NYT : 4 Accused of Bombing Plot at Bronx Synagogues

4 Accused of Bombing Plot at Bronx Synagogues

By AL BAKER and JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ | May 20, 2009

Four men were arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y.

The men, all of whom live in Newburgh, about 60 miles north of New York City, were arrested around 9 p.m. after planting what they believed to be bombs in cars outside the Riverdale Temple and the nearby Riverdale Jewish Center, officials said. But the men did not know the bombs, obtained with the help of an informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were fake.

The arrests capped what officials described as a “painstaking investigation” that began in June 2008 involving an F.B.I. agent who had been told by a federal informant of the men’s desire to attack targets in America. As part of the plot, the men intended to fire Stinger missiles at military aircraft at the base, which is at Stewart International Airport, officials said.

“This latest attempt to attack our freedoms shows that the homeland security threats against New York City are sadly all too real and underscores why we must remain vigilant in our efforts to prevent terrorism,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a statement. The mayor was expected to appear at 6:45 a.m. Thursday at the Riverdale Jewish Center morning services, joined by Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.

The charges against the four men represent some of the most significant allegations of domestic terrorism in some time, and come months into a new presidential administration, as President Obama grapples with the question of how to handle detainees at the Guantánamo Bay camp in Cuba.

Rabbi Jonathan I. Rosenblatt, the senior rabbi at the Riverdale Jewish Center, a modern Orthodox congregation, said the police informed him on Wednesday evening that his synagogue was a target of the plot, as well as the Riverdale Temple, a Reform synagogue that is a short distance away, on Independence Avenue. The two buildings are about six blocks apart, each with a brick facade. Outside the synagogues on Wednesday night, the streets were eerily quiet.

Rabbi Rosenblatt said in a phone interview that he took the news with “shock, surprise — a sense of disbelief that something which is supposed to belong to the world of front pages and the evening news had invaded the quiet world of our synagogue.”

Jonathan Mark, associate editor of The Jewish Week newspaper who grew up in Riverdale, said it would have been the third plot in the past decade against the synagogues in Riverdale.

Law enforcement officials identified the four men arrested as James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh. One is of Haitian descent, according to law enforcement officials, and at least three were United States citizens. They are all Muslim, a law enforcement official said.

Mr. Cromitie had told the informant that he was upset about the war in Afghanistan and that that he wanted to “do something to America.” Mr. Cromitie stated “the best target” — the World Trade Center — “was hit already,” according to the complaint.

In April, Mr. Cromitie and the three other men selected the synagogues as their targets, the statement said. The informant soon helped them get the weapons, which were incapable of being fired or detonated, according to the authorities.

Mr. Kelly told Jewish leaders Wednesday evening that the attackers planned simultaneous attacks, and the men planned to leave the bombs in the cars in front of the two synagogues, drive back to Newburgh and retrieve cellphone-detonating devices and then proceed with the attack on the air base — simultaneously shooting down aircraft while remotely setting off the devices in the cars.

On Wednesday night, they planted one of the mock improvised explosive devices in a trunk of a car outside the temple and two mock bombs in the back seat of a car outside the Jewish center, the authorities said. Shortly thereafter, police officers swooped in and broke the windows on the suspects’ black sport utility vehicle and charged them with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States and conspiracy to acquire and use antiaircraft missiles.

Around 9 p.m., a law enforcement official said an 18-wheel New York police department vehicle blocked the suspects’ black sport utility vehicle at 239th Street and Independence Avenue. Another armored vehicle arrived and officers from the department’s Emergency Service Unit took the men out of the truck and handcuffed them.

After the plot was broken up, the team of uniformed officers took the suspects away.

Three of the four men were escorted by federal agents from Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan around 1 a.m. Thursday. They were handcuffed and did not respond to reporters’ questions as they were loaded into the back of vehicles to be taken to the nearby Metropolitan Correctional Center. There, they emerged one by one.

Mr. Cromitie, who was wearing a dark blue shirt and jeans, gazed at the assembled reporters and photographers but again did not respond to questions. David Williams and Onta Williams also did not answer questions as they quickly walked by, staring at the ground. The four defendants were to be taken to White Plains later on Thursday morning, where they were to appear in federal court.

A federal law enforcement official described the plot as “aspirational” — meaning that the suspects wanted to do something but had no weapons or explosives — and described the operation as a sting with a cooperator within the group.

“It was fully controlled at all times,” a law enforcement official said.

