My FOX Philly : Muslim Conference Leader Speaks Out

Muslim Conference Leader Speaks Out

Not Clear If Accused Plotter Registered To Attend

May 22, 2009

PHILADELPHIA - The FBI stopped an alleged terror plot with a Philadelphia connection. You heard about it first Thursday on Fox 29 News at Noon.

An interfaith service has been held at one of the synagogues targeted in this alleged plot. And Jews attending Shabbat services and Muslims going to worship may see tighter security.

Whenever a plot of this nature is discovered, Muslim leaders say their members are often targeted with vandalism or physical violence.

And we're learning more about the conference that brought one of the alleged terrorists to Philadelphia. The theme of the conference was "Forging A Muslim-American Agenda."

The general secretary of the Muslim Alliance in North America, the organization that put on the conference, told Fox 29's Julie Kim that terrorism or a Jihad against America was not a part of that agenda.

Long before they ended up in handcuffs and charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, the four suspects in this alleged terror plot -- shown in just released court sketches -- were small-time criminals. Authorities said James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen met while in prison, where they converted to Islam.

Court documents say that the plot to target Jews originated in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Authorities said Cromitie attended the Muslim Alliance in North America conference in November, where he allegedly told an informant that he hated Jews and wanted to destroy a synagogue.

Ihsan Bagby, the general secretary of MANA, talked to Fox 29's Julie Kim on Friday, saying Cromitie was seen at the conference although they are still trying to confirm his registration.

He said MANA is mostly a social-service organization that promotes volunteerism. He said, "We condemn violence. There is no place for it in the Islam or the Muslim-American community. We speak out against extremism. Anyone who attended the conference did not hear anything like that (promoting violence). … They heard the opposite."

Authorities said it was after the conference when the men collected guns, cell phones, surveyed synagogues and purchased what they thought were real explosives and a missile system from undercover law enforcement.

The men were arrested late Wednesday night as they planted fake explosives at two synagogues in the Bronx.

MANA also said they are letting their members and various mosques be more secure.

Meanwhile, the Anti-Defamation League said they've sent letters urging synagogues to be cautious but not hysterical.

Workers World : FBI entraps four Black men in phony bomb plot

FBI entraps four Black men in phony bomb plot

By Larry Hales | May 27, 2009

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York state Gov. David A. Paterson and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly honored the FBI agents and New York Police Department personnel who foiled the phony FBI-engineered “terror plot.”

Each official took turns May 21 congratulating the federal and local cops, overblowing the circumstances surrounding the arrests of four Black men.

Bloomberg said of the arrests, “I feel safer in the city today than ever before,” and, “They have prevented what could have been a terrible loss of life.”

Paterson said it was “one of the most heinous crimes that has been [planned] in this city for a long time.”

Kelly called the response of the cops and FBI, “a textbook example of how a major investigation should be handled.” (New York Daily News, May 22)

This so-called plot ended when police arrested James Cromitie, 44; David Williams, 28; Onta Williams, 32; and Haitian immigrant Laguerre Payen, 27, as the four allegedly planted two bags supposedly filled with inert plastic explosives at two synagogues in the exclusive Riverdale neighborhood in the Bronx.

As with all the other so-called “homegrown terror plots,” this case is being revealed for what it really is: entrapment. It is one more incident of an FBI informant going fishing, baiting, in particular, Black men and enticing them with money and other favors, directing their conversations and playing upon their anger against their oppression.

This case has many similarities to a so-called plot involving the Miami 7. Five of the Miami defendants of the mostly Haitian group of seven were convicted a week earlier. It is also similar to the phony Fort Dix plot that led to five Muslim men being convicted earlier in May.

Informant promised to help dying brother

Elizabeth McWilliams, the mother of David Williams, said that the FBI informant, Shahed (Malik) Hussain, offered to help save David’s dying brother, who needs a liver transplant and is dying from an immunity disorder, sarcoidosis. McWilliams said, “He promised he would take care of it.” (Daily News, May 24)

James Cromitie’s friend, Kathleen Baynes, said the informant, also known as Maqsood, had given Cromitie rent money and cash. “They come and hit a brother who is down and out,” she said, “and tell him they’ll give him the world. Maqsood is no different than a pimp or drug dealer sitting on 42nd St.” (Daily News, May 24)

The government charged the four men with one count of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and another count of conspiracy to use an anti-aircraft missile. The four had all been released from prison in the recent past after having served time, mostly for drug convictions.

Cromitie worked at Wal-Mart and Onta Williams at loading and unloading trucks since being released. Another of the men worked at a landscaping company. Their neighbors describe them as nice guys. “There’s nothing bad to say about him,” one friend said, regarding Cromitie. (Los Angeles Times, May 22)

David Williams’ aunt, Aahkiyaah Cummings, said Williams is a good father.

Laguerre Payen had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic, for which he takes medication. Payen cannot read or write English. When asked if he understood what he was being charged with, he responded, “sort of.” Payen was also unemployed, had no money and was fighting a deportation order. (Daily News, May 24)

This government conspiracy involved the informant targeting the Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh, N.Y., starting a few years ago. According to worshippers there, Hussain focused “most of his attention on younger Black members and visitors.” (New York Times, May 23)

Informant’s deal with the FBI

Hussain, who had been an informant in a number of other federal cases, had moved to the U.S. from Pakistan in 1994. He was arrested in 2002 and charged with trying to help people in Albany get drivers’ licenses. Facing deportation, Hussain instead chose to assist the FBI in exchange for a light sentence of five years probation. (New York Times, May 23)

Worshippers said Hussain would approach young men, mostly Black men, and ask them out to lunch. He also asked the assistant to the imam at the mosque for a meeting.

Before attending services at the Masjid in Newburgh, Hussain went to another one in Wappingers Falls, not far from Newburgh. It was there that he asked an assistant to the imam for a list of worshippers. Most worshippers found Hussain suspicious and stayed clear of him.

Hussain stopped attending services at the Wappingers Fall mosque in June 2008, shortly before he met James Cromitie. It is reported that Cromitie told Hussain that his parents lived in Afghanistan for a time and that he was angry about the U.S. war there. This was around the time their relationship began.

A member of the mosque, Jamil Muhammad, said of Hussain, “It’s easy to influence someone with the dollar. Especially these guys coming out of prison.” (New York Times, May 23)

All of the men existed under dire circumstances forced upon them as oppressed Black men with a prison record before they began being mixed up with the government informant.

Hussain would sit outside the Newburgh mosque in his black Mercedes. He may have appeared as a way for the men to escape their circumstances, a way for David Williams to get his brother the liver transplant, a way for the others to get their heads above water in times of a crisis of the system.

As in the case of the Miami men, the informant did much of the talking. Hussain posed as having contacts with a Pakistani group, Jaish-e-Mohammed (Mohammed’s Army). He had the contacts to get the disabled anti-aircraft weapon and the inert explosives. Hussain even took the four men to get cell phones.

Since the men primarily worked at low paying jobs, transcripts of the investigation will most likely reveal that Hussain bankrolled the entire operation.

That Cromitie expressed anger towards the United States for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is no great crime. The majority of people in the U.S. and around the world oppose the U.S. occupations of those countries.

A New York Times article quoted above even reveals that the imam of the Newburgh mosque questions whether a plot would have developed if Hussain had not been around.

It is evident and will prove even more so over time that if he had not been entrapped, James Cromitie would have most likely gone about his life. So would the other three. But the FBI and the informant preyed upon their anger.

Ultimately, though, it is not their anger that is at fault, but the conditions of U.S. society. Here oppressed people seek and, in particular, these four Black men sought, whatever means might improve their daily existence. Then they are criminalized for it.

This crisis of the system falls upon them harder than on most people. If this is indeed “how every major investigation should be handled,” as Police Commissioner Kelly said, then more such cases of entrapment can be expected. Their righteous indignation towards capitalism and imperialism can itself turn them into pariahs.

Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

The Militant : N.Y.: Four entrapped by FBI, arrested on conspiracy charges

N.Y.: Four entrapped by FBI, arrested on conspiracy charges

BY CINDY JAQUITH | June 8, 2009

NEW YORK—In a case based on FBI entrapment, four men were arrested here May 20 on charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and conspiracy to acquire and use an antiaircraft missile. They are being held without bail.

Three U.S.-born Black workers—James Cromitie, David Williams, and Onta Williams—and one Haitian, Laguerre Payen, were arrested after they allegedly joined FBI provocateur Shahed Hussain in placing what they thought were active bombs outside the Riverdale Jewish Center and the Reform Riverdale Temple in the Bronx.

Earlier, the government says, the four had traveled to Connecticut with Hussain to pick up what they were told was a Stinger missile, supposedly for use against aircraft at Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York, from which U.S. troops and supplies are regularly flown to Iraq and Afghanistan. All four defendants lived in Newburgh.

New York State representative Peter King claimed, “This was a very serious threat that could have cost many, many lives if it had gone through. There’s a real threat from homegrown terrorists and also from jailhouse converts.” All four men had served time in prison and are Muslims.

