New York ‘lone wolf’ was one hour away from finishing his bomb
She also praised the New York Police Department, saying, “I think they handled it well.”
Officials with the NYPD, which conducted the undercover investigation using a confidential informant and a bugged apartment, said the department had to move quickly because Pimentel was about to test a pipe bomb made out of match heads, nails and other ingredients bought at neighborhood hardware and discount stores.
Two law enforcement officials said Monday that the NYPD’s Intelligence Division had sought to get the FBI involved at least twice as the investigation unfolded. Both times, the FBI concluded that Pimentel lacked the mental capacity to act on his own, they said.
The FBI thought Pimentel “didn’t have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own,” one of the officials said.
The officials were not authorized to speak about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity. The FBI’s New York office and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan both declined to comment on Monday.
Pimentel’s lawyer, Joseph Zablocki, said his client was never a true threat.
“If the goal here is to be stopping terror … I’m not sure that this is where we should be spending our resources,” he said.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly defended the handling of the case Monday, saying the NYPD kept federal authorities in the loop “all along” before circumstances forced investigators to take swift measures using state charges.
“No question in my mind that we had to take this case down,” Kelly said. “There was an imminent threat.”
Added Kelly: “This is a classic case of what we’ve been talking about �� the lone wolf, an individual, self-radicalized. This is the needle in the haystack problem we face as a country and as a city.”
Authorities described Pimentel as an unemployed U.S. citizen and “al-Qaida sympathizer” who was born in the Dominican Republic. He had lived most of his life in Manhattan, aside from about five years in the upstate city of Schenectady, where authorities say he had an arrested for credit card fraud.
His mother said he was raised Roman Catholic. But he converted to Islam in 2004 and went by the name Muhammad Yusuf, authorities said.
Using a tip from police in Albany, the NYPD had been watching Pimentel using a confidential informant for the past year. Investigators learned that he was energized and motivated to carry out his plan by the Sept. 30 killing of al-Qaida’s U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, police said.
Pimentel was under constant surveillance as he shopped for the pipe bombmaterials. He also was overheard talking about attacking police patrol cars and postal facilities, killing soldiers returning home from abroad andbombing a police station in Bayonne, N.J., authorizes said.
Where's Vance?
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Vance we’ll all miss you and I hope you post from time to time and will we see you in Toronto in about 4 months?
Bad dice suck!!! I rolled so many last week on the table top its not even funny, maybe this weekend my dice will be better
Keep in touch or we’ll form a posse -
but can he restore his account, and get everything back as it was before?
absolutely not. He can make a new “Vince” account but these can never be related to his dead accounts posts.
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That’s it then… Vance as we knew him, is gone.
Goodbye my little Lego friend.
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Well that explains a lot. I just got back from mission and I couldn’t post to him to tell him I was back. Damn, not going to be able to finish the game….
Oh, by the way…this was NOT our game that caused this.
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Even if it was…… Vance’s growing frustration with the dice is nobody’s fault.
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Is there anyway somebody can take over for that game or is it lost?
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We have lost some really great troops in the past few years.
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@ABWorsham:
We have lost some really great troops in the past few years.
Agreed…
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If only we could lose some of the “not so great” troops… :)
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I truly liked playing with you, Vance. Fair and helpful, oh, and forgiving some horrific beginners mistakes. Can understand frustration about dice. Anytime you want to play online Diplomacy, let me know!
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If only we could lose some of the “not so great” troops… :)
Gargantua comes into mind :-D
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I am back. Thank you all for your support during my dark time. :-)
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Variance lol. WB mate
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Glad to hear it. We missed you!
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Welcome back my little plastic friend, and if you ever leave again…… I will pull a General Patton, and slap you across your yellow lego face.
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welcome back V ,may the lego force be with you…
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Welcome back Vance :-)
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