Stewart International Airport is used by the New York Air National Guard and United States Air Force, according to the complaint, and it stores aircraft used to transport military supplies and personnel to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Political leaders responded to the news of the arrests with statements expressing relief.

“This was a very serious threat that could have cost many, many lives if it had gone through,” Representative Peter T. King, Republican from Long Island, said in an interview with WPIX-TV. “It would have been a horrible, damaging tragedy. There’s a real threat from homegrown terrorists and also from jailhouse converts.”

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said in a statement: “If there can be any good news from this terror scare it’s that this group was relatively unsophisticated, infiltrated early, and not connected to another terrorist group. This incident shows that we must always be vigilant against terrorism — foreign or domestic.”

Reporting was contributed by Sewell Chan, David Johnston, Angela Macropoulos, Jennifer Mascia, Colin Moynihan, William K. Rashbaum and Benjamin Weiser.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 22, 2009
An article in some editions on Thursday about the arrests of four men suspected in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y., included erroneous descriptions from a law enforcement official about the men’s ethnic origins. One is a Haitian immigrant and the other three are African-Americans; none are of Arabic descent.

~~~

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 27, 2009

Because of an editing error, an article in some editions on Thursday about the arrests of four men suspected in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y., misstated, in some copies, the Bronx location where a police vehicle blocked the suspects’ sport utility vehicle. It was at 239th Street and Independence Avenue — not 237th Street and Riverdale Avenue, which do not intersect.

Poughkeepsie Journal : Man believed to be informant in terror plot also frequented Wappingers Falls mosque

Man believed to be informant in terror plot also frequented Wappingers Falls mosque

John W. Barry | May 23, 2009

A man believed to be the government informant at the center of a Newburgh-based terrorism plot that unfolded last week had previously attended services at a mosque in Wappingers Falls, according to sources.

Imam Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad of Masjid Al Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh said today that he believes a man named Shahid Maqsood, who attended services at the mosque, is the government informant.

Muhammad said he had previously learned, during routine dialogue with Masjid Al-Noor mosque in Wappingers Falls, that a man there had invited attention after asking more than once for a list of members.

“We suspect this person was a government agent,” Muhammad said.

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

The men — James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, all of Newburgh — have pleaded not guilty.

Cromitie and Payen attended Masjid Al Ikhlas mosque occasionally.

Federal officials had been aware of the plot for almost a year and had an informant working with the crew, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Wednesday night. The FBI arranged for the alleged plotters to receive a non-functioning missile and bogus C-4 explosives, according to the complaint.

Muhammad said he grew suspicious of Maqsood because, “of things that came back to me from other people, who were saying he invited them to lunch, he invited them to dinner; he started having these conversations: what do you think about what’s going on in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Don’t you think we should deal with jihad?”

Zubair Zoha, chairman of the board of trustees at Masjid Al-Noor mosque in Wappingers Falls, said Maqsood had asked him three times for the mosque’s membership list, sometime between 2007-08, when Zoha was treasurer. Maqsood had told Zoha he wanted to start a business locally and was hoping to advertise his services to members of the mosque.

“I was suspicious,” Zoha said. “Nobody ever requested the membership list. I didn’t know what the purpose was. Why did he want the list? He couldn’t convince me.”

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?”

The National (UAE) : Islamic group says four alleged US plotters ‘not real Muslims’

Islamic group says four alleged US plotters ‘not real Muslims’

Sharmila Devi, Foreign Correspondent | May 30, 2009

NEW YORK // The recent arrest of four New York men for allegedly plotting to attack Jewish centres raised fears among American Muslims the incident would reinforce extremist views of them as an ever-present danger in US society.

The vast majority of American Muslims did not even consider the four men as real religious brothers, said Naim Baig, vice-president of the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), a community group started in 1974.

“We say there is no place for any terrorism in Islam, period. Some people abuse the faith out of their own tribal agendas. These four guys were not even practising Muslims. They had criminal backgrounds and some had girlfriends,” Mr Baig said.

This view of the plotters as outside mainstream Muslim society helps to explain why the alleged bomb plots were usurped by the financial crisis and its moral implications as the most discussed topic at last weekend’s three-day ICNA conference, attended by up to 12,000 people in Hartford, Connecticut.

