.
I’m really not that impressed with what I have seen in this case so far. Sure, their “plans,” such that they were, sound ominous and would have been horrifying. I just don’t know if they would have come up with the plans on their own, or if they would have ever been able to pull any of it off without the generous assistance of the FBI informant. I need to read more about this, as it may be that the NY Times is just providing some really crappy writing, and they were in fact planning this stuff before the informant came along. As it is, it just seems like they were just a bunch of low-lifes until the informant entered into the equation.
KevinNYC
It’s the Bronx Bomb plot. So it’s even more downmarket. Several real plots have taken place in Brooklyn
blogenfreude
@KevinNYC: I live in NYC as well, and this doesn’t worry me a bit. Like those clowns at Fort Dix – this wasn’t very likely to happen.
edmund dantes
It depends. They are a bunch of guys that if they had the means probably would have committed the crime, but until the government informant came along and greased the skids they weren’t that close to pulling it off.
I’m not sure where you go on that one, but I think that if the government has to get involved in order for you to pull off the deed. You probably aren’t guilty of anything than being crazy and possibly needing some help that you won’t get in the criminal justice system.
dbrown
To get a surface to air missle would take many $10K or even $100K; like these A/O’s had that type of cash.
Bill H
And they charged these guys with “employing weapons of mass destruction” to boot. That was my first clue that we were dealing with another Sears Tower plot.
Nikki
I agree with your opinion, John. The article says the informant offered money to several members at the mosque until someone took the bait. That sounds extremely fishy to me.
Michael
Walter Mitty plots, the same as Padillo.
It doesn’t stop the embarrassing white right wing fear machine from churning out shitloads of racial terror.
I keep wondering how long these chickenshits can live before their hearts give out in sheer terror of “the others”.
InflatableCommenter
What’s really critical here is whether the Threat Level Color Code has changed.
This is what keeps me safe on a day to day basis.
We’re at yellow, guys. Be alert.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
They should have planned to wear top hats. That would have classed the plot right up.
Comrade Dread
A lot of these terrorism busts have been like that: a bunch of idiot low lifes who sign on to some informant’s plot and get themselves arrested.
On the one hand, you’re right, it does seem unlikely that anything would have come of this had it not been for the FBI.
On the other hand, if an actual terrorist (with a brain or a plan) had approached them, it’s pretty clear that they would have signed on for that.
kid bitzer
“and raw chicken on the stovetop.”
uhh…aren’t they usually raw when you first put them on the stovetop?
i mean: is the govt. arguing that he ought to have baked it in a cloche?
cooking chicken on the stovetop may be a sin, but it’s hardly a crime.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@InflatableCommenter: We’re at yellow, guys. Be alert.
Has the threat level ever gone below yellow? I’ve figured the color code was always a fear-maintenance / ass-covering thing.
Dennis-SGMM
A few brisk waterboardings and these guys would have confessed to plotting to blow up the Congress. Now that would have been progress in the War on a Tactic. The only remaining question is where are we going to incarcerate them? Harry Reid, among others, has made it clear that their terrorist super powers will enable them to be a danger to us all if they[re held on U.S. soil.
John Cole
@kid bitzer: How else are you supposed to make blackened chicken if you are not using a skillet on the stove top?
@Comrade Dread: Exactly.
@edmund dantes: Yes.
Ninerdave
Haven’t most of these “plots” be essentially clowns screaming jihad, then bumbling around like the Keystone Cops?
OniHanzo
FOX News cracks me up on this.
“See what we did there? We just proved that Gitmo detainees shouldn’t be held in US prisons. Because prisons are where terrorism cakes are made. And no real American likes terror cake.”
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
@Dennis-SGMM:
“REID: Can’t put them in prison unless you release them.”
Also.
Dennis beat me to it, but yeah….. a little Enhanced Interrogatin’ and we’ll discover just how dangerous these morans really were.
Svensker
I think apprehending these guys was totally worth giving up the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, don’t you? I mean, how could we LIVE in freedom with people like this in our midst?!?
rec
This one reminds me of a “This American Life” story about The Arms Trader:
InflatableCommenter
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist:
It has been at yellow or orange every day since it was invented, AFAIK. It went to orange whenever the Cheney Administration needed to deflect attention from some fuckup or other.
