Here’s a telling detail in the most recent terrorism arrest in New York:
Mr. Pimentel, 27, who lived with his uncle in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood after his mother threw him out recently, appears to be unstable, according to several of the people briefed on the case, three of whom said he had tried to circumcise himself.
The government’s informant in the case spent two years with Pimentel before he was able to get together the money and know-how to build a pipe bomb. The FBI didn’t think they had a case, but the NYPD has charged him with terrorism and conspiracy. Even if you buy the notion that this obviously disturbed individual was going to blow up churches and synagogues, there’s no mention of any terrorism ring in the media stories I’ve seen. I don’t see the conspiracy, unless cutting off one’s own foreskin is a super-secret new Al Qaeda tactic. My guess is that the NYPD is desperate to show that their Intelligence Division is worth the money that’s been poured into it since 9/11.
Suffern ACE
Two years to help produce one terrorist who finally got the money to start considering building bombs if the secret government workers would only teach him how.
tommybones
Also, Bloomberg is getting creamed in the local press for his handling of the OWS protests… and then voila! terror arrest! New front page!
Glen Tomkins
I think we have yet another target for budget cutting that has identified itself. We could accomplish the same thing that the existing domestic counter-terrorism undercover operations have accomplished, at far lower costs, simply by sending a few uniformed police persons to the nation’s psychiatric treatment facilities to recruit their victims. So inefficient to try to cull them from the general population!
4tehlulz
OK I’ll bite. Does this means he failed? Did he lose his head when this happened?
wilfred
More terrorporn from the poster boy for the 1%’ers. Bloomberg is a thug. Isn’t Kelly’s son or nephew a Fox hack?
chopper
yeah, some of the NY press is all about ‘feds didn’t think he was a threat at all!’. it’s not that, it’s that the FBI figured the NYPD could take care of it, which they did. it was one guy who was basically nuts and needed to be led by the hand to build a bomb. BFD.
if the FBI had stepped in, they’d all be screaming about how fed goons are keeping the NYPD from doing its job.
Steeplejack
@4tehlulz:
Phrasing! [Archer]
Natasha
Under NY State law, it is possible to treat a lone actor plus an informant as a conspiracy. I don’t know if the law is intended to cover terrorism specifically or all criminal conspiracies.
Soonergrunt
@tommybones: THIS!
This whole thing stinks like they kept it in the cupboard until they thought they might need it.
eric
there is no terrorism ring because he circumcised it.
seanindc
not fer nuthin, but I know a handful of people in the NYPD intel dept. and they do exceptionally good work at times. They do a lot of liasing with foreign intelligence officers/INTERPOL tracking suspects through NYC, both physical suspects as well as (incredibly difficult to track) financial support for terrorists. Just because they don’t frogmarch a ton of people out to MCC all the time doesn’t mean they aren’t doing good work.
Suffern ACE
@Steeplejack: Yep. “I’ll take a stab at it” would have been more appropriate wording.
David in NY
This is more common than you might think. And if it’s an FBI informant, they go full steam ahead.
Waynski
@tommybones: This. Bloomberg learned well from the Bush Administration. Public: “What’s that blistering fail you have behind the curtain?” Government: “Look! Terrorism!”
Amir Khalid
@4tehlulz:
Jose Pimentel needed a circumcision because he’d converted to Islam — sure, that sounds perfectly plausible to me. But of course you don’t do that by yourself, and whoever taught him about Islam must have told him that circumcision could wait until he had the means to get it done. The guy definitely sounds not right in the head.
As to the bomb-making business, it sounds like Jose is also not very bright to begin with. As I understand the New York Times story, the NYPD Intelligence Division may have persuaded him to make a bomb, then taught him how and maybe even spotted him the money to buy the makings. I think the FBI should arrest them.
handsmile
@tommybones (#2)
While we seem to agree that the emperor Bloomberg’s sudden Sunday night press conference to declare the arrest of Pimentel was a craven effort to stoke fears and bolster his counter-terrorism gravitas, you’ll have to point me/link to just where he was “getting creamed in the local press for his handling of the OWS protests.”
All mainstream NYC newspapers from the Times to the tabloids both in their reporting and editorials, as well as every NYC local television broadcast I saw, hailed Bloomberg’s despotic actions in Zuccotti Park last week and his security forces’ actions during the city-wide protests last Thursday.
Given just how supine the Times has been in its coverage of the Occupy movement, I am frankly astonished that it chose to run its pushback story on the Pimentel arrest above the fold in its print edition today. Both the Daily News and the NY Post in fact are condemning the FBI for its failure to recognize the terrifying gravity of this Al Qaeda bomb plot in its editions today. Bloomberg and Ray Kelly remain lauded for their noble vigilance.
Bloomberg is playing a broader, national game here: he wants to remain the anointed Savior of the Third-Way political movement, so desperately clamored for by the Village media. The billionaire is already adored by them for his corporate successes, now he just has to demonstrate his resolve in kicking some Mooslim ass. He knows that the media courtiers are competitive only in their efforts to fellate him.
Mnemosyne
Isn’t self-mutilation of the genitals one of those things that used to get you a one-way trip to Bellevue?
I think it was AA+ Bonds who pointed out a couple of days ago that we’re so reluctant to talk about our massive failure as a society to deal with mental illness that we’d rather throw a bunch of untreated people in jail than actually try to help them.
Suffern ACE
@handsmile: Yep. The papers uniformly have decided that OWS has outstayed it’s welcome. And they love some terrorist action…breathlessly reporting on the arrest of a man who was no more threat Sunday as he was two months ago or would have been two years from now.
Kyle
unless cutting off one’s own foreskin is a super-secret new Al Qaeda tactic.
Tony Baloney of the NYPD called it “an act of violence justifying the use of pepper spray.”
bob h
At least Bloomberg didn’t try to tie him to OWS.