Muslim community leaders have tried to distance themselves even more from the plotters in recent days, with many issuing statements of concern over the use of an informant by US law enforcement agencies to catch the men, who aimed to bomb two New York synagogues and shoot down military planes in Newburgh, about 110 kilometres north of the city.

The alleged plot “may have been based more on the financial inducements of a government informant than on the predisposition to terrorism of three petty criminals and a mentally ill Haitian immigrant,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), a civil rights group, said in a statement. “The Associated Press described the alleged plotters as ‘down-and-out ex-convicts living on the margins in a faded industrial city’.”

Earlier this year, several Muslim groups called for a suspension of outreach co-operation with the FBI because of concerns over the use of informants at mosques, particularly in California and Florida.

Islam is the fastest-growing religion in US prisons, with between 30,000 and 40,000 conversions each year, according to a study for the justice department by Indiana State University criminologists.

“Prislam” is how such conversions are described by law enforcement officials, who closely monitor prison imams. Corrections officials in New York and Connecticut have also banned a Saudi translation of the Quran that has an appendix called “The Call to Jihad (Holy Fighting in Allah’s Cause)”.

Less easy to check is the informal teaching administered to prisoners by fellow inmates and who might have a less than scholarly understanding of Islam.

The alleged plot also highlights tensions between Muslims of Arab or South Asian origin and African-American Muslims, such as the four alleged plotters. They are James Cromitie, also known as Abdul Rahman, David Williams, also called Daoud, Onta Williams, also called Hamza, and Lageurre Payen, also called Amin or Almondo, who was born in Haiti.

Tough drug laws since the 1980s led to the incarceration of large numbers of African-Americans, many of whom joined the Nation of Islam, a US-born religious group much criticised for its extremist views, before progressing towards more mainstream Sunni Islam.

Mr Baig, who is of Pakistani descent, said relations were improving between African-Americans and their co-religionists from South Asia and the Middle East.

“The relationship is still in a learning process and there are many cultural gaps. For example, many of our African-American brothers can’t handle the spices in our food. We also fell into racial profiling where we labelled different groups in a certain way,” he said.

sdevi@thenational.ae

Boston Globe : Ex-convicts hatched plan to bomb synagogues

Ex-convicts hatched plan to bomb synagogues

Officials detail terror plot; suspects held without bail

By Michael Wilson | New York Times | May 22, 2009

NEW YORK - They were four ex-convicts - one a crack addict, another whose most recent arrests involved snatching women's 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 attempts 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 Connecticut to pick up a surface-to-air missile that was waiting for them in a warehouse.

One of the men in the car - on parole for a drug conviction - was sure they were being followed by law enforcement, so they turned around, lost their suspected tail, and eventually 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 more fully filled in yesterday, 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 federal authorities described - the talk of killing Jews, the testing of the men's would-be weaponry - played out on a veritable sound stage of hidden cameras and secret microphones, and involved material provided by the FBI. A house in Newburgh, a storage facility in Stamford, the planting of the would-be bombs in the Riverdale section of the Bronx - everything was recorded, according to the complaint.

"It's hard to envision a more chilling plot." Eric Snyder, an assistant US attorney, said yesterday in federal court in Manhattan."These are extremely violent men. These are men who eagerly embraced an opportunity to bring deaths to Jews."

The investigation 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, 45; David Williams, 28; Onta Williams, 32, and no apparent relation to David; and Laguerre Payen, 27 - most of the details that emerged yesterday stemmed from their criminal pasts.

David Williams was described as particularly violent by prosecutors yesterday. 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, said Snyder. 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.

Payen, described as a nervous, quiet sort who took medication for schizophrenia or a bipolar 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 the window - striking two teens - and snatching two women's purses.

Onta Williams had been hooked on cocaine since he was a teenager, according to testimony at a 2003 court hearing.

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 yesterday their religious backgrounds remained uncertain.

Payen reported himself to be Catholic during his 15-month prison sentence that ended in 2005, according to a state corrections official. Cromitie and Onta Williams both identified themselves as Baptists in prison records, although 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.

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Times Herald-Record : Temple bomb case hurtful reminder in NYC community

Temple bomb case hurtful reminder in NYC community

May 25, 2009

NEW YORK (AP) -- Riverdale has a reputation as a tranquil piece of suburbia nestled in New York City.

The hilly Bronx neighborhood boasts leafy estates, prestigious schools and sweeping views of the Hudson River. Residents tout the neighborliness of a place that feels both close to urbane charms and far from urban ills.