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the arrests. Police commissioner Raymond Kelly said the police-FBI operation was “a textbook example of how a major investigation should be handled.”

According to the indictment, Cromitie and the other three were bent on attacking Jews and symbols of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. A large part of the “evidence,” however, is based on taped conversations in a house especially outfitted for surveillance by the FBI, weapons supplied by the FBI, and the word of FBI spy Hussain.

According to the London Times, Hussain became an FBI informant in 2002 to avoid deportation for fraud charges. This is not his first “terrorist” case. Attorney Terence Kindlon said a client of his was sentenced to 15 years in jail in 2004 on charges of laundering money for a “terrorist plot.” The star witness in that trial was also Hussain.

In the case of the four just arrested in New York, “A federal law enforcement official described the plot as ‘aspirational’—meaning that the suspects wanted to do something but had no weapons or explosives,” reported the New York Times. “It was fully controlled at all times,” a federal cop told the Times.

According to the indictment, FBI spy Hussain told the four defendants that he belonged to Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based armed Islamist group. Cromitie, the government claims, asked to join Jaish and said he wanted to “get a synagogue.” Onta Williams is accused of calling for killing U.S. soldiers with bombs and Stingers.

Salahuddin Muhammad, the imam at the mosque in Newburgh, said people were suspicious of Hussain when he first began visiting there: “He came to the mosque and started right away trying to meet up with different people.” One man told Muhammad that Hussain had offered him $25,000 “and he started talking about jihad.” The man said he told Hussain, “I don’t want no part of that.”

Muhammad pointed out that “provocateur” is a better word for Hussain than “informant,” according to the Newburgh News.

Lord McWilliams, brother of defendant David Williams, told the New York Daily News that Hussain led the family to believe that he would pay $20,000 for a liver transplant for Lord that his Medicaid insurance would not cover.

“We’re not entrapping or encouraging anyone to commit a crime,” claimed Joseph Demarest, head of the New York FBI office. “We merely facilitated their wishes.”

“You have to be skeptical,” said Utya Habif-Afres, interviewed by the Washington Post as she picked up her son from a class at the Riverdale Jewish Center. “I was also questioning if the police informant didn’t provide the bombs, would these people have been able to get bombs?”

Reuters : Informant's role questioned in U.S. security probes

Informant's role questioned in U.S. security probes

By Edith Honan | May 31, 2009

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The arrests of four men in a suspected plot to bomb two New York synagogues have drawn fire from critics who say U.S. law enforcement relies on informants who infiltrate extremist groups that otherwise would be incapable of mounting an attack.

Civil liberties advocates and legal scholars say the case is part of a pattern since the September 11 attacks of 2001 in which paid informants are sent to mosques where they aid and encourage disgruntled Muslim men in criminal pursuits.

"We're concerned that it was the actions of the FBI informant that really led to the alleged plot," said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Police on May 20 arrested four men who they said worked with an undercover informant for a year and were caught on video leaving what they believed were live bombs outside a pair of synagogues in the Bronx borough of New York.

The men then planned to shoot down military aircraft with a guided surface-to-air missile that, like the explosives, was deactivated and provided by the informant, authorities said.

The suspects -- James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen -- are charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and face up to life in prison if convicted. None is believed to have links to al Qaeda.

"Why the FBI is going out to create a terrorist group just so they can then solve the crime by prosecuting the terrorist group seems a little odd," said Michael German, who spent 16 years as an FBI special agent and now works with the American Civil Liberties Union.

He cited the fact that the men in the Bronx case had difficulty buying a pistol as evidence they needed help to do real harm.

FBI spokesman Jim Margolin said it was bureau policy not to comment on pending or previous cases and he would not comment on the use of informants generally.

"They still had the intention," Joseph Demarest, head of the New York FBI office, said of the suspects at a recent news conference.

Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney who successfully prosecuted Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot, said informants were closely monitored and essential to preventing attacks.

"If the counterterrorism strategy you want is to prevent attacks from happening, you don't have any choice but to infiltrate potential terrorist organizations," McCarthy said. "Your average FBI agent from Iowa is not going to be able to ... credibly infiltrate terrorist organizations."

BENDING THE RULES

Recent plots targeting New Jersey's Fort Dix military base, the New York subway system and Chicago's Sears Tower have been foiled at early stages with the help of informants and have led to criminal convictions.

In 2006, a 23-year-old Pakistani immigrant, Matin Siraj, was convicted of plotting to blow up a New York subway station after meeting with an informant nearly twice his age who was recruited by police to monitor extremist Muslims at mosques.

Siraj testified the informant had inflamed his anger toward the United States.

Another informant used in multiple cases, Mohamed Alanssi, set himself on fire outside the White House in November 2004 to protest his treatment by the FBI.

German said the public should be concerned about entrapment even if, as a defense, it typically fails to sway juries.

"It really strains credulity why the FBI chose not to use undercover agents (instead of informants), and my concern is the reason why is because they know the informants will bend the rules a lot more easily," German said.

In the Bronx case, Payen's court-appointed lawyer said her client was "intellectually challenged" and schizophrenic.

"They look like hapless mopes who, but for the government, wouldn't have been involved in anything, let alone a sophisticated plot," said Columbia University Law School professor Daniel Richman.

"The problem the government faces is the concern that a group of hapless mopes, when visited by the foreign terrorist type, will turn into very willing and effective tools."

(Additional reporting by Christine Kearney; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Peter Cooney)

© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved

Times Herald-Record : Terror informant misused?

Terror informant misused?

Lawyers question whether FBI's plant went too far

By Matt King | May 24, 2009

The use of confidential informants to bust alleged homegrown terror rings is part of a campaign intended more to promote the war on terror than to protect citizens, say lawyers who have defended the accused in such cases.

"This is the law enforcement equivalent of an exhibition game," Albany lawyer Terence Kindlon said. "They're creating a crime and then solving it."

Kindlon represented Yassin Aref, an imam sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2007 in a scheme to launder money for an informant who claimed he was part of a plot to assassinate a Pakistini government official in New York.

The informant — Aref knew him as Malik — is named Shahed Hussain, who has worked for federal agents since 2003, when he was convicted in a fraud scheme involving motor vehicle documents in Albany, according to court records.

Based on the criminal complaint against James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, Kindlon says the informant in the Albany case is the same one involved in the case of the four Newburgh men.

"These were four very vulnerable dimwits who were susceptible to a very sophisticated, extremely devious, extraordinarily clever and dishonest snake in the grass," he said. "So crooked is this Malik character I don't trust him as far as I can throw my car."

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Southern District of New York would not comment on the informant's identity. A spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington also would not comment on the case but said informants follow "strict guidelines" to avoid entrapping suspects.

"We stay well away from that line and make sure every action is legal," Dean Boyd said.

Arnold Bogis, a research fellow at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, said informants are justified as long as their role is not simply to foment the "musings of angry, disaffected people."

An imam at a Newburgh mosque has accused the confidential informant of "prompting, prompting, prompting" the four alleged plotters into the attacks with his talk of jihad and fighting.

Lawyers concede actions by the FBI don't meet the legal burden of entrapment, but say they blur ethical lines by overtly encouraging their targets to participate in plots hatched by the informants.

"As soon as you introduce an aggressive informant into the situation you don't have the ability to understand what the defendants' intent was going to be," said New Jersey lawyer Michael Huff, who defended one of five men sentenced in April for plotting to attack Fort Dix.

"When you find people who feel disenfranchised and looking to blame their problems on someone, they're easily led."

The Newburgh men are uneducated, with sad-sack histories of drug abuse, mental illness and incarceration.

"You take these sacrificial lambs, they can't find Afghanistan on a map. They probably can't find Newburgh on a map," Kindlon said. "These are pathetic people from the underclass, the law enforcement equivalent of cannon fodder."

Huff said the informant approach would be fine if infiltrators merely observed and didn't take leadership roles in plots.

But he doesn't expect the policy to change because "the investigation would then go on forever. All they want to know is what they need to convict these guys at trial."

And the approach has worked.

Earlier this month, five men were convicted in Miami for plotting to blow up the Sears Tower. The government pressed the case through two hung juries before finally winning.

mking@th-record.com

Times Herald-Record : City, state honor team that derailed alleged terror plot

City, state honor team that derailed alleged terror plot

NYC mayor gives awards to more than 100

By The Associated Press | May 23, 2009

NEW YORK — Law enforcement agents who helped thwart a suspected New York City terror plot have received special thanks from the city and state.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday awarded certificates to more than 100 detectives, officers and agents from the FBI, NYPD and state police.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly says the amount of people involved shows the scope of the investigation.

Four men were arrested Wednesday and accused of plotting to blow up synagogues and shoot down military planes at the Air National Guard Base in Newburgh.

They have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles.

Officials say the FBI monitored the plot every step of the way.

