FBI catches would-be bomber in Portland, Oregon

FBI tipped off to investigate teenager

The teenager accused of attempting to bomb a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Ore., was acting on his own initiative and not at the direction of any foreign terrorist organization, a law enforcement official said Saturday.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud hatched the plan on his own to use a cell phone to detonate what he believed was an explosive-filled van at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony Friday, according to the official, who wasn't authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke on a condition of anonymity.

The official said Mohamud was very committed to the plot and alone planned the details, including where to park the van for the maximum number of casualties. Authorities say Mohamud sent bomb components to undercover FBI agents who he believed were assembling the explosive device, but the agents supplied a fake that Mohamud tried to detonate twice via his phone.

The official said agents began investigating Mohamud after receiving a tip from someone who was concerned about the teenager. The official declined to provide any more detail about the relationship between Mohamud and that source.

The FBI monitored Mohamud's e-mail. They found that he was in e-mail contact with people overseas and was asking how he could travel to Pakistan and join the fight for jihad, according to an FBI affidavit.

Mohamud, a student at Oregon State University, e-mailed a friend living in Pakistan who had been a student in Oregon in 2007-2008, according to the official. The FBI's affidavit says the friend in Pakistan referred him to another associate, but gave him an invalid e-mail address that Mohamud tried repeatedly to use unsuccessfully. The official said FBI agents saw that as an opportunity and e-mailed Mohamud in response, claiming to be associates of his friend, the former student.

The friend Mohamud was e-mailing was in Pakistan's northwest frontier province, an area known to harbor terrorists, but the law enforcement official said there is no indication that any foreign terrorist group was behind the plot.
The FBI affidavit says the undercover agent first met Mohamud in person on July 30 and asked what he would do for the cause of jihad. The agent suggested that Mohamud might want to spread Islam to others, continue his studies to help the cause overseas, raise money, become "operational" or become a martyr. Mohamud immediately responded that he wanted to become "operational," but didn't know how and needed training, the affidavit said.

The affidavit says when Mohamud was asked what he meant by being "operational," he responded that he wanted to put together an explosion. The undercover agent said he could introduce him to an explosive expert and asked Mohamud to research potential targets.
At a second meeting on Aug. 19 at a Portland hotel, the agent brought a second undercover agent; Mohamud allegedly told them had selected the tree lighting at Portland's Pioneer Square for the bombing.

The Daily News article

My brother knows Mohamed Mohamud. He went to school with him and was good friends with him. My brother was totally shocked this morning when he brought in the newspaper and his friend's name was splashed across the front cover.

That's got to suck for your brother Pippin, I can just imagine the kind of betrayal you'd feel if a friend did something like that. You wouldn't be sure you could trust anything anybody says. Just unbelievable.

Good on the FBI for getting on top of this.

I'm starting to wonder if there is more than one Mohamed Mohamud at Oregon State University. Unlikely, but some of the details in the newspaper match Logan's friend, and some don't. My brother's friend is not 19, and he going to school for two years before the paper said that he'd been there. Even the picture doesn't really look like him. But some of the details about his character and hobbies do match.

I agree that the FBI really came through here. They were following this guy for ages it seems

Pippin, you can't count on papers for 100% accuracy. Fact checking usually consists of someone screaming "how long was he in school? 2 years?" and someone else calling back "sounds right!"

It doesn't SOUND like a common enough name for there to be 2 of them at one school.

Mohamed Mohamud, what an unfortunate name, it's like an Arabic version of Ronald McDonald or Edward Woodward.

Was your brother at the tree-lighting ceremony Pippin? That would be scary to be there and know that if he had gone to different people to get his bomb made, there could've been some serious shit go down.

I understand that the FBI have to let the suspect go through with the crime so they can arrest him on more than suspicion or plotting, but if the FBI had got it wrong and he had another bomb, or something else had gone wrong, the fact that they waited until AFTER he had tried to explode the bomb could've resulted in a loss of lives.

I'm sure it is him, since Logan told me that last year two guys in suits showed up in the dorms looking for Mohamed, but it's nice to throw out the possibility to ease into accepting the reality.

I agree, Schmiggens, what a ridiculous name We weren't in Portland for the tree-lighting, but I go to school in the city. Luckily our town is about an hour away so we would not have been affected except that school would probably be cancelled during finals week.

gaboman wrote:

Pippin, you can't count on papers for 100% accuracy. Fact checking usually consists of someone screaming "how long was he in school? 2 years?" and someone else calling back "sounds right!"

It doesn't SOUND like a common enough name for there to be 2 of them at one school.

Nah, my Mom works for a newspaper and I spent my younger years basically living at the newspaper, and fact checking is SO important. If a fact is wrong then the reporter is in trouble and has to write corrections and apologies, not to mention put up with the wrath of the editors.

My Mom just got home from work and used her connections with the paper to do some checking, and turns out that there ARE two guys at Oregon State with that name; spelled slightly differently. My brother's friend Mo is the one who is not the terrorist.

Whew!

Haha nobody's ever going to look at that dude the same way again, though. I mean Everybody in Oregan had to have heard of the almost-terrorist-attack-thingy.

Oh yeah, it's been all over the news shows here. People lit some Portland Mosques on fire in retaliation.

Don't know how the friend is doing, though. He was even buds with the actual terrorist guy, so no matter what he's got to be shaken. He is ignoring all the phone calls that we've been sending him.

Someone probably strung him up.

Fucking lighting Mosques on fire. What dicks. I hope those guys get the book thrown at them with some sort of hate crime law. It makes them no better than terrorists themselves.