Yet the arrests last week of four men accused of trying to bomb two Riverdale synagogues weren't the community's first confrontation with the specter of violent hatred. A local weekly newspaper was firebombed in 1989, in apparent retaliation for an editorial. And a group of men including a Palestinian angry at Israel tossed homemade bombs through a temple's door in 2000.

The newest case evokes both painful memories and new anguish for the heavily Jewish community, which prides itself on tolerance and embracing diversity. One of the temples authorities say was targeted, the Riverdale Jewish Center, has provided a Muslim exchange student with space to pray near her school.

"Riverdale terrorist plot - three words I never thought I would say in one sentence," mused resident Aliza Hausman, 28, a Dominican-American who converted from Roman Catholicism to Orthodox Judaism. She moved to Riverdale in 2006, seeing it as "definitely a tolerant type of place."

Despite her conversion, one of the community's two Catholic colleges readily hired her for a part-time job, said Hausman, a former editor and public school teacher who keeps a blog called "Memoirs of a Jewminicana."

A scenic swath of land along the Hudson, Riverdale has been a home or summer home to Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, the conductor Arturo Toscanini and Carly Simon, among other notables.

Wealthy New Yorkers began creating estates there in the mid-1800s. Smaller homes, high-rises and a subway line have since made parts of the area more urban. But preservationists have reined in development pressures to protect single-family homes and the community's sense of being a place apart in the often gritty Bronx.

"Riverdale is a community that has its own, somewhat separate identity," said lifelong resident and City Councilman G. Oliver Koppell, a former state attorney general and assemblyman.

Long a Jewish and Irish-American redoubt, Riverdale has seen an influx of Dominican-Americans in recent years, along with Manhattanites of all demographics attracted by its family-oriented feel and relative affordability.

Growing, too, is the population of Orthodox Jews, drawn by a rising number of Orthodox synagogues and schools.

Orthodox newcomers are a small fraction of the 101,000 people in Riverdale and two adjacent neighborhoods counted with it in city community statistics.

But with the growing Orthodox community, "the image of Riverdale is much more Jewish," said Richard Stein, co-publisher emeritus of The Riverdale Press, one of the area's weekly newspapers. His parents founded it in 1950; it is now owned by Richner Communications Inc.

The first floor of the paper's office was destroyed in the February 1989 firebombing. It came days after Stein's brother, Bernard, wrote an editorial saying citizens had a right to read Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses." The book prompted Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a death decree that forced the author into hiding for years.

The paper published the day after the bombing, with a front-page editorial declaring, "We will not be silenced."

The paper continues to run an editorial about Rushdie once a year. One version helped win Bernard Stein the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing, a rare honor for a small newspaper.

In 2000, authorities said four men tried to make Molotov cocktails out of vodka bottles and lobbed them through the glass door of the Conservative Synagogue Adath Israel of Riverdale the night before Yom Kippur, the Jewish calendar's holiest day. The firebombs didn't ignite.

Two men were convicted. The lawyer for one of the men, a Palestinian, told a court that her client was trying to stop the congregation from sending money to Israel.

Authorities say the recent temple bombing plot was more advanced.

The defendants, Muslims angry at the United States and Jews, had gotten what they thought was a powerful explosive, a court complaint said. The explosive was inert, and their supplier was part of an FBI sting, according to the complaint.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said the men may have chosen their temple targets simply for their convenience. One is near a highway, the other a few blocks away.

"In other words, it could have been any synagogue, any temple here in Riverdale or elsewhere," Rabbi Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale wrote in a speech for Saturday services. The Orthodox synagogue was not among the alleged conspirators' targets.

"We dare not forget that an attack against any house of worship," he wrote, "is an attack against every house of worship."

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.

Times Herald-Record : Sorry, honey: I was busy stopping a terrorist plot

Sorry, honey: I was busy stopping a terrorist plot

May 22, 2009

New Windsor police got a call May 8 from an employee of the Guardian Storage business on Route 32. The employee was suspicious of a man who had a Middle Eastern appearance and made 45 visits over three days to the storage units he was renting. He took pains to conceal what he was storing.

Police made some inquiries, New Windsor police Chief Michael Biasotti said. "Of course, we set off all kinds of alarms, because it's an FBI operation. At that point, we're brought into it." Biasotti took his place in the command post set up at Stewart Airport.

The moral of the story, Biasotti said, is that "The 'If you see something, say something' campaign works.'"

Biasotti can now explain to his stepdaughter, Elizabeth Hanley, why he was unable to attend her graduation from a doctoral program at Columbia Wednesday.

"I had to miss that," he said with a rueful chuckle, "and I couldn't even give a reason about why I couldn't be there."

Oliver Mackson

