Hot Air blog has the minute-by-minute
account of the events that occurred when a suspicious vehicle in the
heart of Times Square led the police to clear thousands of tourists and
theatergoers from the area on a warm and busy Saturday evening, May 1,
2010
Police officials said a witness reported a running Nissan
Pathfinder with Connecticut plates, with smoke coming out of the back.
A bomb squad robot popped the back latch of the Pathfinder, and officers
found what they initially believed was a bomb. The vehicle was
found to contain explosives, gasoline, propane and burned wires, a Fire
Department officer told Reuters.
The officer, who did not give
his name because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said
that a man was seen fleeing the S.U.V. and that the police evacuated the
area in case there were other threats nearby.
The officer said
that the police were treating the vehicle as a "failed device."
The police were searching for a suspect. That suspect would be
identified as Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen, originally
from Pakistan.
Faisal At The Fireworks Store
Shahzad Was Connected
ABC News is
reporting that Shahzad had contact with Awlaki, Taliban Chief, and
Mumbai Massacre Mastermind.
Accused Times Square Bomber Faisal
Shahzad linked up with the Pakistani Taliban through the internet, ABC
News has been told by law enforcement and intelligence sources close to
the investigation. Once the Taliban identified him as more
valuable in the U.S. than in Pakistan, they trained him to return to
execute his bomb attack.
But according to these sources, Shahzad
also had a web of jihadist contacts that included big names tied to
terror attacks in the U.S. and abroad, including the figure who has
emerged as a central figure in many recent domestic terror attempts --
radical American-born Muslim cleric Anwar Awlaki.
Besides Awlaki,
sources say Shahzad was also linked to a key figure in the Pakistani
Taliban, its Emir Beitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a drone missile
strike in 2009. The Mehsuds had been family friends of Shahzad,
who is the son of a former high-ranking Pakistani military officer.
Sources told ABC News that Shahzad was childhood friends with one of
the alleged masterminds of the Mumbai massacre of 2008, in which more
than 170 people died.
Shahzad is also said to be linked to a man
named Muhammed Rehan, whom Pakistani authorities reportedly have in
custody. Sources said Rehan helped Shahzad travel to Peshawar and
then to Waziristan and made introductions to the Taliban.
According to a person briefed on the FBI interrogation, Shahzad has told
federal agents that he was angry at the CIA missile strikes carried out
in Pakistan and suffered a personal crisis in his life. He has
reportedly said he carried out the attempted bombing because he was
under duress and that he feared for his family's safety if he didn't
fulfill the mission.
Shahzad has admitted to receiving
bomb-making training and to loading a car with explosives and driving it
into Times Square, say U.S. authorities, and is providing valuable
information that is helping officials round up possible accomplices.
Seven men have been arrested in Pakistan in connection with the
failed car bombing, including two in Karachi and five in Punjab
Province. Shahzad's faither-in-law has also been detained, and
Shahzad's father, wife and children may be in protective custody.
Shahzad, whose father was a high-ranking officer in the Pakistani
Air Force, moved to the United States in 1998. Married with two
daughters, he worked as a financial analyst and lived in Connecticut.
In 2009, Shahzad's life began unraveling. He had been
working as a junior financial analyst in the Stamford, Connecticut
office of the Affinion Group, an international marketing firm, But in
May he left his job, abandoned his $200,000 home to foreclosure and
returned to Pakistan.
Federal officials alleged that while in
Pakistan he learned bomb-making with the Taliban and received money for
his plot.
Investigators of the failed car bombing in Times Square are
looking for a money courier they
say helped funnel cash from overseas to finance a
Pakistani-American’s preparations to blow up the crude
gasoline-and-propane bomb in the heart of New York, a law
enforcement official told The Associated Press.
Investigators have the name of the courier they believe
helped Faisal Shahzad pay for the used SUV and other materials to
rig up a car bomb that would have caused a huge fireball in Times
Square if it had gone off, the official told the AP. The
official didn’t know how much money may have changed hands.
"First, Shahzad used a disposable cell phone to communicate
-- the NSA leak may very well explain why he did that. Second,
according to the AP this morning, he received funds from abroad via
a courier. A courier!!! The SWIFT leak is almost
certainly implicated here."