Scott de B.
If this kind of bottom-of-the-barrel stuff is the only thing the FBI can scare up these days given the effort that has been put into counter-terrorism, that either means that A) We really are pretty safe, there are no major Al-Qaeda cells in the U.S. waiting to strike or B) There are such cells but the FBI is unable to detect them and this is the best they can do.
Bulworth
The “Christian” cable teevee news described this “plot” as causing the City of New York to be “reeling”–in fear, presumably.
Written Off
Liberal Terrorist Sympathizer!
No, seriously though, atleast they definitely have a case on a gang member that is illegally selling guns.
Rosali
The color coded terror alerts were a fearmongering tool used to help win the 2004 election. Notice that the color chart all but disappeared after Nov 2004.
kid bitzer
#14–
fair point, john,
but some people prefer to start the blackening with chicken that has been pre-cooked a bit some other way, not raw.
less likely to wind up with the burnt outside/raw inside problem.
still, if you’re okay starting with raw chicken, then this is clearly prosecutorial overreach.
AhabTRuler
What, the FBI using an agent provocateur. Well, I never. Who ever heard of something like that?
AhabTRuler
Tee-hee, this made my day.
linda
dudes…. do you know how much BACTERIA a RAW CHICKEN carries…..
that’s why the wmd charges. ;-)
InflatableCommenter
@Rosali:
The color chart is still used within the DHS “community” of agencies and services related to security.
But the media stopped reporting on it because even they aren’t stupid enough to think that it has any relevance to the public any more. I know, hard to believe that the media could muster enough smarts to figure that out, but they did.
To the public, the color code is just a little voice that constantly cries “Wolf!”
dadanarchist
@Bulworth:
I can accurately report from Brooklyn that no such “reeling” is going on. The Post has screaming headlines as usual but then again most people only read the sports section.
New Yorkers are, by and large, jaded mofos….
John Cole
@kid bitzer: I always use those tenderloins, which are really thin and I like how they taste when they are blackened.
Plus I just like using a cast-iron skillet.
linda
uh, i work in the bronx .. there hasn’t been one mention of this ‘plot’ by anybody — neither where i work nor have i noticed concerned readers warily eyeballing the nypost/nydailynews on the subway ride here.
Rainy
Wow, these guys obviously had some really f-ed up lives. A guy addicted to drugs since he was a teenager and a schizophrenic? Come on! I good to be cautious but these people need serious help.
kid bitzer
ahhh….tenderloins!
that changes everything. sure; thin enough that the inside cooks properly before the outside gets burnt.
and i’m with you on the cast-iron skillet.
hell, before i fry up my tenderloins, i whack ’em with the cast-iron skillet to flatten ’em out.
still, there’s something to what linda says in #28.
if all the other charges fall through, maybe we can put them away on health violations.
kinda like capone and the taxes.
CapMidnight
Actually, we’re now at “brown.”
No, wait–that’s the Lou Dobbs‘s Underwear Threat Level.
(Sorry–I always get those two mixed up.)
Evinfuilt
The FBI needed to uncover a plot, so they did. Of course if they did it early there wouldn’t have been any news. so they helped make it a bigger plot, much more than it ever could have been, and thus, plenty of news coverage showing that they did their job.
These guys would have been dangerous, but in the more common variety of running into and shooting up a “joint.” I’m glad their in prison, just not on the stupid, overzealous charges being put to them.
Rosali
TPM has details on the informant:
An upstate motel owner, identified by the New York Post as Shahed Hussain, 52, he became a government informant in 2002, after he was busted for helping immigrants cheat on drivers tests while working as a DMV translator. He was hoping to win leniency in his sentencing and avoid being deported to Pakistan.
This isn’t his first sting operation. A few years ago, he posed as an arms dealer who had sold a shoulder-launched missile to be used to kill a Pakistani envoy. Two Albany men, Mohammed Hossain and Yassin Aref, helped him launder money from the supposed sale, and were convicted and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.
Nylund
The “informant” was an identity thief who was doing this for the FBI in exchange for getting his own charges dropped. His act was so bad at the Mosque that every regular member of the Mosque knew he was working for the gov’t and decided to stay as far away from him as possible.