~~~

Not the expected answer

U.S. Magistrate Lisa Margaret Smith was dealing with the arraignments of the accused terror plotters Thursday.

In what is a pro forma question in such court appearances, Smith asked if any of the defendants had taken drugs in the past 24 hours.

James Cromitie volunteered that he had smoked marijuana on Wednesday.

John Sullivan

~~~

Town police were involved, also

The FBI briefed Town of Newburgh police last week on the year-long investigation, according to Deputy Chief John Mahoney.

The department also had a member stationed in the local command post Wednesday while arrests were being made, but only to monitor the situation.

"Our concern was for the safety of the residents of the town," Mahoney said.

The Stewart Air National Guard base is primarily on the Town of Newburgh side of the airport, off Route 17K.

State police Capt. Wayne Olson at Troop F headquarters in Middletown confirmed the troop was involved in the investigation but would not say in what capacity, nor would he make any more specific comments.

He referred questions to the FBI.

Mike Randall

Times Herald-Record : Informant's story never questioned

Informant's story never questioned

By Jeremiah Horrigan | May 22, 2009

CITY OF NEWBURGH — The terrorist suspects arrested Wednesday in Newburgh didn't do their homework very well.

The unidentified informant who supplied the men with phony bomb and missile equipment claimed to be a member of a Pakistan jihadist group, but his credentials were apparently never questioned.

Jaish-e-Mohammad ("Army of Mohammed"), or JEM, which is based in Pakistan, has been implicated in the attacks on Mumbai, India, last year. The U.S. government has designated the group as a foreign terrorist organization.

According to FBI documents, James Cromitie, one the four accused men, told the informant he would be "interested" in joining Jaish-e-Mohammed to "do jihad."

U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said if there can be any good news out of this case, it's that "the group was relatively unsophisticated, penetrated early and not connected to any outside group."

jhorrigan@th-record.com

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

Times Herald-Record : Public might not hear all evidence in Stewart terror case

Public might not hear all evidence in Stewart terror case

Terror-probe secrecy an issue

By Oliver Mackson | May 30, 2009

WHITE PLAINS — The case of four Newburgh men accused of plotting to blow up synagogues and military planes is likely to draw plenty of public interest, but it might also prompt a judge to put some evidence off-limits to the public.

Two similar terrorism cases in New York's federal courts prompted judges to sign protective orders that put classified information under wraps, with defense lawyers agreeing never to disclose it — even after the cases end.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office said it's too early to tell whether prosecutors will ask for such an order. But a former federal prosecutor with experience reviewing wiretap applications for the U.S. Justice Department predicted such an order will be sought in the Newburgh case.

"In a case of this magnitude, this sensitive, the government is given wide latitude in protecting the methods, the means and the sources of information involved in the case," said David Hoovler, a former assistant U.S. attorney and Orange County prosecutor who's now in private practice in Chester.

In a similar case being prosecuted in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, a judge has issued an order that covers classified evidence against four men accused of plotting to blow up jet fuel supply lines and storage tanks at JFK International Airport.

Two years ago, a federal judge in Albany signed a protective order that covered classified evidence against two Albany men convicted on conspiracy charges involving the sale of a missile that was supposed to be deployed by terrorists.

The sale was a sting, and the government informant who arranged the deal has been named as the same informant who led the Newburgh four to believe they were buying armaments.

Worries over sealed files

Judge Thomas McAvoy's sealing order was challenged by news organizations and the New York Civil Liberties Union, which argued it was too broad. McAvoy eventually ruled that redacted versions of some documents could be kept in the public court file. Still, the NYCLU's Christopher Dunn sees reason for worry.

"There's been a notable trend since 9/11 for there to be more sealed court filings, and that certainly reduces the public's understanding of these prosecutions," he said. "It's very difficult to know if the courts are getting this right because we don't know what's in the sealed documents."

omackson@th-record.com

NYT : Suspects in Terror Bombing Plot: Drug Arrests and Prison Conversions

Suspects in Terror Bombing Plot: Drug Arrests and Prison Conversions

By AL BAKER | May 21, 2009

Four men from Newburgh, N.Y., were arrested on Wednesday night, charged with trying to carry out what they believed was a bomb attack on two synagogues in the Riverdale section of the Bronx and the simultaneous shooting down of military aircraft in Newburgh.

James Cromitie