The complete arrogance and stupidity of the press is
mindboggling. The arrogance to believe that they should be the
keepers of secrets. They should decide what to disclose and
what not to. The stupidity in believing that printing a
article which describes a secret tracking program will not affect
our war against terror.
It HAS affected it, and by pure luck many deaths were averted.
Times Square Bomber's Mosque Identified
WorldNetDaily
has learned that federal agents investigating the alleged car bomber
paid a visit to a radical mosque in Bridgeport, Conn., with ties to
terrorism. Shahzad has lived in the Bridgeport area for nearly a decade.
FBI agents questioned leaders of the Masjid An-Noor, also known
as the Bridgeport Islamic Society, after arresting Shahzad on terrorism
charges. The mosque serves a sizable population of Pakistani
immigrants in the area, and Shahzad, recently naturalized as a U.S.
citizen, was born and raised in Pakistan.
Masjid An-Noor's imam,
Hasan Abunar, did not deny Shahzad attended his mosque, arguing only
that he did not attend regularly. He allowed that he may have
turned up a few times to pray.
Investigators say the Bridgeport
Islamic Society and Masjid An-Noor are owned and controlled by a
pro-jihad front group for Hamas, a federally designated terrorist group
and its radical parent, the
Muslim Brotherhood.
The front group,
North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), holds title to the large
Bridgeport mosque. NAIT is the financial arm of the
Islamic Society of North America. Both entities have been
blacklisted by the U.S. government as unindicted co-conspirators in a
criminal plot to underwrite Palestinian terrorism, including suicide
bombings that have killed Americans.
NAIT also holds the deed to
Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center, the large mosque outside Washington where
the Fort Hood terrorist and some of the 9/11 hijackers worshipped.
This radical custodian of the Bridgeport Islamic Society also
publishes and distributes jihadi literature that exhorts Muslims to
"kill" any Westerners who get in the way of spreading Islam "No
political system or material power should put hindrances in the way of
preaching Islam," asserts one Islamic book distributed by NAIT.
"If someone does this, then it is the duty of Islam to fight him until
either he is killed or until he declares his submission."
Current NAIT Trustee Gaddoor Saidi was individually listed as an
unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case -- the
largest terror finance trial in U.S. history, which ended in guilty
verdicts on all 108 counts.
Chicago-based NAIT also handles the
finances for CAIR, which along with NAIT has been criminally implicated
in the Hamas terror conspiracy, according to the book, "Muslim Mafia:
Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America."
CAIR has vehemently protested the FBI's use
of undercover informants in mosques and its recent seizure of several
mosques in America. Last year, a Detroit mosque leader supported
by CAIR was fatally wounded in a shootout with FBI agents who sought his
arrest on felony charges. CAIR's claims that Shahzad was not
religious and lacked ties to the Muslim community do not square with
evidence found in his apartment or with accounts by neighbors and
witnesses canvassed by FBI agents.
Federal investigators say one
of the sole possessions found in Shahzad's apartment was a copy of the
Quran. Found alongside it were prayer beads. He was also
working on a scale wooden model of a mosque in his hobby room.
Shahzad shopped at a neighborhood Islamic grocery, Fresh Halal Meat and
International Food. His wife used halal cosmetics, investigators say.
Neighbors say Shahzad, who wore a full beard, was seen wearing
traditional Muslim robes at his home. And his wife, they say,
often wore a veil.
While media reports say Shahzad only recently
turned orthodox, investigators say he was schooled in a radical madrassa
growing up in the Pakistani city of Karachi, a Taliban and al-Qaida
hotbed.
Abunar condemned the failed car-bomb plot and says he
lectures against violence at the Bridgeport mosque, which requires women
to worship separately from men.
The imam recently lectured at
events to support the pro-jihad
Muslim American Society's youth programs. MAS, a front for the
radical Muslim Brotherhood, runs "jihad camps" for Muslim boys.
MAS's tarbiya (indoctrination) guide exhorts Muslim youth to "wage war,"
according to former FBI agent Johh Guandolo, quoted in "Muslim Mafia,"
until the U.S. is "wiped out" and only the law of Allah reigns supreme.