Times Herald-Record : Suspected terrorists stopped for a bite

Suspected terrorists stopped for a bite

FBI prepared to make arrests in Newburgh

By Adam Bosch | May 23, 2009

NEWBURGH — Federal agents were going to spring their trap in Newburgh, but four aspiring jihadists didn't want to commit terrorism on an empty stomach.

The four accused conspirators — James Cromitie, 44; Laguerre Payen, 27; David Williams, 28; and Onta Williams, 32 — didn't rush their plot Wednesday to blow up two Bronx synagogues and military aircraft at the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, according to an investigator familiar with the case.

Instead, the men ate an early afternoon meal at one of their Newburgh apartments, spent some time praying and then paused to eat again at the Thruway's Ramapo rest stop.

Only then did they head to the Bronx to plant what they believed to be explosives outside two synagogues, where they were arrested about 9:30 p.m.

The FBI initially wanted to sting the men in Newburgh. Agents planned to let the accused terror team set up somewhere near the Air National Guard Base at Stewart International Airport before moving in to arrest them.

The men planned to use a Stinger ground-to-air missile to blow a military aircraft out of the sky, according to court records. It's unclear whether the suspects' delay forced authorities to change their plans.

"They wanted to arrest the men when they got back up here (to Newburgh)," the investigator said. "We were set up much earlier, and they got the suspects six hours later than expected."

The investigator, who spoke anonymously because he's not authorized to talk to the press, said the conspirators' lack of urgency was another sign of their ineptitude.

They plotted an elaborate scheme but lacked the precision to carry it out on schedule.

In other terror-plot revelations, the Times Herald-Record has learned that:

# The four men were talking openly in a Newburgh mosque about their desire to commit jihad when a federal informant, a sporadic attendee of the mosque, overheard them. He then took the information to the feds.

The informant, Sahed "Malik" Hussain, helped the FBI infiltrate accused terrorists operating at a storefront mosque in Albany in 2004.

Hussain was recruited by the feds after pleading guilty in April 2003 to scheming to help illegal immigrants get driver's licenses.

The investigator said the government would now likely pay and relocate Hussain.

# Federal agents this week searched a Beacon apartment where Onta Williams listed an address. It's unclear what agents recovered.

# Four Newburgh men conjured the plot, but the FBI provided the money. Agents gave Hussain money to help the would-be terrorists buy what they believed to be explosives and missile systems.

The FBI also provided two cars that the terror suspects parked outside the Bronx synagogues days before the plan was to be executed. The men stashed inert explosive devices inside the cars' trunks just before federal agents arrested them.

# It's unclear whether the four men had been monitoring the Air National Guard Base to track when military planes landed and took off, but sources said C-5A traffic was heavy on Wednesday, the planned day of the attack.

Eric Durr, spokesman for the Division of Military and Naval Affairs, said military air traffic at Stewart was normal but would not say how many planes came and left.

# One of the suspects, Payen, was ordered to be deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but the agency could not move him because of unspecified circumstances.

"Based upon the ruling of the immigration judge, we are unable to remove Mr. Payen," ICE spokesman Louis Martinez said. "He has been on an order of supervision and reports to ICE regularly."

Martinez did not say how often Payen checked in.

abosch@th-record.com

Reporters Chris McKenna and Michael Randall contributed to this story.

LoHud : Mosque officials discuss terror suspects, suggest entrapment

Mosque officials discuss terror suspects, suggest entrapment

By Hema Easley | May 21, 2009

NEWBURGH, N.Y. - Leaders of a Newburgh mosque said two men suspected of plotting to bomb Jewish temples in Riverdale and shoot down military planes were loosely affiliated with the mosque, and one was on medication for paranoia.

The head imam of the mosque says one of the men arrested was baited into the plot, and he called the arrest entrapment.

Federal agents arrested Newburgh residents James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, and charged them with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Hamin Rashada is the assistant imam at Masjid Al-Ikhlas, where Cromitie and Payen frequented. The name of the mosque translates to "Mosque of Purity and Serenity."

Rashada said Payen suffered from paranoia, was on medication, and had been to the mosque for counseling recently. He was also in the country illegally from Haiti and had faced deportation in the past but was helped by a group of students from a local law college, and apparently hadn't been deported.

He was in jail for five months for something related to his immigration status, Rashada said. Payen was scheduled for another immigration hearing tomorrow at Federal Plaza in New York City, but he's in FBI custody, he said.

Rashada said that when Payen came to the mosque in March, he was apparently homeless, and Rashada assisted him in getting a room in a multi-family home that was also home to several people with criminal backgrounds who were on parole.

He said that in the last few days, Payen had been going around asking people where he could gain access to heavy weapons and a dependable driver. According to Rashada, the people did not help him because they didn't want more legal trouble.

He found all this out when he asked around today and yesterday after hearing of the arrests, he said. He informed the FBI of the information he had gathered last night. He knew none of the information prior to the arrests.

heasley@lohud.com

NYT : The Role of an F.B.I. Informer Draws Praise as Well as Questions About Legitimacy

The Role of an F.B.I. Informer Draws Praise as Well as Questions About Legitimacy

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI | May 10, 2007

It was August 2006 when one of the young Muslim men accused of plotting to kill soldiers at Fort Dix first broached the idea, according to the authorities. Talking to an informer who was secretly taping the exchange, the young man said that he thought he could round up six or seven other men willing to take part, and that a rocket-propelled grenade might be the most effective weapon, the authorities said.

And he had one more notion: He wanted the informer to lead the attack, according to a federal complaint. “I am at your services,” the young man is quoted as telling the informer, who had presented himself as an Egyptian with a military background.

That moment, recorded on tape and submitted in federal court this week in Camden, N.J., as the authorities charged six Muslim men in the plot, captures something of the complexity of using informers in terror investigations. The informer, sent to penetrate a loose group of men who liked to talk about jihad and fire guns in the woods, had come to be seen by the suspects as the person who might actually show them how an act of terror could be carried off.

Indeed, over the months that followed, as the targets of the investigation spoke with a sometimes unfocused zeal about waging holy war, the informer, one of two used in the investigation, would tell them that he could get them the sophisticated weapons they wanted. He would accompany them on surveillance missions to military installations, debating the risks, and when the men looked ready to purchase the weapons, it was the informer who seemed to be pushing the idea of buying the deadliest items, startling at least one of the suspects.

Since 9/11, law enforcement officials have praised the work of such informers, saying they have been doing exactly what they should be doing — gaining access to the world of a possible threat, playing along to see just how far suspects were willing to go, and allowing the authorities to act before the potential terrorists did.

In the case of the men arrested this week, the authorities have been emphatic: The men were prepared to kill, and to die in the effort, and the informer was vital to preventing any loss of life.

“Their intentions and motivation were obviously well established before the investigation began,” said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the United States attorney in New Jersey, Christopher J. Christie, who announced the arrests of the men on Tuesday.

The authorities made the arrests and ended the operation, officials said, because the men were at last ready to acquire the weapons they had sought.

As the case goes forward, the role of the main informer will almost surely be contested. Over the years, informers in terror cases have become the focus of efforts by defense lawyers and others to call into question the legitimacy of the investigations. They have often sought to show that informers engaged in entrapment.

“The police are allowed to use some enticement in cases,” said Troy Archie, a lawyer for one of the six men charged, Dritan Duka. “But it depends how far they go.”

Certainly, the work of informers can sometimes seem murky. In one instance, the informer who was the main witness in a major terror financing case in Brooklyn in 2005 almost did not make it to the witness stand after he set himself on fire in front of the White House to protest his compensation by his F.B.I. handlers. The informer helped win a conviction, but wound up being prosecuted himself for writing bad checks while working for the F.B.I.

In the criminal complaint they filed against the six men in New Jersey, federal prosecutors took the step of including information about an earlier problem involving their main informer. Prosecutors acknowledged that the informer, two months before he became involved in the Fort Dix case, had misled investigators in order to protect a friend.

The prosecutors added that “the F.B.I. has been able to independently corroborate the information provided” by the informer in this case through recordings and surveillance tapes.

The complaint captures only a small portion of the interactions between the informer and the six suspects during the 14 months they were associated. Defense lawyers assigned yesterday to represent two of the central figures in the case objected to what they called the selective excerpts of conversations submitted by the prosecutors.

“The prosecutors have put out only snippets of conversations, rather than the entire context of conversations,” said Rocco C. Cipparone, who represents another of the six, Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer.

However, a close reading of even the limited material in the criminal complaint suggests a relationship in which some of the suspects never fully trusted the informer, but nonetheless shared secrets with him about a wide assortment of illicit plans and illegal weapons.

Without doubt, in most of the instances described in the complaint, the informer seems to be merely facilitating the menacing plans of the suspects or following along. But on some occasions, the informer appears to have played a slightly more provocative role.

He first struck up an acquaintance with Mr. Shnewer, a cabdriver, in March 2006, two months after a store clerk alerted the authorities that a man had asked him to make a DVD copy of a videotape that appeared to be a terrorist training exercise.

