FBI: Bomb plot targeting Dallas skyscraper
foiled
Friday, September
25, 2009
By JASON TRAHAN, TODD J. GILLMAN and SCOTT
GOLDSTEIN / The Dallas Morning NewsA 19-year-old Jordanian citizen was arrested Thursday in a dramatic FBI sting operation after he parked a vehicle laden with government-supplied fake explosives at an iconic downtown Dallas skyscraper and attempted to detonate it, authorities said.
An undercover FBI agent monitoring an online extremist Web site discovered Hosam Maher Husein Smadi espousing jihad against the U.S. more than six months ago.
As more undercover Arabic-speaking agents engaged him, Smadi, living illegally in the U.S. in the small town of Italy, about 45 miles south of Dallas, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and expressed a desire to kill Americans, authorities said.
In conversations with agents posing as members of an al-Qaeda sleeper cell, Smadi said he came to the U.S. to wage jihad, or holy war. He told agents he wanted to target military recruitment centers, but eventually settled on financial institutions.
"I want to destroy ... targets ... everything that helps America on its war on Arabs will be targeted," he told undercover agents in May.
The sting culminated in Thursday's arrest after Smadi parked a 2001 Ford Explorer Sport Trac, supplied by the FBI, in the underground parking garage of Fountain Place, a 60-story, emerald-green glass office tower in the 1400 block of Ross Avenue at North Field Street that is home to many businesses, including a Wells Fargo Home Mortgage office.
Inside the SUV was a fake bomb, designed to appear similar to one used by Timothy McVeigh in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Authorities say Smadi thought he could detonate it with a cellphone. After parking the vehicle, he got into another vehicle with one of the agents, and they drove several blocks away.
An agent offered Smadi earplugs, but he declined, "indicating that he wanted to hear the blast," authorities said. He then dialed the phone, thinking it would trigger the bomb, authorities said. Instead, the agents took him into custody.
Colorado man 'planned major terror attack in NY on 9/11 anniversary’
By Tom Leonard in New York
Published: 10:18PM BST 25 Sep 2009
Najibullah Zazi, who was on Friday night being transferred to New York, allegedly received explosives training from al-Qaeda, and bought large quantities of hydrogen peroxide and nail varnish remover to make bombs.
Prosecutors told a judge in Denver that Mr Zazi was “intent on being in New York on 9/11” for a possible attack to coincide with the September 11 anniversary.
“The defendant was in the throes of making a bomb and attempting to perfect his formulation,” said Tim Neff, a federal prosecutor. He called the evidence a “chilling, disturbing sequence of events”.
Mr Zazi was one of five men arrested by the FBI in four cities across America during the past week over a series of apparently unrelated homegrown terror plots.
Homeland Security's Janet Napolitano claims 'the system worked' after terrorist attack foiled
BY Richard
Sisk and Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Sunday, December 27th 2009, 10:24 PM
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano brushed off the glaring mistakes that allowed a Nigerian bomber onto a U.S.-bound plane, stressing Sunday that everything worked "like clockwork" - after passengers foiled his plot.
"Once the incident occurred, the system worked," she stunningly told ABC's "This Week."
"The traveling public is very, very safe," she assured CNN.
As for the warning from the bomber's father that his son was a threat, and the screening flaws that failed to flag a killer while innocent grandmothers are routinely pulled aside for an extra patdown, Napolitano had little to say.
The federal government, she said, never had "information that would put this individual on a no-fly list."Critics pounced faster than passengers on a bomber setting himself on fire.
"The fact is the system did not work," Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.) said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"He got to the one-yard line." The terror plot almost killed 289 people on Christmas Day.
Downtown Springfield bombing plot foiled
By BERNARD SCHOENBURG and BRUCE RUSHTON THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER
Posted Sep 24, 2009 @ 11:41 PM
Last update Sep 25, 2009 @ 03:10 PM
Over the two years that authorities tracked Michael C. Finton, accused Thursday of trying to bomb Springfield’s federal courthouse, they gave Finton plenty of chances to drop the idea.
According to a 25-page affidavit filed in support of the charges against Finton, however, he would not be deterred.
Authorities say Finton tried Wednesday to ignite what he thought was a huge quantity of explosives contained in a van parked near Sixth and Monroe streets. Finton allegedly expected the resulting blast to kill everyone in the Paul Findley
Federal Building, plus “take out” an office of U.S. Rep. Aaron Schock across the
intersection.
As it turned out, however, law enforcement authorities had been aware of Finton’s plans for more than two years, the affidavit said. As a result, a man Finton allegedly thought was a low-level operative of the al-Qaida terror network was actually an undercover FBI special agent, and there were no explosives in the van.
Instead of the van blowing up when Finton dialed a cell phone number, agents swooped in to arrest him.
On Thursday, Finton, who authorities said also used the name “Talib Islam,” was brought before a federal judge in the same building he allegedly had targeted.