Ensnaring terrorists demands creativity
by Stephan Salisbury
The Liberty City Seven, the Fort Dix Six, the Detroit Ummah Conspiracy, the Newburgh Four – each has had their fear-filled day in the sun. None of these plots ever came close to happening. How could they? All were bogus from the get-go: money to buy missiles or cell phones or shoes and fancy duds – provided by the authorities; plans for how to use the missiles and bombs and cell phones – provided by authorities; cars for transport and demolition – issued by the authorities; facilities for carrying out the transactions – leased by those same authorities. Played out on landscapes manufactured by federal imagineers, the climax of each drama was foreordained. The failure of the plots would then be touted as the success of the investigations and prosecutions.
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After their May 2009 arrests, the four Newburgh conspirators were portrayed as Jew-hating Muslim converts who intended to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes based at Stewart Airport in Newburgh. “It’s hard to envision a more chilling plot,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder at the time, describing the defendants as “extremely violent.”
The men were indeed arrested only after placing bogus bombs (courtesy of the FBI) near two Bronx synagogues. New York Police Chief Raymond Kelly said the plotters believed “it would be alright” to kill Jews. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement noting that the uncovered plot cooked up by “the jihadist terrorists” showed “that the dangers from such fanaticism have not passed and that American Jews must maintain their vigilance.” New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg reiterated that vigilance remains a necessity for all concerned.
With their anti-Semitic bona fides established and the men caught in the act, all that seemed left was a perfunctory trial, followed by life in prison for James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen. A decade earlier, Cromitie had been arrested for dealing drugs behind a school. Payen, a Haitian immigrant, is a crack addict and certified paranoid schizophrenic, often found living on the street; his earlier deportation had been on hold due to his mental instability. Onta and David Williams, not related, had pasts pocked by drug busts and spotty work at minimum wage jobs scrounged from Newburgh’s depressed economy. All four men were black.
Almost immediately, however, questions about the conspiracy began to arise. For one thing, the FBI informer who broke the case was a Pakistani named Shaheed Hussain, who arrived in Newburgh in the summer of 2008 driving a flashy Mercedes, showing lots of money, and promising jobs to down-and-out African American hangers-on at Masjid al-Ikhlas, Newburgh’s main mosque. Convicted in a fraudulent driver’s license scheme in 2002, he agreed to work undercover for the FBI shortly afterward to avoid deportation and turned out to have been an informer in a previous terrorism case in Albany in 2004.
Scott Horton Interviews Stephan Salisbury
Stephan Salisbury, author of Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, discusses the sordid history of bogus domestic terrorism cases since 9/11, an egregious example in Philadelphia, the difficulty the entrapping feds cause the local police in their attempts to build trust in their local Muslim communities, the long history of undercover provocateurs in the pay of the national government, Dick Cheney’s 1% Doctrine [wonder who’s bright idea that was!], the case of the “Newburgh Four,” the Albany pizza shop owner and the FBI’s killing of Luqman Ameen Abdullah in Dearborn, Michigan.
MP3 here. (39:07)
http://antiwar.com/radio/2010/07/11/stephan-salisbury/
See also: “New York State Capital Takes Stand Against Pre-emptive Prosecution of Muslims.”
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