The complaint suggests that the informer quickly began to establish a rapport with Mr. Shnewer, apparently one of the group’s leaders. The informer was shown terror training videotapes, included in talks about obtaining weapons and invited to be the group’s tactical leader in any assault. He later went with Mr. Shnewer on trips to scout a variety of military targets.

Months elapsed without significant developments. The complaint indicates that in October 2006, seven months after the informer first entered the ranks of the men, it might have been the informer who helped jump-start another suspect, Serdar Tatar, who still had not followed through on his promise to get a map of the base from his father’s pizzeria near Fort Dix. The two men were discussing Fort Dix, the complaint said, when the informer “expressed anger at the United States.”

“You want to make them pay for something that they did,” Mr. Tatar said to the informer, according to the complaint. “O.K., you need maps?”

Soon, Mr. Tatar provided the map, the complaint says.

In November, it was the informer who volunteered that he might have a source who could provide the machine guns and heavier arms the men had long been talking about.

“Shnewer expressed interest,” the complaint says.

By early this year, the complaint asserts, the informer accompanied the men to a shooting range in the Poconos, and later practiced assault maneuvers with them using paintball guns. During those exercises, the suspects mused about obtaining explosives and whether to attack a warship when it was docked in Philadelphia.

Eljvir Duka, one of three brothers among the suspects, offered a rationale for their planned attacks, saying, according to the complaint, that when someone threatened “your religion, your way of life, then you go jihad.”

But no specific dates were discussed or plans committed to.

And when efforts to finally get the more potent weapons seemed close to producing results, the informer presented a list of possible arms that could now be bought. The list included fully automatic machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. But it was the men who scaled back their ambitions.

In fact, one of the suspects, Dritan Duka, seemed taken aback by the informer’s listing of the heavy artillery. Mr. Duka appeared to ask the informer if there was anything more he should know about the informer’s background or intentions, including whether he was religious. Asked why he seemed alarmed, Mr. Duka said to the informer, “There was some stuff on the list that was heavy.” And he added an expletive.

In the last recorded conversation cited in the complaint, the men opted only for the machine guns. They would “hold off” on anything more.

Times Herald-Record : Suspected terrorist's aunt raps FBI in her blog

Suspected terrorist's aunt raps FBI in her blog

By Doyle Murphy | June 1, 2009

CITY OF NEWBURGH — An aunt of one of four suspected terrorists has started a blog, condemning the government sting operation that nabbed her nephew.

Alicia McWilliams said her 28-year-old nephew, David Williams, made foolish mistakes and will have to pay for them. But she said much of the blame should fall on an FBI informant who she believes manipulated and guided the four Newburgh men toward crimes they would never have considered on their own.

"They're uneducated fools, and they played them," McWilliams said in an interview.

She posted her first blog entry on Wednesday at visionbeyondthewalls.blogspot.com. She describes a program she began working on in 2006 to help convicts after they leave prison. McWilliams, who lives in the Bronx, said she'd seen too many men in her own family dropped back into society with no skills and no hope for jobs. Williams was one of them.

"My nephew thought this was a great idea," she wrote. "He like many others was interested in the vision and mission. Stumbling through life like many of us do he got caught up in the web."

Federal prosecutors say Williams, James Cromitie, Onta Williams (no relation to David) and Laguerre Payen planned to shoot down military planes at Stewart Airport and blow up a synagogue and community center in the Bronx. Agents monitored the men during a yearlong investigation. Authorities said it began when the men approached the informant at a Newburgh mosque for help with their plans. Mosque members have said it was the other way around.

McWilliams said the informant preyed on four men in a small, desperate city. Men such as her nephew need help to succeed, she said, not help to fail.

"All that money you wasted for that year, you could have built a training facility," she wrote. McWilliams said she'll continue to speak out and post on the blog.

AP : Terrorism arrests: snitch, sting, then controversy

Terrorism arrests: snitch, sting, then controversy

By DEBORAH HASTINGS | May 24, 2009

NEW YORK (AP) — It usually starts with a snitch and a sting operation, followed by a great deal of publicity and controversy.

Case in point: Four Muslim men charged last week with plotting to blow up synagogues and military planes. The informant is a convicted felon and Pakistani immigrant who turned informant seven years ago to avoid deportation. This wasn't his first foray into undercover work for federal authorities.

With considerable fanfare, a steady stream of terrorism busts has been announced by the FBI since Sept. 11, 2001. And in most cases, accusations soon followed that the stings were overblown operations that entrapped hapless ne'er-do-wells. Federal authorities say such arrests save lives.

But what happens to these cases after the media spotlight fades and the noise dies down? And are the snitches involved reliable?

"Most of these guys don't get tried," said security analyst Bruce Schneier. "These are not criminal masterminds, they're idiots. There's huge fanfares at the arrest, and then it dies off."

The New York men arrested last week were ex-convicts down on their luck. In federal court, one admitted that he'd recently gotten stoned. "I smoke it regularly," he told the judge. Not to worry, he added, "I understand everything you are saying."

James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen were calm as they appeared in court Thursday with shackled hands. They entered no pleas and were ordered held without bail. If convicted, they face life imprisonment.

Federal authorities are proud of their work, saying agents have prevented many attacks by nipping them in the bud. Among the biggest headline grabbers were alleged plots to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago and underground gas pipes at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and allegations that others planned to storm the Fort Dix military base in New Jersey while dressed as pizza delivery men.

However, court statistics show that most domestic terrorism cases never make it to trial.

According to informant Shahed Hussain, who also helped the FBI in 2004 by posing as an arms dealer, he met the men arrested last week at a local mosque.

Cromitie, the alleged mastermind, told Hussain "I hate those mother-------, those f------ Jewish b------ .... I would like to get a synagogue," according to the complaint.

Hussain drove the men to scout targets and supplied them with weapons and explosive devices that, unbeknownst to the accused, were fake.

"Where he goes conspiracies blossom," said attorney Terence L. Kindlon, who represents one of two men sentenced to 15 years in prison based on Hussain's help in a 2004 case involving money laundering charges for a fictitious terror plot.

"We are not entrapping or encouraging anyone to commit a crime," said Joseph M. Demarest, head of New York's FBI office. "We merely facilitated their wishes."

Assistant U.S. attorney Eric Snyder said: "It's hard to envision a more chilling plot."

Which is almost exactly what then-U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf said in 2007 when announcing the bust of an alleged plan to blow up gas lines at JFK airport. Russell Defrietas — described by neighbors as a man who slept in his car and couldn't read or write — was arrested with three others on the work of an FBI informant, a twice-convicted drug dealer.

Mauskopf called it "one of the most chilling plots imaginable." Two years later, Defrietas, whom his attorney says is "mentally challenged," and three others sit in a Brooklyn jail. No trial date has been set.

As in last week's case, there was "a very active role played by a confidential informant," said attorney Daniel Noble, who represents Abdel Nur, a co-defendant in the JFK case. "There was never anything there," he said. "The question is whether anything would have happened without the informant."

That point was echoed by Schneier, of security firm BT Group. "Is the FBI manufacturing terrorists? What would happen if they were left on their own? They fall into the hands of an FBI informant, and then they get helped and egged on."

In Detroit, a case against four men once hailed as major victory over terrorism instead became a major embarrassment. In 2004, a federal judge threw out terrorism charges against two convicted men following widespread prosecutorial misconduct and questionable information from a self-described scam artist who once lived with the defendants and was trying to get a prison sentence reduced. One man was eventually deported and the fourth was acquitted.

Video tapes seized at the men's home were claimed to be terror surveillance shots. According to trial testimony, they were vacation videos taken at tourist spots including Disneyland.

However, claiming entrapment and problem informants are not enough to prevent convictions and strong punishments.

Five foreign-born men were convicted in December of conspiracy to kill U.S. soldiers in the Fort Dix case. Four were sentenced to life in prison. The fifth was sentenced to 33 years. Their trials relied heavily on two paid FBI informants who secretly recorded meetings and telephone calls during a 15-month operation and helped the men meet an arms dealer.

During the investigation, one of the men called a Philadelphia police officer saying he had been approached by someone who was pressuring him to obtain a map of Fort Dix and he suspected it was terrorist-related.

That didn't hold much sway with jurors.

Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra said he hoped the sentences served as a warning.

"We're going to catch you and hopefully catch you before you do it," he said. "And we're going to punish you severely."

Associated Press writers Michael Virtanen and Tom Hays contributed to this story.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Times : FBI ‘lured dimwits’ into terror plot

FBI ‘lured dimwits’ into terror plot

The arrest of petty crooks over a plan to target Jews has put the use of sting operations under fire

Tony Allen-Mills, New York | May 24, 2009

ON the steps of New York city hall on Friday, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor, praised the police officers and federal agents who helped disrupt an apparent terrorist plot to blow up a synagogue and shoot down military aircraft.

The mayor was flanked by more than 100 homeland security and counter-terrorist specialists, all of whom had a hand in an elaborate sting that netted four alleged Muslim extremists. Their plan, according to FBI agents, was to detonate a “fireball that would make the country gasp”.

The operation was acclaimed by New York officials for its success in averting what David Paterson, the state governor, described as “a heinous crime”.

