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.
Some new rules for civility
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What about account suspension before deletion? Kinda a “last warning” deal? 30 days on an alias is almost as bad as starting from scratch, IMHO.
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Off with their heads! :x
(Whack!) :o
(Thud!) :cry:
Gurgle, gurgle!OH, please, oh, please, oh, please, oh, please!
Don’t take away my alternative to fighting through the chat/arguing/blather/cursing/nonsense of the chat rooms. I find it so much easier if you have to fight through my chat/arguing/blather/cursing/nonsense! :wink: -
Jeez, I go on vacation and come back and the world changes :) It’s really pretty sad that a step like this is necessary. It may be hard at times to judge intent though, so I hope this is something done with a large degree of ‘safe side’ meaning erring on the side of the person who is doing the insulting, etc. Some stuff is pretty clear, but bad humor taken out of context could fall into this category.
Do you have an appeals process in mind for those who didn’t think they were being insulting/abusive, etc?
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yes, what constitutes an insult? because what if i say something insulting to someone, as a joke, and they got it, but you didnt?
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yes, what constitutes an insult? because what if i say something insulting to someone, as a joke, and they got it, but you didnt?
Or worse, you were just misunderstood in your meaning…a typical communications breakdown that seems to occur on these boards more often that one can count. ;)
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yes, what constitutes an insult? because what if i say something insulting to someone, as a joke, and they got it, but you didnt?
Janus - you of all people know that it is not this arbitrary. I have given several people (yourself included) multiple warnings when they approach “the line”. Obviously if there is an “inside joke” that i am missing, then subsequent to a warning one or both participants merely have to clue me in that this is the case.
To answer your first question - i think the fact that this is under the thread “civility” should point all of us (myself included) into the proper direction. “You are a dumba$$” is clearly inappropriate. “Your issue appears to be baseless” tends to be the beginning of a reasonable argument.
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fair enough cc, i just dont want someone being overzealous to read something tongue-in-cheek, or something thats understood by both involved parties to be a joke, to be taken as an insult and deleted. esp. since i know both you and i, as well as others do this from time to time.
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yes, what constitutes an insult? because what if i say something insulting to someone, as a joke, and they got it, but you didnt?
That was my point Janus. That’s why I said I would hope they’ll error on the side of caution and let ‘borderline’ stuff go. Generally it’s too subjective to be judged accurately, especially individual comments.
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Or… maybe people could just stay away from the borderline stuff? Wouldn’t that make life so much easier, and count down so much on hard feelings, etc.? Maybe it’s just me, but seems to make sense… :P
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Or… maybe people could just stay away from the borderline stuff? Wouldn’t that make life so much easier, and count down so much on hard feelings, etc.? Maybe it’s just me, but seems to make sense… :P
. . . but less fun.
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