Thwarting Terror

The original plan was to wait for James to be paroled in approximately January 2006. Mr. Washington, however, it looked like he wanted to accelerate the plan. There was a discussion of Jewish holidays and September 11 that year. We arrested them in July 2005, so perhaps [they might have attacked] within a few months. It was well beyond the sitting back and discussing hypothetically, "Wouldn't it be nice to attack the United States military?" They were in the advance stages of planning and actually executing of their plan.

They talked about gathering bomb materials. Was there any evidence that had happened?
It looks like they had not gotten to that point. They talked about gathering materials, and they were supposed to be recruiting people, including one who had an explosives background or trained in explosives. The idea, according to the plea agreement, [was] they wanted to develop expertise in remote control bomb making.

The cell appears to have been remarkably indiscreet about committing plans to paper. They even left the text of a press release Mr. James had written for use once they committed a successful attack. And one of the ringleaders, James, was in prison the whole time. Why didn't their plans attract attention earlier?
One of the issues is that there's always a concern about civil rights and the freedom and practice of religion even in the state prison system. The FBI is working much closer with California Department of Corrections and the federal Bureau of Prisons to examine any potential connection between the practice of religion, which is authorized under the First Amendment and people who develop as a bizarre, radical offshoots, as terrorists have done and certainly as Mr. James has done. … Our intent is to try to identify and disrupt any type of radicalization similar to JIS.

The case started when local police arrested two of the men for armed robbery?
Torrance Police arrested these guys on the armed robbery, and they executed the search warrant and found this jihad type material. This investigation worked because street cops recognized the value of that material. We were up within hours with a command post, and we had at least 25 agencies and over 500 investigators, analysts and prosecutors at the local, state and military levels. We seized and analyzed thousands of documents. We realized quickly that they were planning on attacking U.S. military and Jewish sites, perhaps in the extreme near future. I think that we did this one right.

This stands in marked contrast to this week's acquittal and mistrials in Florida in the Liberty City case. Terrorism investigators have come under criticism for launching weak cases or making arrests so early in alleged plots that the evidence isn't there yet. What's different about the cases?
I don't want to comment on other investigations that are going on through the country, because they involved other agencies and other U.S. Attorneys offices. And the cases are factually different. This one, why I believe it was so successful is because we investigated it so fully. … In these types of cases, there's always a struggle between doing whatever it takes to ensure the safety of citizens, which is the No. 1 priority, and also being able to step back at the same time and look toward the prosecution. You can't wait for the fuse to be lit and then have the Joint Terrorism Task Force rush in and stamp it out. You've got to consider the safety of the citizens when you are thwarting one of these attacks. If the criticism is that we've thwarted them too early to get a prosecution, my response is, "Guess what? At least we thwarted them." I mean that.

© 2007