Yet not every New Yorker was impressed by the latest in a long line of purported anti-terrorist triumphs that have supposedly averted tragedy in New York, Chicago, Toronto and several other North American cities since September 11, 2001.

“This whole operation was a foolish waste of time and money,” claimed Terence Kindlon, a defence lawyer who represented the last terror suspect to be tried in New York state. “It is almost as if the FBI cooked up the plot and found four idiots to install as defendants.”

Kindlon’s complaints were echoed by other legal experts who have repeatedly questioned the FBI’s reliance on undercover informants – known as confidential witnesses (CWs) – who lure gullible radicals into far-fetched plots that are then foiled by the agents monitoring them.

The last such plot purportedly involved an alleged attempt to blow up a fuel pipeline at John F Kennedy airport in New York in 2007; the defendants are awaiting trial in a case that depends heavily on evidence from an undercover CW.

“One question [about the synagogue case] that has to be answered is: did the informant go in and enlist people who were otherwise not considering trouble ?” said Kevin Luibrand, who represented a Muslim businessman caught up in another FBI sting three years ago. “Did the government induce someone to commit a crime?”

The other question that US security experts were debating was how much had been achieved by assigning more than 100 agents to a year-long investigation of three petty criminals and a mentally ill Haitian immigrant, none of whom had any connection with any known terrorist group. “They were all unsophisticated dimwits,” said Kindlon.

Prosecutors alleged that James Cromitie, a 44-year-old ex-convict who converted to Islam in prison, was the ringleader of a plot to bomb synagogues because, in his tape-recorded words, “I hate those f****** Jewish bastards”.

Cromitie, from Newburgh, 60 miles north of Manhattan, was said to have recruited three other Muslim converts – David Williams, 28, and Onta Williams (no relation), 32, both former Baptist American ex-convicts; and Laguerre Payen, 27, a Haitian former Catholic and paranoid schizophrenic.

This unlikely crew was said to have planned to use remotely detonated C4 explosives to bomb synagogues in the New York suburb of Riverdale; they then intended to drive north to a National Guard base near Newburgh to shoot down military aircraft with a Stinger missile supplied by a man they believed was working with Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based terrorist group.

That man is now understood to have been Shahed Hussain, a former New York state motel owner who became an FBI informant in 2002 to avoid deportation to Pakistan after being arrested on fraud charges. Hussain appears to have met Cromitie at a Newburgh mosque where the plot to bomb Jewish targets was hatched.

With Hussain’s help, the FBI was able to monitor every move made by Cromitie and the others. Hussain also provided the group with bogus C4 explosive and a fake Stinger missile and launcher supplied by the FBI. When the conspirators planted their dud bombs outside two Jewish targets on Wednesday night, the FBI was watching. The area was smothered with heavily armed Swat teams, the would-be bombers’ exit was blocked and agents hauled them away in handcuffs.

“Did they really need all those men in ninja suits with M16 rifles to arrest four idiots?” wondered Kindlon, a former marine sergeant whose main concern is that real terrorists may be plotting undisturbed while domestic US agencies focus on fantasists. “Somewhere, someone in Al-Qaeda must be laughing.”

Concern about the FBI’s tactics heightened after Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, imam at the Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh, revealed that when Hussain first came to the mosque and started talking about jihad (holy war) – apparently to identify radical elements for his FBI handlers – several members immediately concluded that he must be a government agent.

The FBI is known to have infiltrated mosques, and many anti-terrorist experts believe a mosque is the last place a serious Islamic terrorist would plot an attack. “Anyone with any smarts knew to stay away from [Hussain],” said Muhammad. Yet nobody will accuse Cromitie and his cohorts of being smart.

LAT : Alleged N.Y. terrorist plotters known as regular guys

Alleged N.Y. terrorist plotters known as regular guys

Prosecutors say four suspects sought to kill Jews and bring down a military aircraft in New York. Friends and family say that doesn't square with the men they knew.

By Tina Susman | May 22, 2009

Reporting from Newburgh, N.Y. -- To his Uncle Richard, Onta Williams is passive to a fault, too weak-willed to defy men at the local mosque who urged him to shun his uncle, who is gay. To his neighbors, James Cromitie is a "cool dude," a Muslim who prayed regularly but also joined their beery chat sessions and never uttered a hateful word.

But to prosecutors, Williams and Cromitie are homegrown terrorists who, working with two other men, spent nearly a year formulating a plot to blow up Jewish centers in the New York City suburb of Riverdale and shoot a military plane over blue-collar Newburgh in the Hudson River Valley.

Williams, 32, and Cromitie, 55 -- along with codefendants David Williams, 28, and Laguerre Payen, 27 -- appeared in federal court Thursday on charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction in the U.S. and conspiracy to acquire and use an antiaircraft missile. They were arrested late Wednesday outside a synagogue they allegedly targeted.

Prosecutors called it the latest in a string of homegrown terrorism plots hatched after Sept. 11. The case is likely to energize opponents of President Obama's argument that the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should be closed and that its inmates should be sent elsewhere -- some to the U.S.

"It's hard to envision a more chilling plot," Assistant U.S. Atty. Eric Snyder said in court Thursday. He described all four suspects as "eager to bring death to Jews."

"It shows how real the threat is from homegrown terrorists," said Rep. Peter T. King of New York, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee.

The indictment described the four men as seeking to avenge the deaths of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, and driven by a hatred of Jews.

Cromitie, the alleged ringleader, first began discussing the plan in June after meeting an FBI informant at the Masjid Al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh, according to the charges. He said he felt ties to Afghanistan because his parents had lived there before he was born, and he expressed interest in joining Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based group labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S.

He described the World Trade Center as "the best target" and lamented that it already had been destroyed. After months of research, he settled on a Jewish community center and nearby synagogue, because quiet Riverdale would be "a piece of cake" to attack, he allegedly told the informant.

Cromitie and the others -- some of whom embraced Islam in prison -- also plotted to buy a Stinger missile to shoot a military aircraft over Stewart International Airport in Newburgh, prosecutors said. Troops and military supplies bound for Iraq and Afghanistan leave from Stewart.

Richard Williams, brother of Onta Williams' late mother, shook his head in wonder Thursday as he sat on the porch of his worn two-story brick house in Newburgh. Across the road, geese ambled across the lawns of a shady park. But just down the block, locals said, crack cocaine is sold openly.

It was drugs that landed Onta Williams in prison, where he turned to Islam, said his uncle. When Onta Williams was released about three years ago, he came to live with his uncle.

"I'm the favorite uncle. I'm the gay uncle, so he viewed me as a second mother," said Richard Williams. But mosque members objected to homosexuality and persuaded his nephew to move out about a year ago. Onta Williams moved in with a girlfriend in nearby Beacon. He had a job loading and unloading trucks.

"He's a follower, not a leader. He's easy to push around," said Richard Williams. "I just can't think of why he would do something like this, except for the crew he was running with."

Onta Williams sometimes brought friends to the house and used the peeling wooden porch for boozy parties, though Islam prohibits alcohol. But he also grew his beard thick and bushy in keeping with devout Muslim norms, to the point that "he looked like a pilgrim," his uncle said.

Cromitie, too, served time in prison on drug offenses.

Neighbors in the apartment block alongside a lake where Cromitie lived said his drug days appeared to be over. For several years, they said, they had known him as an easygoing, friendly man who went to work at Wal-Mart and went to the mosque, but never tried to convert anyone to Islam.

He also never shied away from the regular gatherings of beer-drinking pals who were hanging out Thursday near Cromitie's unit.

"There's nothing bad to say about him," said one, who gave his name only as Ricky and who had a large cross tattooed on his forearm. Others said Cromitie would help them carry their groceries and prune their hedges.

"He's an average guy," said Ricky.

"Whatever he did," Ricky said, "he didn't do around us."

Suspect David Williams (no relation to Onta Williams) is another prison convert to Islam, according to aunt Aahkiyaah Cummings. She described him as a good father to his two young children.

The only one of the four suspects who appears to have aroused any suspicion was Payen, a Haitian native who attended the Newburgh mosque. Assistant imam Hamid Rashada said his dishevelment and odd behavior disturbed some members, said the assistant imam, Hamid Rashada.

When Payen appeared in court, defense attorney Marilyn Reader described him as "intellectually challenged" and on medication for schizophrenia. The Associated Press said that when he was asked if he understood the proceedings, Payen replied: "Sort of."

tina.susman@latimes.com

NYT : In Bronx Bomb Case, Missteps Caught on Tape

In Bronx Bomb Case, Missteps Caught on Tape

[Secret Recordings Reveal Details of Terror Plot Accusations]

By MICHAEL WILSON | May 22, 2009

They were four ex-convicts — one a crack addict, another whose most recent arrest involved snatching purses — and they gathered their terror tools as they went.

They bought cellphones, the authorities said; they bought a camera in a Wal-Mart to take photographs of the synagogues in New York City that they wanted to blow up. When their attempt to buy guns in Newburgh, N.Y., fell through — their gun dealer told them she had sold out — they drove downstate, buying a $700 pistol from a Bloods gang leader in Brooklyn.