And, this case is one of our few “successes”.
Jeez.
Tony J
I wonder how hard it would be for the FBI to run this kind of sting on, say, a bunch of white supremacist Christian mouth-breathers. Y’know, like the ones who were arrested a few months back for planning to shoot Obama?
Doesn’t happen, though. I guess they know that this kind of faux-threat overkill aimed at non-brown people would lead to a 24/7 scandal and heads rolling.
Bootlegger
@OniHanzo: Jon Stewart replied to this last night and pointed out the obvious conclusion of Faux News Actor’s logic is not to put anyone in prison.
Bootlegger
@Tony J: Believe it or not the racist skins are actually too, um, wary (I almost said smart) to fall for something like this. The FBI has had a damned hard time penetrating those groups and they are sitting right out in the open.
JK
Interesting blog post on this story
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/5/21/143656/241
wolfetone
@Bulworth: Nope. The folks in NYC are reeling and doing jigs!
justinslot
These guys sound way dumber than the Duka brothers, who also had a heavily informant-dependent case against them, and they’ll probably receive similarly lengthy prison sentences for the crime of bullshitting with a paid government informant. It’s ridiculous. (JK’s Talkleft length also talks about the Dukas and some other “plots.”)
celticdragon
LMAO!
Are they dancing to Toss the Feathers…Brenda Stubbarts or The Kesh Jig?
NonWonderDog
@Rosali:
I really loved the way FOX News integrated the current threat level into their watermark. That was a nice touch. I was actually a bit disappointed when they dropped it after the election.
Actually, they might still have it in the news ticker. I haven’t looked lately.
asiangrrlMN
@InflatableCommenter: Every time I go to the airport, I laugh hysterically at the “threat level is orange” sign. It’s been that way since whenever they implemented the stupid color-coded thingy.
As for this plot, it sounds like entrapment to me. I don’t like it. I am not saying these guys wouldn’t be dangerous given the right circumstances, but hello? They didn’t have one brain to share. These guys need help.
Tony J
@Bootlegger:
So it would be an idea for them to pick out some easier marks. Maybe kids out in some small town who frequent hard-right blogs and fill their Facebook pages with racial diatribes and nihilistic threats. Draw them in, get them to make statements about killing civilians, talk about what they’d do if they had the resources to really hurt people, etc, then offer them the means.
You see where I’m going with this? If the Feds wanted to stir up a panic about right-wing terrorists in the American Heartland wanting to commit mass-slaughter, they could do it quite easily, using exactly these kinds of tactics. They wouldn’t need to go anywhere near an actual far-right group, they could do it all by releasing the right kind of innuendo to the media and drawing a big flashing line between their marks and the kind of neo-confederate hate-sites they’d been reading.
All they lack is the kind of pre-saturated MSM solution you have now where Angry Muslim = Al Qaida = 9/11 without skipping a beat. But hey, there’s a black guy in the Oval Office, and he’s really popular with most of the country, so it wouldn’t be that difficult to get the MSM excited about the headlines they could sell if they think (because anonymous sources tell them so) that Obama – or his family – is a serious target.
They could, but obviously, they won’t. That would project a great, big flashing line between the Tim McVeighs of this world and the Republican Party, and no-one ‘serious’ wants to go there. Not if they value their job.
tavella
The FBI needs a pretend-plot every few months to justify their existence and their spending priorities. So they produce one.
It’s not hard; there’s always a few mentally handicapped/insane/homeless/addicts around who will say or do anything for attention or another hit. Real terrorists are unlikely to recruit them, because to do so would be to ask the plot to fail; they are about as reliable as you would expect insane/homeless/addicts to be.
wobbly
More on this from the Daily News:
(It originally ran under the headline MEET THE DUMMIES)
Newburgh neighbors stunned as cops see enough hate to kill in terror fiends
BY Carrie Melago, Alison Gendar, Joe Kemp and Matt Lysiak
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Three did prison time for drug dealing – and the fourth is a mentally ill Haitian immigrant found too insane to be deported.
Prosecutors described the men as bloodthirsty wanna-be terrorists who crossed the line from minor crime to big trouble when they were caught planting what they thought were explosives at two Bronx synagogues.