MAS youth indoctrination is steeped in the teachings of Muslim
Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Banna, who argued for "increasing the
number of youth groups (and) igniting in them the spirit of Islamic
jihad."
Abunar is also listed as a member of the North American
Imam Federation, a sister organization to CAIR, ISNA and NAIT, and
another American front for the radical Muslim Brotherhood. The
NAIF directory, in fact, lists Abunar on the same page with Luqman
Abdullah, the Detroit imam recently gunned down in a firefight with the
FBI.
Time Square Bomber A Democrat
Flopping Aces is still
tracking down that news but one thing is clear: he wasn’t a Tea
Partier!
There are reports that Faisal Shahzad, the failed Time
Square bomber was a registered Democrat in Connecticut and may be a
donor to Obama’s campaign.
This comes after the Mayor of New
York, Michael Bloomberg openly
speculated that the bomber might be "somebody with a political
agenda who doesn’t like the health care bill or something."
Contessa Brewer, a "reporter" for MSNBC went further, actually
hoping the terrorist here wasn’t Islamic and was disappointed that
it wasn’t a right winger.
Coming on the heels of repeated
warnings from Obama, Bill Clinton and others that Tea Parties might lead
to violence it was only natural for libs to assume this attack may have
been inspired by opposition to Obama. But like the other baseless
charges in Obama’s political repertoire, this one turned out to be false
as well.
Homeland Security almost let terrorist slip away?
What’s worse than the overt profiling of Tea Partiers is the sheer
incompetence of the Obama Administration which nearly let Faisal Shahzad
get away. While security at the JFK airport in New York City
was busy patting down little old ladies, Shahzad boarded his flight to
the Middle East, the plane had began to pull away from the gate and only
at the last second was the suspect caught.
How is it that a man
whose name should have immediately placed him on a "no fly" list would
be allowed to board a plane? Were counter terrorism agents
spending too much time tracking down Tea Partiers?
Meanwhile,
the Obama Administration
has a "boot to
the throat" of British Petroleum ten days AFTER the oil spill began in
the Gulf of Mexico yet they don’t seem to be paying much attention to
the growing problem of terrorism in the U.S.!
Pakistan Taliban Behind NY Bomb
Anne Flaherty
says Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser said
Sunday that authorities believe the Pakistani Taliban was behind the
attempted bombing at Times Square.
White House adviser John
Brennan said that while the investigation is ongoing, it appears that
accused bomber Faisal Shahzad
was working for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The militant
group is believed to be hiding senior al-Qaida leaders, including Osama
bin Laden.
Brennan said the finding "underscores the serious
threat that we face from a very determined enemy."
The
conclusion seemed to contradict a recent statement by Gen. David
Petraeus, who said Shahzad apparently operated as a "lone wolf."
Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said in a statement Friday to
The Associated Press that while Shahzad was inspired by militants in
Pakistan, he didn’t necessarily have direct contact with them.
Brennan’s comments come after speculation that TTP had orchestrated the
attack. Shahzad, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, spent five months
in Pakistan before returning to the United States in February and
preparing his attack…
Related: Attorney General Eric H. Holder
Jr. said Sunday that the Pakistani Taliban directed the Times Square
car-bomb plot and is actively recruiting more agents to carry out
attacks on U.S. soil.
"We know that they helped facilitate it;
we know that they probably helped finance it, and that [the suspect] was
working at their direction," Holder said in an appearance on ABC News'
"This Week."
Gee, what was their first hint?
Still, we can’t be absolutely certain until Secretary Janet Napolitano
makes her pronouncement.
Why Obama Wanted Times Square Bomber To Be
A Lone Nut
Ben Shapiro says, that on May 1, 2010,
Pakistani-born, naturalized American citizen
Faisal Shahzad drove a
green SUV into Times Square, parked it there, and walked away.
Inside the SUV were explosives and a jerry-rigged timing device.
Fortunately, the bomb didn’t go off, and the authorities captured
Shahzad just before his plane took off for Dubai.