After months of planning, the authorities allege, the men had their first real scare this month, driving to Stamford, Conn., to pick up a surface-to-air missile that was waiting for them in a warehouse. One of the men in the car believed they were being followed by law enforcement, so they returned to Newburgh, drove around until they were satisfied they were in the clear, then went back to Stamford for their missile and bombs.

They brought them back to Newburgh, locked them in a storage container, and celebrated, shouting, “Allah akbar!”

These details as told by the authorities describe a homegrown terror plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down a military aircraft in Newburgh. The outlines of the plan were fleshed out on Thursday, in court hearings, documents and interviews, as were bits and pieces of the checkered life stories of the four men charged in the plot.

Remarkably, vast passages of the conspiracy the federal authorities described — the talk of killing Jews, the testing of the men’s would-be weaponry — played out on a veritable soundstage of hidden cameras and secret microphones, and involved material provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A house in Newburgh, a storage facility in Stamford, the planting of the would-be bombs in the Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale — everything was recorded, according to the complaint.

“It’s hard to envision a more chilling plot,” Eric Snyder, an assistant United States attorney, said on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan. “These are extremely violent men. These are men who eagerly embraced an opportunity” to “bring deaths to Jews.”

On Thursday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly appeared at the Riverdale Jewish Center, which the F.B.I. identified as one of the targets of the plot. Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Kelly praised the work of the agencies behind the arrests and sought to tamp down any fears of a larger terrorist organization at work.

“Sadly, this is just a reminder that peace is fragile and democracy is fragile and we have to be vigilant all the time,” said Mr. Bloomberg, who along with Mr. Kelly stressed that the four men had no connection to any international terror groups. “The good news is that the N.Y.P.D. and F.B.I. prevented what could have been a terrible event in our city.”

The case is the latest in a series in New York and around the country since Sept. 11, 2001, and sounded familiar in some ways. The investigation, for instance, began with the work of a confidential informant, who portrayed himself as an agent of a Pakistani terror organization, and who became a critical member of the men’s plot.

The full nature and extent of the informant’s role in facilitating the plot is unknown. In other cases, defense lawyers have sought to portray these informants as engaging in entrapment, suggesting they had, in effect, provoked and fueled the actions of their clients.

But where past terror prosecutions have been based mostly on conversations about a planned or imagined attack, this one went further, the authorities alleged: the men went through critical acts in what they believed to be a deadly assault.

As for the defendants — James Cromitie, 44; David Williams, 28; Onta Williams, 32, and no apparent relation to David; and Laguerre Payen, 27 — most of the details that emerged on Thursday stemmed from their criminal pasts.

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.

Law enforcement officials initially said the four men were Muslims, but their religious backgrounds remained uncertain Thursday. Mr. Payen reported himself to be Catholic during his 15-month prison sentence that ended in 2005, according to a state corrections official. Mr. Cromitie and Onta Williams both identified themselves as Baptists in prison records, although Mr. Cromitie changed his listed religion to Muslim upon his last two incarcerations; David Williams reported no religious affiliation.

The men never served in the same prison together. Three of them regularly lunched together at Danny’s Restaurant in Newburgh, chatting over plates of rice and beans, said Danny DeLeon, the owner.

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.

Mr. Cromitie was there last June, and he met a stranger.

He had no way of knowing that the stranger’s path to the mosque began in 2002, when he was arrested on federal charges of identity theft. He was sentenced to five years’ probation, and became a confidential informant for the F.B.I. He began showing up at the mosque in Newburgh around 2007, Mr. Muhammad said.

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.

The next month, on July 3, the two men met and discussed the terror organization Jaish-e-Mohammed, based in Pakistan, with which the informant claimed to be involved. Mr. Cromitie told him he wanted to join and “do jihad,” according to the complaint.

All of this came as a shock to Mr. Cromitie’s mother after his arrest on Wednesday. Adele Cromitie, 65, said her son was raised a Christian, and that neither she nor his father, who left the family when Mr. Cromitie was a young child, had lived in Afghanistan. She said Mr. Cromitie visited her, at her apartment in the Castle Hill neighborhood of the Bronx, for the first time in nearly 15 years about three years ago, after getting out of prison, and announced he had converted to Islam.

“When he told me that, I said, ‘Get out of here,’ ” Ms. Cromitie recalled.

About six months ago, Mr. DeLeon, the restaurant owner, noticed that a new man was showing up for lunch. He was about 50 and appeared to be South Asian, and he usually paid for the group. Mr. DeLeon thought he was the boss.

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.”

On April 10, Mr. Cromitie, David Williams and the informant drove to a Wal-Mart in Newburgh and bought a camera, and then went to the Bronx, where Mr. Cromitie took pictures of synagogues. He said blowing up the Riverdale Jewish Center would be “a piece of cake.”

Several days later, the three men met again and discussed picking up a Stinger heat-seeking missile in Connecticut and synchronizing the aircraft strike and the bombings.

On the night of April 28, after figuring out where they could get a gun, the men reinforced their commitment to the plan to one another, according to the authorities. They each said they were willing to perform jihad, and Onta Williams spoke, saying the military is “killing Muslim brothers and sisters in Muslim countries, so if we kill them here with I.E.D.’s and Stingers, it is equal,” according to the complaint.

On May 6, the five men drove to Stamford to pick up the explosives and the Stinger, according to the complaint. The location was carefully chosen in advance, but not by any of the men in the vehicle.

The Stamford police were approached by the F.B.I. several months ago, officials said, and asked for help in finding a warehouse where a meeting with the suspected terror cell could take place. A warehouse on the Waterside section of town was chosen and wired for video and audio for the meeting.

The men, after the brief scare about being followed, eventually made it to Stamford. There, they inspected the explosive devices. Each weighed 37 pounds and was inside a canvas bag. None of them, nor the Stinger missile at the warehouse, was operational, having been disabled by the F.B.I.

The four men tested one of the detonators for the bombs, which was to be set off with a cellphone, the compliant said. They drove the weapons to Newburgh, locked them in a storage container and celebrated.

The five men met at the storage unit to inspect the weapons on May 8. Twelve days later, they drove to the Bronx with the bombs.

Albany Times-Union : Local link in terror plot

Local link in terror plot

Informant used by FBI in Albany terror sting plays similar role in cracking alleged Newburgh cell

By BRENDAN J. LYONS, Senior writer | May 22, 2009

ALBANY — The informant used to ensnare a group of suspected jihadists in Newburgh Wednesday was also used by the FBI in 2004 in a widely publicized terrorism case against two Albany residents.

Two persons familiar with the case confirmed that Shahed "Malik" Hussain, a former Loudonville resident, was involved in the sting operation that authorities said exposed a desire by four men to attack targets ranging from synagogues to military bases.

Paul Holstein, spokesman for the FBI in Albany, declined to comment and referred all questions to the bureau's New York City field office.

Hussain, convicted of federal fraud-related charges in 2002, became an FBI informant, according to court records. However, his criminal file has since vanished from public records in U.S. District Court.

In 2004, the FBI recruited him to infiltrate the inner circle of Masjid As-Salam, a storefront mosque that had drawn the attention of federal agents after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Hussain's efforts helped lead to the convictions of Central Avenue pizza shop owner Mohammed Mosharref Hossain and Yassin Muhiddin Aref, the mosque's imam, in a sting operation built a spurious scheme to aid terrorists.

Hussain's role on behalf of the FBI was sharply criticized by defense attorneys who argued that his efforts amounted to entrapment against Hossain and Aref.

Terence L. Kindlon, Aref's criminal defense attorney, called Hussain a ''highly sophisticated confidence man'' who cannot be trusted because he is paid for his informant work.

"My experience taught me that I couldn't trust him,'' Kindlon said. "As for the case based upon his work, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is."

Mohammed Hossain's attorney, Kevin A. Luibrand, expressed a similar opinion of the FBI's informant, who had befriended the Albany targets at the direction of the FBI, who suspected Aref was tied to Middle Eastern terrorists.

"It's interesting that the government again recruited Malik since it was established in the Albany case that he lied repeatedly and consistently to his FBI handlers," Luibrand said.

During the Albany trial, there was testimony that the informant's recorded conversations with the Albany targets were in Urdu. The informant would then translate those conversations for FBI agents, who later learned that the translations were not always accurate, according to the defense team.

Hussain also played a role as informant in the probe that led to Wednesday's arrest of four men from Newburgh after authorities said they planted what the suspects believed to be plastic explosives outside the Riverdale Jewish Center and Riverdale Temple in New York City. The four men were identified as Laguerre Payen, 27; James Cromitie, whom records show is 44; Onta Williams, 32, and David Williams, 28.

Authorities told The Associated Press that the four men were ex-convicts who envisioned themselves as holy warriors. But they had trouble finding guns and bought cameras at Wal-Mart to photograph their targets. Payen was a convicted purse snatcher, and Cromitie smoked marijuana the day the plot was to be carried out.