The awful details of the group’s year-long plotting were captured by hidden cameras and microphones, prosecutors said.
James Cromitie, 44, David Williams, 28, and Onta Williams, 32, all served time for drug dealing, converting to Islam in prison. Cromitie had as many as 27 convictions.
He even made the stunning admission in court that he had smoked pot before the bust.
The fourth man, Laguerre Payen, 27, had served 15 months for assault and was supposed to be deported to Haiti. But an immigration judge stayed the order because Payen, a paranoid schizophrenic, was judged insane.
“Waiting for him to be sane enough to boot out of the country? That logic is what’s insane,” said a law enforcement source.
Payen lived in a filthy crack den where a friend Thursday said he saw bottles of urine.
The other three routinely hung out on Cromitie’s porch in upstate Newburgh, across the street from David Williams’ house, drinking and barbecuing.
They also routinely gathered at a Denny’s restaurant, talking and eating dishes of rice and beans, said neighbors.
The assistant imam at the mainstream Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh, where the four worshiped sporadically, said they frequently had to be corrected in their understanding of the Koran.
One pal said Cromitie, the accused ringleader, brought up 9/11 just two weeks ago over beers on his creaky porch in a rundown section of Newburgh.
“James was disgusted by the death and carnage of 9/11. He said, ‘Only an idiot believes peace can be achieved through violence,'” said neighbor Ricky Jewel.
“Now I look at that smile, and I don’t know if he’s grinning or plotting.”
Prosecutors said Cromitie claimed his father was Afghan, but cops now believe it was a lie to boost his “terror creds.”
Cromitie and his stepson, a seventh-grader, played baseball with the neighborhood kids hours before his arrest Wednesday. Cromitie also was known for helping elderly people in his housing development.
Cromitie, a high school dropout whose most recent arrest was for selling drugs near a New York City school, lived with his girlfriend, Kathleen Baynes, whom he met when she worked at a homeless shelter in upstate Chester.
Her friends and family were mystified at the prosecution’s portrait of him as a schemer.
“I don’t think they got the right guy. They’re saying the ringleader – I don’t think James is capable of that! Maybe it’s a case of misidentity?” said a Baynes relative.
Cromitie never mentioned hating America, she said, and wondered if it was a lie gone wrong.
“He was always making up big-time stories. Big whoppers about everything. He would just lie for conversation,” she said.
David Williams, who once told the parole board he dreamed of being a chef, has a 7-year-old daughter and a newborn son. He lived with his mother and took care of a younger brother dying of cancer, said old friend Manny Colon, 42. “David’s a very sensitive man,” he said.
But prosecutors described a much more violent David Williams. At one point, when a deal to buy weapons for the foursome fell through, David Williams set up a meeting with a “supreme Blood gang leader” in Brooklyn, said Eric Snyder, an assistant U.S. attorney.
He and an informant bought the weapon, and David Williams said if he were alone, he would have shot the gun dealer and kept his $700.
Onta Williams, no relation, was raised Baptist, said his uncle Richard Williams, who blamed the jailhouse conversion for his nephew’s trouble. “These fake Muslims manipulated him to do this,” said Richard Williams.
The fourth man, Payen, was hospitalized after his arrest. “He was off his meds – needing to be particularly crazy to do the deed,” said a law enforcement source.
Payen had done time for shooting two teens with a BB gun.
His cousin, Marie Payen, said his mother also is mentally ill. His father is dead, and his brother, a U.S. Marine, is the only normal one, she said.
Still, she couldn’t picture him as a terrorist. “I know he’s not normal, but he’s not that kind of person. I don’t even think he knows how to read,” she said.
[email protected]
The comments appended to this story are show that plenty of New Yorkers just aren’t buying into this crap, and I’m talking the outer Boroughs.
Woody
THe budget for hunting terrorists in the DHS is fuukin gi-NORMOUS…
Napolitano, ike any top bureaucrat, is always gonna be angling for more appropriations. To make the case, DHS has gott a capture a few terrorists every once in a while…These mopes were just stupid enough to serve the purpose…
If there’s any cells around ya gotta worry about, you won’t know about ’em til later…