After his
detention, members of the Obama clique immediately put out the
misinformation that Shahzad had acted alone. On May 6, The
Associated Press reported that law enforcement officials were virtually
certain he had been an isolated actor. On May 7, Gen. Petraeus --
who has proved himself to be a lackey to the Obama administration --
told The AP that Shahzad was a "lone wolf" who had been "inspired by
militants in Pakistan but didn’t have direct contact with them."
Meanwhile, the press leaped on the "lone wolf" meme to suggest that
Shahzad wasn’t a radical Muslim -- he was a sad little man who had been
crushed by the disappointments of capitalism.
Stephen Brown says that before any real
investigation had been carried out into the attempted terrorist bombing
on New York’s Times Square last week, Secretary of Homeland Security
Janet Napolitano had almost immediately dismissed it as a "one-off"
thing. General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command, was
also quick off the mark, saying the terrorist behind the plot,
Faisal Shahzad, 30, who
traded his Pakistani citizenship for American last year, was a "lone
wolf."
But last weekend the truth came out when Attorney-General
Eric Holder was forced to admit what many suspected all along. It
was another act of international Islamic jihad against the United
States, and faceless murderers in Taliban/al-Qaeda terrorist
organizations, based in Pakistan and motivated by their undying resolve
to kill as many Americans, were the string-pullers.
"We’ve now developed evidence that shows
that the Pakistan Taliban was behind the attack," Holder said on the
ABC program, This Week. "We know that they probably helped
finance it. And that he (Shahzad) was working at their
direction."
With Holder’s admission, the question remains as to
why a government that told people not to jump to conclusions concerning
a connection between the Fort Hood massacre and Islamist terrorism was
so quick to erroneously declare the Times Square bombing a solo,
one-time operation? In the Fort Hood killings, Major Nidal Malik
Hasan was also initially described as a lone gunman, whose motives were
unclear, although he was shouting "Allahu Akbar" during his murderous
rampage. Obama himself cautioned against any premature judgment,
even though his own intelligence agencies knew for months that Hasan had
been trying to make contact with al Qaeda-connected people.
"We don’t know all the answers yet," Obama
said at the time. "And I would caution against jumping to any
conclusions until we have all the facts."
But in the case of the failed Times Square bombing
the facts were already in, some of them for a long time. The
United States is in a worldwide war with radical Islam, a concept some
still have difficulty with. As a result of this war, according to
one analyst, America was the target of about a dozen terrorist attacks
within its borders last year alone. Only the
Fort Hood massacre was
successful, costing 13 lives while another 30 were wounded.
Joy Tiz
says those Pakistanis with subprime mortgages who hate ObamaCare are
really starting to get the government's attention:
Federal authorities have arrested three men
living in the greater Boston area in connection with the attempted
Times Square bombing, Fox News has learned.
But don't worry, we are assured that there is no
immediate threat or active plot:
Officials said the searches "do not relate
to any known immediate threat to the public or active plot against
the United States."
What, then were they looking for? Overdue
parking tickets?
Making an excellent case for tougher enforcement
of our immigration laws:
One of the men arrested Thursday has been
charged with overstaying his visa, and another, identified as Pir
Khan, has been charged with staying in the country despite an order
of removal, according to one source. The third man was also arrested
for alleged immigration violations, a source said.
Reflecting the administration's recent discovery of
terrorism:
The Boston-area men have been arrested on
"administrative charges," which means federal authorities will not
advise them of Miranda rights to question them, as is required in
criminal cases.
Obama Knew!
FReeper Kristinn says three months before the
Times Square terror bombing by a Pakistani-American with ties to
terrorists in Pakistan, the Obama administration knew the style of
attack, the type of explosives to be used and when the attack would
come, yet when the attack happened the administration played dumb with
its initial reaction being to downplay the attack as an unsophisticated
"one-off" that was a "potential" terror attack.
On February 10, I
wrote an
article
at FR based on Vice President Joe Biden's comments about coming terror
attacks on the U.S. that were broadcast later that day on CNN's Larry
King Live.
King mentioned to Biden that U.S. intelligence chiefs
had recently told Sen. Diane Feinstein that terror attacks on the U.S.
mainland in the next few months were "certain," prompting Biden to
describe the coming attacks as being by lone attackers with "indigenous"
explosives.