Officials identified the leader as James Cromitie, a career criminal born in Brooklyn on Dec. 24, 1964. Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said he had a record of 27 arrests, at least a dozen for drug offenses, beginning in 1987. He spent a total of 12 years in state prison, the most recent stint for a 1998 conviction for selling cocaine to an undercover officer behind a school in the Bronx.

He was paroled in 2004 and moved to Newburgh from the Bronx in March 2005.

His mother, Adele Cromitie, 65, said she had last seen her son three years ago, when he came to her apartment in the Castle Hill neighborhood of the Bronx, where she has lived for 26 years. It was the first time she had seen him in years.

He took her up to Newburgh and introduced her to the woman he was living with and said that he had become a Muslim. He was raised an Episcopalian, she said. In his first jail stint he listed his religion as Baptist; in the second and third ones, as Muslim.

Mr. Cromitie’s sister, Wanda Walker, said she was shocked to learn of her brother’s arrest while watching television Thursday morning. She said she was unaware that her brother may have had extreme political views. She had last spoken to him about two years ago when she thought he was working at a Wal-Mart or Kmart store.

“Right now, to me he’s, like, the dumbest person I ever came in contact with in my life,” Ms. Walker said. She added that as far as she knew, he was not a Muslim, but said “they do a little time in jail and they don’t eat pork no more.”

Ms. Cromitie and her daughter said that Mr. Cromitie was in the middle in a family of 10 children, and was raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Ms. Cromitie said her son had a nickname as a child: “Fildee,” for a character in an old TV commercial who used to encourage throwing trash in trash cans by saying, “fill dee basket.”

His sister, Ms. Walker, remembered him as a jokester, always singing gospel songs or oldies and mimicking Smokey Robinson or Luther Vandross.

“You could be down, on your downest day and downest luck, and he’d make you laugh,” Ms. Walker said. “I’m still waiting for the punch line of all of this.”

Ms. Cromitie said Mr. Cromitie’s father, James Walker, left when James Cromitie was 3 years old. She said she had seen him only once in more than 20 years.

She raised 10 children on her own. “He never did anything for Fildee,” she said about the father. Although Mr. Cromitie was said to have told people his parents had lived in Afghanistan, Ms. Cromitie and Ms. Walker said the family had no ties to that country.

Those who lived around Mr. Cromitie on Lake Drive in Newburgh described his as a good-natured neighbor who never spoke of religion or politics.

“To hear this just blew my mind,” said one neighbor, who gave her name as Kristina L. “I would have never assumed he was a terrorist.”

Onta Williams

Onta Williams, also known as Hamza, was born on June 29, 1976, in Newburgh, and his father left him when he was young. He went to prison in the mid-1990s on a drug charge, and there he converted to Islam, said an uncle, Richard Williams. In 2003 he went to federal prison on drug charges.

He was addicted to crack and cocaine since he was 15 or 16, a lawyer of his, Sol Lesser, said, according to a court transcript of his sentencing in April 2003.

Onta Williams’s mother died just before he was released from prison in July 2007, said Richard Williams. He also separated from his wife in the last three years.

He loves to eat, and was a good football player in junior high, his uncle said. He has a 14-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter, and moved in with a new girlfriend and her son in Newburgh in February.

Mr. Williams said his nephew worked at CNS, a loading company, and spent his free time at a mosque or with fellow Muslims. The uncle said that he, too, served time in prison and became wary of the converted Muslims he met inside.

He said that because of this, he tried to warn his nephew, but to no avail. “I did not condone his religion, but when I talked to him about it he would say to me, ‘You can’t tell me anything about the Muslim religion because they’re my supporters and they’re my family,’ ” Richard Williams said. “He told me, ‘They’re more my family than you.’ ”

David Williams IV

In recent weeks Richard Williams said he rarely saw Onta Williams, despite pleas. Richard said he fell ill with flu and, worried that it was swine flu, begged Onta to come bring him medicine. Onta ignored him, he said.

“This ordeal, whatever was going on was the reason he wouldn’t come to visit me,” Richard Williams said.

David Williams IV

David Williams IV, not related to Onta Williams, was born on Feb. 9, 1981. His mother, Elizabeth McWilliams, said he was raised in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with two younger brothers. He lived in East New York, Brooklyn, but spent a lot of time at his mother’s house in Newburgh, a few doors down from Mr. Cromitie.

At an appearance on Thursday in Federal District Court in White Plains, Eric Snyder, an assistant United States attorney, said Mr. Williams — referred to in court papers as Daoud and DL — was, “bragging, boasting, that he would shoot anyone who tried to stop him.”