They spent months scouting targets and securing what they thought was a surface-to-air missile system and powerful explosives — all under the watch of the FBI informant.

The bombs they planted Wednesday were useless, packed with inert explosives supplied by the FBI instead of the Pakistani terrorist group they had pledged to support, according to a criminal complaint.

They appeared in court Thursday to answer charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles. They did not enter pleas and were held without bail; they face life in prison if convicted.

Besides planting the bombs in the heavily Jewish Riverdale section of the Bronx, they intended to shoot down planes at the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, prosecutors said.

Relatives said the defendants were down-on-their-luck men who found work at Wal-Mart, a landscaping company and a warehouse when they weren't behind bars. Payen's lawyer, Marilyn Reader, said he was "intellectually challenged" and on medication for schizophrenia and has "a very low borderline" IQ.

Payen appears to be a Haitian citizen, while the other three are Americans. The Williamses are not related.

Relatives said Payen, David Williams and Onta Williams were introduced to Islam in prison. According to The New York Times, law enforcement officials initially said the four men were Muslims, but on Thursday their religious backgrounds remained uncertain. They didn't serve prison time together.

Authorities say the informant first met Cromitie at the Masjid al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh in June 2008.

The mosque is led by Imam Salahuddin Muhammad, who has worked since 1985 as a chaplain in Fishkill Correctional Facility, the medium-security prison in Beacon, and also serves as a chaplain one day a week at Bard College.

"I know the mosque and I know the imam very well," said Lawrence Mamiya, an expert on Islam who teaches at Vassar College. "He's not radical at all. He's very mainstream."

The complaint portrays Cromitie as the instigator of the conspiracy, telling the informant last July that he wanted to join Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani terrorist group with which the informant claimed to be involved. By December, Cromitie was asking the informant to supply explosives and surface-to-air missiles, in one of many discussions secretly recorded in a Newburgh home the FBI had outfitted with video and audio equipment, the complaint said.

The Australian : Four men arrested for plotting New York terrorist attacks

Four men arrested for plotting New York terrorist attacks

Agence France-Presse | May 21, 2009

FOUR men have been arrested on charges linked with planning attacks against a synagogue and New York military bases, prosecutors said today.

The men, who according to a US congressman were all born in the US, were arrested “on charges arising from a plot to detonate explosives near a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York,” according to the complaint filed at a White Plains, New York federal court.

The group, residing in New York, where al-Qa'ida extremists with hijacked commercial airliners destroyed the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001, also “planned to shoot down military planes located at the New York Air National Guard Base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh, New York, with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles,” officials said.

They were set to appear in federal court in White Plains, New York today. The charges hold a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison to a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Three of the men were of Arabic descent and one of Haitian descent, according to New York Governor David Paterson. They all used Arab aliases. New York Representative Peter King said the men were Muslim and that some had converted to Islam in prison.

The suspects - identified as James Cromitie, also known as Abdul Rahman; David Williams, also known as Daoud or simply DL; Onta Williams, also known as Hamza; and Laguerre Payen, also known as Amin and Almondo - had been tracked for over a year, officials said.

To obtain weapons, the defendants dealt with an FBI informant, who provided the group “with an inactive missile and inert explosives,” officials said.

According to the complaint in June 2008 when a Federal Bureau of Investigations informant met with Cromitie in Newburgh, New York, the suspect explained his anger over the US-led war in Afghanistan.

At that time Cromitie “expressed an interest in 'doing something to America'," the complaint said.

Beginning in October 2008, the informant began meeting with Cromitie regularly along with David Williams, Onta Williams and Payen at a house in which the FBI had concealed video and audio equipment.

The group “expressed desire” to attack targets in New York, and Cromitie “asked the informant to supply surface-to-air guided missiles and explosives, according to prosecutors.

In April this year the group agreed on the synagogue they intended to attack and proceeded to conduct surveillance, including taking photographs of the warplanes at the military base.

“As alleged in the complaint, the defendants wanted to engage in terrorist attacks,” said acting US attorney Lev L Dassin.

“Fortunately, the defendants sought the assistance of a witness cooperating with the government. While the weapons provided to the defendants were fake, the defendants thought they were absolutely real,” Dassin added.

New York Congressman Peter King told CNN television that the attacks would have involved exploding bombs in cars parked outside the Jewish temple and a community centre.

“This would have been a tragic loss of life if the FBI and the NYPD (New York Police Department) had not been monitoring it.”

King said he believed all four of the men were born in the US, and that they were all Muslim. “One is of Afghan descent,” he said, adding that some of the group converted to Islam in prison.

“Thank God for the NYPD and it shows what a real threat we face from homegrown terrorists, and it shows especially those of us living in New York, we live with this every day,” he said.

“We can rest secured tonight because this plot was stopped but we don't know how many others are out there, and it's why we can never let our guard down and we have to be extremely vigilant and realize the true diabolic nature of this enemy.”

OMB Watch : Court Orders Review of FBI Records on California Muslim Organizations as New Complaints Emerge in 2 States

Court Orders Review of FBI Records on California Muslim Organizations as New Complaints Emerge in 2 States

April 30, 2009

Responding to claims that Muslim organizations have been illegally spied upon in southern California, a federal judge said on April 20, 2009 he will conduct a review of the FBI records. The decision comes after nearly three years of legal efforts by the ACLU and American Muslim groups to obtain information that they say would demonstrate illegal surveillance by the FBI. The FBI will have 30 days to deliver approximately 100 pages of related surveillance memos and the files on the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and its leaders to the judge.

Judge Cormac J. Carney said after he receives the FBI files he will determine which, if any, can be released to the public and what must remain protected under federal law. In 2007 six Muslim groups and five individuals sued the FBI and the Department of Justice alleging the agency failed to turn over records requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) a year earlier. The FBI had released largely redacted documents, claiming the information contained in the files were beyond the scope of the FOIA request.

Applauding the judge's decision, ACLU attorney, Jennie Pasquarella said, "There's a reason why they don't want to disclose this information. It will show why they've surveilled people and we think it might show they're surveilling people based on their religion."

This ruling comes in the wake of a steady decline in relations between the FBI and American Muslim groups. In March 2009, the American Muslim Taskforce, a coalition of Islamic groups, said they may boycott cooperation with FBI investigations after learning that a paid FBI informant was discovered in a southern California mosque.

More Revelations of FBI Surveillance Targeting Muslim Organizations

Concerns over the FBI informant in the California mosque have raised a red flag for many American Muslim groups and individuals who feel the FBI is targeting them for their religious beliefs. "The Somali Muslim community in particular feels that they are under siege by law enforcement," explained a spokesman for CAIR, describing the situation for Somali Muslims in the St. Louis, Missouri area. Repeated government intrusions of local Somali owned businesses, racial profiling and the use of "questionable" tactics to investigate a possible terrorist recruitment plan had made many American Muslim advocacy groups and local Somali Muslims feel threatened by the FBI.

Approximately 2,500 Somali Muslims live in the St. Louis area. Several have reported to local and national American Muslim advocacy groups that they have been contacted by the FBI to share information about fellow community members or threatened with immigration problems if they do not cooperate with FBI investigations. "They want some constant contact who will tell them news frequently, what's going on in the community, who's doing what, if there is are any guests coming along doing fundraising," said an official for the Masjid Bilal mosque in St. Louis.


In Michigan, American Muslim leaders asked U.S. Attorney general Eric Holder to investigate claims that the FBI sought out community members to spy on Islamic leaders and local congregations. Many of the complainants say the FBI promised to help resolve their immigration problems in exchange for their monitoring of mosques. Dawud Walid, Executive Director of the Michigan chapter of CAIR, said that there is no justification for the recent contacts made by the FBI into the American Muslim population and their actions amount to a "fishing expedition." "If there was a specific imam who they felt was telling people to support Osama bin Laden, that's a different story – we wouldn't have a problem with that," said Walid.

Orange County Register : Court asks FBI for Muslim surveillance files

Court asks FBI for Muslim surveillance files

Muslim organizations are angry over reports of spying in Southern California mosques.

By SEAN EMERY | THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER | April 20, 2009

SANTA ANA – The widening rift between the FBI and the Islamic community has drawn the American Civil Liberties Union into the fray, with the organization's lawyers declaring victory in their efforts to force the release of government surveillance records on Southern California Muslims.

A federal district court judge Monday gave the FBI 30 days to make available for review 48 pages of surveillance memos pertaining to Southern California Muslim organizations that had previously been released only in heavily redacted form, 47 pages of previously withheld memos, and FBI files on the Council of American Islamic Relations and Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the group's Southern Californian Chapter, ACLU staff attorney Jennie Pasquarella said.

Ayloush and Shakeel Syed, the executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, joined Pasquarella in the courtyard of the federal courthouse in Santa Ana minutes after the judge's ruling, declaring the decision a victory for Muslim organizations.

"We are exercising our first amendment rights, and we are running out of patience," Syed said.