The very next morning after the Times Square attack,
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
downplayed the terror attack as a "one-off" and not "very
sophisticated" even though it was exactly the type of attack that Obama
was warned of by his intelligence chiefs.
TAPPER...this attempted attack resembles car
bomb attempts in London and Scotland in 2007. How concerned
are you that this is not an isolated incident?
NAPOLITANO:
Well, right now, we have no evidence that it is anything other than
a one-off, but we are alerting state, local officials around the
country, letting them know what is going on...
Here's what was said on CNN three months before:
KING: Terror -- last week on terrorism, the
heads of the major U.S. intelligence agencies told Dianne Feinstein
that another attempted terrorist attack on the United States is
coming certain in the next few months.
BIDEN: Well...
KING: What do you make of that?
BIDEN: Well, look, let me put
it this way. The idea of there being a massive attack in the United
States like 9/11 is unlikely, in my view.
But if you see
what's happening, particularly with al Qaeda and the Arabian
Peninsula, they have decided to move in the direction of much more
small bore but devastatingly frightening attacks.
KING:
Detroit?
BIDEN: Detroit. But I think what you're seeing
morphing here -- and it's a concern to us -- is you'll see the --
the concern relates to somebody like a shoe bomber or the underpants
bomber, the Christmas attack or someone just strapping a backpack on
them with weapons that are indigenous and blowing up, you know,
walking into (INAUDIBLE)...
KING: So that's going to happen?
BIDEN: Well, I -- I think there are going to be an attempts. I
hope we've been -- I've been really impressed. As I said, I've been
here for eight presidents. I used to be in the Intelligence
Committee. I was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. It's
something I spent my professional life doing. I've been really
impressed with the success we've had, building on the last
administration, in dealing with these.
Well, Mr. Vice President, many Americans are not
impressed since the Obama administration has allowed four terrorist
attacks on American soil within the past year. It is especially
unimpressive that the administration missed it when the Times Square
bomber was on the terrorist radar and was getting training and funding
in Pakistan.
The bottom line is Obama knew this type of attack
was coming and was too busy partying and golfing to stop it.
Terror By Lawsuit
Bill Burck and Dana Perino
say that the Times Square
bomber, Faisal Shahzad, was presented to a judge this past Tuesday,
after being held in custody, incommunicado from everyone except his
interrogators, for two weeks. According to reports, the
interrogators included federal prosecutors and agents from Manhattan, as
well as members of Obama’s newly minted High-Value Detainee
Interrogation Group (HIG).
Infamously, the HIG was not deployed by the Obama administration to
question Crotch Bomber, Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab, back in December -- because (unbeknownst to
the recently resigned director of national intelligence Dennis Blair) it
did not actually exist yet, even though it had been announced with
fanfare late last summer.
This time, the administration sprang
into action much more spryly, taking its lead from Preet Bharara, the
U.S. Attorney for Manhattan, and others in law enforcement who
prioritize public safety over safely covering their butts.
Shahzad’s two weeks in custody without appearing before a judge is
almost unprecedented and reflects the interrogators’ determination to
get intelligence about other plots and prevent future attacks. Had
the prosecutors followed the usual criminal-justice playbook, Shahzad
would have been presented to a judge and given a lawyer as soon as
possible after arrest, or at most 24 or 48 hours after arrest -- even
though he waived his rights to appear before a judge and have a lawyer.
Instead, the prosecutors accepted Shahzad’s waivers so that his
interrogation would not be disrupted, informing a judge during the
interrogation that "uninterrupted access [to Shahzad] has been, and
continues to be, extremely beneficial, if not essential, to the
investigation."
The interrogation has produced results,
including raids of possible co-conspirators, search warrants, and
overseas arrests of Shahzad’s bomb trainers, and it has made us safer.
As we wrote last week, the prosecutors handling Shahzad deserve our
praise and gratitude for taking the risk of a judge’s rebuke to gain
knowledge about Shahzad’s co-conspirators.
But there remains the
chance that a court might suppress Shahzad’s statements so they cannot
be used against him at trial. The court might decide, essentially,
that Shahzad’s two weeks in custody without appearing before a judge or
getting a lawyer were so inherently coercive that his waivers should not
be accepted as "knowing and voluntary."