According to the prosecutor, Mr. Williams bought a pistol in a Brooklyn housing project for $700 from a man Mr. Williams described to an F.B.I. informer as a “supreme Blood gang leader.” And he told the informant that if the informant hadn’t been there when he made the purchase, he would have killed the gun seller and kept the $700, said Mr. Snyder, the prosecutor.

His mother said he served time in prison on a drug charge. Arrested in 2003 with cocaine in his pocket, he was sentenced to up to three years in prison after pleading guilty, according to a transcript of his February 2005 parole hearing.

But now, she said, he had been getting his life together: He had worked for six months in the kitchen at Boulder Creek Steakhouse in the Spring Creek area of Brooklyn, but left two months ago; he studied computers at ASA Institute in Downtown Brooklyn.

He has a 7-year-old daughter and an infant son, and was recommitting to them, his mother said. She said he never talked about religion — and she said that though the family is Roman Catholic, he is Muslim, a religion he got from his father.

Co-workers at the steakhouse, in the Gateway Center Mall, said Mr. Williams was something of a ladies’ man. “He was always reading books on the line when it was slow,” said one co-worker who did not give her name because her bosses had forbade employees to talk to reporters. “Always reading an Arab book, the Koran, I think.”

Aahkiyaah Cummings, Mr. Williams’s aunt, said the last time she saw him, about a week ago, he seemed distant. Ms. Cummings said she gave Mr. Williams a hug outside his mother’s apartment and felt a change.

“You know your family, and one of the things I always looked forward to was a hug from David because there was such realness, such love,” she said. “But after I embraced him I said to my husband: ‘Something is not right. You need to talk to him.’ ”

Laguerre Payen

Laguerre Payen was born in Haiti on Sept. 24, 1981, officials said. In 2002, he shot two 16-year-olds with a BB gun on Route 59 in Monsey, N.Y., according to his January 2005 parole hearing transcript; one was hit near his left eye, the other behind an ear, according to court records.

He served about 15 months in prison, where he reported himself as Roman Catholic, but converted to Islam there, according to Hamin Rashada, an assistant imam from the Islamic Learning Center of Orange County. He counseled Mr. Payen in a program to help former prisoners re-enter the outside world.

He was quiet and evasive, unemployed and poor, shifting between rooming houses and homelessness; but he was working to readjust to society, Mr. Rashada said. “He has some very serious psychological problems,” he said, adding that Mr. Payen was on medications and talked in circles.

The imam said Mr. Payen had a shallow and misguided understanding of Islam. He said he asked Mr. Payen if he had extremist views about the government. “He said, ‘Mr. Rashada, I can’t even get a job here because I’m not a citizen, I don’t involve myself in that type of stuff.’ ”

Mr. Payen has a 3-year-old son, who lives with his mother elsewhere in Orange County, Mr. Rashada said.

Immigration officials would not say if Mr. Payen had been in the country legally, and it was unclear when he came to the United States, but at his parole hearing in November 2004 he told the judge he was “a legal resident.”

Shortly thereafter, however, Immigration and Customs Enforcement began deportation proceedings because of his criminal conviction. An immigration judge issued a deportation order against Mr. Payen on Sept. 27, 2008, immigration officials said. But the judge’s order also blocked his immediate removal from the country, officials said, giving no further details.

In some cases, a judge may issue a deportation order and, at the same time, temporarily block the deportation if the defendant can prove that he would suffer severe persecution or torture in his homeland. It is unclear whether such an argument was used in Mr. Payen’s case.

While some people facing deportation, particularly violent criminals, are held in detention centers, others are released and ordered to report periodically to the authorities until their removal from the country.

Immigration officials said Mr. Payen had been released under these terms and had been reporting “regularly.”

NY Daily News : 'Stupidest man on the planet', says sister of James Cromitie, alleged would-be Bronx terrorist

'Stupidest man on the planet', says sister of James Cromitie, alleged would-be Bronx terrorist

BY Matthew Lysiak, Chloe Rosenberg and Corky Siemaszko | DAILY NEWS WRITERS | May 23, 2009

Some terrorists.

The four fools who conspired to blow up two Bronx synagogues in the name of Allah were booze-swilling losers who hung out at a Roman Catholic community center in upstate Newburgh.

"Amateurs," Bloomberg said Friday. "That doesn't mean they couldn't have killed a lot of people. But they were not part of a professional worldwide terrorist ring."

The alleged ringleader was 44-year-old James Cromitie, a career crook from the Bronx who converted to Islam while in jail.

His big sister, Wanda Walker, called him "the stupidest man on the planet."

"I'm still waiting for the punchline," Walker, 45, said yesterday. "This is a like a joke to me. I'm waiting for the camera to come out of the closet and say, 'This is Candid Camera.'"