FBI representatives forwarded requests for comment to Department of Justice officials, who could not be immediately reached for comment. Federal officials have previously denied charges by several national Islamic organizations that the government has taken part in "fishing expeditions" by sending informants to ensnare Muslims at area Mosques.

A coalition of Islamic organizations known as the American Muslim Taskforce last month threatened to cut ties with the FBI, accusing the agency of using "McCarthy-era tactics."

The announcement came on the heels of Irvine resident Craig Monteilh's public admission that he spent more than a year pretending to embrace Islam at various local mosques as part of an FBI-backed effort to uncover terrorist threats.

Monteilh claimed his work played a key role in the arrest of Ahmadullah Niazi, a Tustin-resident and member of the Islamic Center of Irvine, on several immigration-fraud charges.

But Islamic leaders claim the FBI violated the sanctity of the Islamic religion by sending in Monteilh, a felon who previously served a prison term for conning two women out of more than $150,000.

"While we were led to believe we were partners, we learned we were also under surveillance," Syed said.

The FBI previously declined to comment on the specific allegations brought by the Islamic groups, but pledged to continue outreach efforts with the Muslim community and warned against "limiting honest dialogue, especially when complex issues are on the table."

Muslim leaders say the rift between the FBI and the larger Islamic community has also widened because of the agency's deteriorating relationship with the Council of American Islamic Relations.

In the months following the 911 attacks, the group's officials say they helped the FBI reach out to Muslims and with cultural sensitivity training.

But the group in 2007 came under fire when it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorist funding case against the Holy Land Foundation.

The FBI recently announced that it has ended its own formal partnership with the council, whose leaders have denied any terrorist links.

Ayloush said he hoped this week's court ruling could spark a "healing phase" between the Muslim community and the FBI.

"We're hoping this will begin the process of undoing this climate of fear," Ayloush said.

Contact the writer: 949-553-2911 or semery@ocregister.com

Orange County News : A Look at Craig Monteilh, Who Says He Spied on the Islamic Center of Irvine for the Feds

A Look at Craig Monteilh, Who Says He Spied on the Islamic Center of Irvine for the Feds

Talkin’ Jihad With Craig Monteilh

Ex-convict, con man, convert—an early conversation with the man who says he spied on the Islamic Center of Irvine on behalf of the feds

By MATT COKER | March 4, 2009

A location scout for a spy movie could not have picked a better location for my late-December meeting with Craig Monteilh: a table outside a restaurant in a bustling Irvine shopping center. A lensman would have appreciated the shadow-erasing clouds hovering overhead on the warm winter morning. And central casting could not have found a better leading man: Monteilh is tall, intense and talkative, with a shaved head and the kind of cut body one would expect from someone who is now a fitness instructor. All that was missing was the story, which Monteilh was just itching to tell.

“I’m looking forward to getting my name back where it should be,” he said.

The gist of the 46-year-old’s tale: that he had taped Afghans, Iraqis and Pakistanis espousing radical ideas and, in some cases, plotting terrorism in Orange County. Not quite trusting the source—for a variety of reasons, which will soon become clear—the Weekly sat on his story.

Then, at dawn on Feb. 20, federal agents arrested 34-year-old Afghan native Ahmad Niazi at his Tustin home. Something about the Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the arrest sounded familiar.

Looking at my Monteilh interview notes with fresh eyes, I saw that I only scribbled down one name as he talked about alleged terror plotters:

Ahmad Niazi.

As I shifted into scramble mode, trying to get back in touch with Monteilh, Niazi was facing five fraud and perjury counts. At his Feb. 24 bail hearing, the eight-year Tustin resident was alleged to have talked in an unnamed informant’s e-mails and recordings of initiating jihad, getting weapons, blowing up buildings, sending money overseas to the Afghan mujahedin and even calling Osama bin Laden “an angel.”

Thomas J. Ropel III, an FBI special agent and Marine-trained counter-terrorism specialist assigned to the Orange County Joint Terrorism Task Force, testified that Niazi was preparing to send the informant to terrorist-training camps in Yemen or Pakistan.

Then Monteilh outed himself. His story appeared first in the Times’ Feb. 26 morning edition, on the Weekly’s Navel Gazing blog that evening and pretty much everywhere else thereafter. Monteilh kept repeating what he told me: He wanted to clear his name. But the whole way he presented his story to me only sowed doubts. Here is how he told it, nearly two months ago:

He was a chaplain for six years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, where he also dabbled in the intelligence division. Because of his biracial looks and grasp of spy work and religion, he was recruited by the FBI in 2004 and flown to Virginia for counterterrorism training. “The FBI knew there were suspicious activities happening in mosques,” particularly in Southern California, Monteilh said. One famous case was that of 30-year-old Adam Gadahn, the former resident of Santa Ana’s Floral Park neighborhood, onetime member of the Islamic Society of Orange County in Garden Grove and now Al-Qaeda’s jihad-spewing “Azzam the American” in Pakistan. Monteilh said his assignment was to infiltrate mosques in Irvine, Tustin, Anaheim, Culver City, West Covina and San Pedro. His contact on the outside was an “FBI Agent Armstrong.” Monteilh was certain others were sent to infiltrate Southern California mosques as well.

He arrived at the Islamic Center of Irvine in 2006 and befriended members, using the name Farouk Aziz, always wearing robes and, though he has no facial hair now, growing a long beard. But about a year in, an incident he would not describe—other than saying it was unrelated to what he was doing at the mosque—caused people he’d been spying on to wonder about him. To test their suspicions, these young Muslims went to the Islamic Center’s leader, who contacted the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), whose California office is in Anaheim. The advocacy group in turn contacted Irvine police and the FBI to say “Aziz” was spreading “jihad” talk at the mosque, which eventually got a restraining order against him.

In Southern California Muslim news source InFocus’ August 2007 story on the incident (“Is Big Brother At Your Mosque?”), Niazi is identified as one of those who turned in Monteilh. In that and other press reports, the FBI would neither confirm nor deny an investigation was under way.

This exposure, Monteilh said, led to death threats against him from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and someone in Irvine with Taliban ties. “They ruined my reputation,” he said. “I need to be known for what I did. They have me as a terrorist or a potential terrorist. The Islamic community has a restraining order against me because of my ‘jihadist views.’ I was carrying out a direct order.”

He claimed people he was investigating blew his cover to protect themselves. Ropel used that same argument at Niazi’s bail hearing. The agent acknowledged their suspect came forward to turn in a convert who “was scary,” but the bureau believed Niazi figured out the convert was an informant and filed the report to protect himself.

If Monteilh’s tale did not cause the hairs on the back of your neck to stiffen, just Google his name. Like a Christmas tree, the Internet lights up with stories of him being a con man, a gold digger, something of a nut and possibly a government informant. His criminal record extends back to 1987, with charges ranging from forgery to burglary and grand theft. His Orange County rap sheet alone includes charges for 18 separate crimes allegedly committed between January 2006 and November 2007. But here is the strange part: all but two were dismissed on the same day.

Confronted with his online infamy, Monteilh claimed that after he’d been exposed, unnamed government officials spread damning stories about him on the Internet to protect the undercover surveillance program.

So how could he prove he was a government spy? He produced stapled photocopies of what he claimed was a court document that a judge in West Covina would later go on to seal. He said it was the disposition of a grand-theft-auto case in which he was found guilty. He pointed to a section on the last page that stated, beneath the sentencing part, that the Los Angeles County prosecutor asked the judge to cut short Monteilh’s probation because he is an FBI informant who an Agent Armstrong says is doing good undercover work.

Monteilh went on to tell me he tried to get a similar assist after he later got caught up in a crime related to an Irvine drug bust but was hung out to dry amid internal debate within the FBI over the value of the operation to infiltrate mosques. When we spoke, he said he’d just returned from 16 months behind bars. His Orange County rap sheet confirms he served 16 months in state prison on two grand-theft charges.

The dealing soon began. Monteilh said if the Weekly printed an initial story clearing his name, he would share with us his e-mails and recordings. “Uh, let me ask my editor about this,” I sheepishly said. Sensing my lack of excitement, Monteilh talked of taking his story to a larger publication and let it drop he was meeting next with Times Orange County editor Steve Marble.

When I told him it would take some time to check out his story, he suggested I contact Hussam Ayloush, CAIR’s executive director in Anaheim, which I later did. “I have never trusted Monteilh,” Ayloush told me. “He is very suspicious.”

It was getting mighty squishy. Then came Niazi’s arrest. I hastily contacted the FBI about Monteilh’s claims. “The FBI is not commenting,” replied bureau spokeswoman Laura Eimiller.

As for his claim of having been a chaplain, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department had no employee records for a Craig Monteilh. The city jail keeps separate records on chaplains, but badges are retrieved and records are generally purged once the volunteers leave Religious Services.

Before we parted that morning in Irvine, the ex-con conman “convert” motioned toward the parking lot and said, “They’re listening to all this, you know?”

There go those hairs on the back of the neck again.

mcoker@ocweekly.com