His cohorts are David Williams, 28, a former chef who also did time for drug dealing; Onta Williams, 32; and Haitian immigrant Lagueere Payen, deemed too insane to be deported after an assault conviction.

Both Williamses spent a lot of time hanging around on Cromitie's porch in Newburgh. Neighbors said they routinely barbecued and boozed it up even though devout Muslims shun alcohol and pork.

Another haunt for the gang: the Newburgh Ministry, a Catholic shelter open to people of all faiths.

"Those four would come into our ministry and sit down and drink coffee on a regular basis," said a source.

"They never caused trouble. They just sat and drank their coffee and talked. Maybe they were plotting?"With Celeste Katz

csiemaszko@nydailynews.com

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.

Times : Four arrested over plot to blow up New York synagogue

Four arrested over plot to blow up New York synagogue

May 21, 2009

Four men have been arrested in connection with an alleged plot to bomb a synagogue in New York and to destroy military aircraft with Stinger missiles.

The suspects were charged with plotting to detonate explosives near a synagogue in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, according to a joint statement released by the acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the FBI and the New York Police Department.

The men were also charged with plotting to attack aircraft at the Air National Guard base at Stewart airport in Newburgh, New York, with Stinger surface-to-air guided missiles, the statement said. Newburgh is about 60 miles (98km) north of New York City.

"The defendants wanted to engage in terrorist attacks. They selected targets and sought the weapons necessary to carry out their plans," Lev Dassin, acting US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said.

The four men, identified as James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen, were arrested after buying an inactive missile and inert explosives in an undercover operation run by the FBI and other agencies.

"While the bombs these terrorists attempted to plant tonight were – unbeknownst to them – fake, this latest attempt to attack our freedoms shows that the homeland security threats against New York City are sadly all too real," Michael Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York, said.

New York has remained on high alert for another attack since the attacks of September 11, 2001 that destroyed the World Trade Centre and killed almost 3,000 people.

David Paterson, the Governor of New York, said that three of the men were US citizens and one was of Haitian descent. "This case clearly illustrates that the threat of terrorism in New York is persistent ... [and] affects all of our communities, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity," Mr Paterson said.

In June last year, Mr Cromitie allegedly told an FBI informant in Newburgh that his parents had lived in Afghanistan and that he was upset about the number of Muslims being killed there and in Pakistan by American forces.

He said that if he died a martyr, he would go to paradise and that he was interested in doing "something to America". In July last year, he told the informant that he wanted to join Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistan-based group designated by Washington as a terrorist organisation, to "do jihad", according to the statement.

In October, Cromitie and the other men began a series of meetings at a house in Newburgh to plot their attacks and last month they selected the synagogue and Jewish community centre and conducted surveillance.

The statement said that the men bought an arsenal that included improvised explosive devices containing inert C-4 plastic explosives and a surface-to-air guided missile provided by the FBI that was not capable of being fired.

Representative Peter King, a New York Republican, said that the suspects planned to undertake their attack last night using a car bomb outside the synagogue.

"Tonight was the night the attacks were being carried out," Mr King told CNN. He said that the four men were all Muslim, one a born Muslim of Afghan descent and three who converted in prison.

The statement quoted from video and audio recordings made by the FBI during meetings between the men and the informant.

During one trip in November to Philadelphia to attend a Muslim Alliance of North America meeting, Cromitie allegedly said that "the best target [the World Trade Centre] was hit already" and "I would like to get [destroy] a synagogue".

On April 28, Onta Williams told the informant that the US military "are killing Muslim brothers and sisters in Muslim countries so, if we kill them here ... it is equal". Williams said that if Jewish people were killed in the attack, "it does not matter", the statement said.

The defendants are expected to appear in court on Thursday.

Each man is charged with one count of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction within the United States, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, and one count of conspiracy to acquire and use anti-aircraft missiles, which also carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.

All the men live in Newburgh, the authorities said.

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.