The threat of terrorism came home to Oregon Friday as the FBI foiled an alleged plot to detonate a huge bomb next to Portland’s Pioneer Square during the annual holiday tree-lighting festivities.
Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a 19-year-old sometime engineering student at Oregon State University, allegedly intended to blow up a van packed with explosives while the square was thronged with some 25,000 spectators.
“Do you remember when 9/11 happened, when those people were jumping from skyscrapers? I thought that was awesome,” Mohamud said to undercover FBI agents, according to an affidavit released by the FBI. “I want to see that, that’s what I want for these people. … I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave either dead or injured.”
The FBI had been tracking Mohamed, a naturalized US citizen who’s a native of Somalia, since at least August 2009, according to the affidavit. Undercover operatives contacted him last June, and Mohamud allegedly began talking with them about how he wanted to blow up a bomb in Pioneer Square.
The agents encouraged Mohamud in his plans, even (according to an Oregonian story) going so far as to build a practice bomb and help him detonate it in a remote area in Lincoln County.
Then, this month, the FBI constructed a dummy bomb inside a van that Mohamud was supposed to park near the square and detonate remotely with a cell phone. When Mohamud allegedly tried to set off the “bomb,” FBI agents and police swooped in and arrested him.
Some civil libertarians, of course, are complaining that Mohamud was entrapped by the FBI. For instance, former Portland Mercury News Editor Matt Davis (as reported by Carla Axtman on Blue Oregon) opined on his Facebook page that “this poor young man was entrapped by over-zealous, seemingly equally mentally ill FBI agents. They assembled the ‘bomb,’ for Chrissakes.”
I don’t think I’ll lose sleep worrying about whether the FBI was unfair to this “poor young man,” who, if he was “entrapped,” seemed only too eager to walk into the trap. I’m just glad the “terrorists” he was working with were FBI operatives instead of the real thing.
I also was reminded of a statement Al Gore made after 9/11 that preventing terrorist attacks was mostly a police problem, not a military problem. Gore was ridiculed at the time, but events have vindicated him. The “shoe bomber,” the “underwear bomber,” the package bomb plot in October, and now the alleged would-be Pioneer Square bomber – all were thwarted by good police work, not by sending tens of thousands of troops into the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan.
This article appears in Nov 25 – Dec 1, 2010.
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give me a freakin break
it’s called setting up a fallguy.
how’s that quote go?
“those who give up liberty for security deserve neither”
sack up you wimps & take personal responsibility, screw you & your nanny state.
people WOULDN’T want to blow up things in america if we weren’t doin our best to piss off the WHOLE world.
“The agents encouraged Mohamud in his plans”
Hmmm, isn’t that what your parents called hanging out w/ the wrong friends? Banks encouraged people to take on loans that couldn’t afford. Look where that’s got us.
Poor young man my ass!!! I’m glad the FBI entrapped this psycho before he built a real bomb with real terrorists. Stupid bleeding heart liberals.
So, for that Portland Mercury editor Matt Davis, who would have had his downtown blown-up, is it entrapment if they catch internet child stalkers using a fake account?
Or would you rather have the predator talk to a real child? STUPID.
You should be fired for being criminally moronic.
We have met the enemy and he is us. Through all of our misdirected “politically correct” sensibilities we are loosing the war. It is time to ……dare I say “profile”. Oh no!
I’d love to see this psycho falling from a skyscraper
Schralper: “people WOULDN’T want to blow up things in america if we weren’t doin our best to piss off the WHOLE world.”
You’re right. On the other hand, since they DO want to blow us up, we have to protect ourselves. And I don’t see Mohamed as a “fall guy.” If you read the whole story you’ll see he had many, many opportunities to back off, but he had his heart set on waging “jihad” and was eager to kill as many Americans as he could.
HBM: “The “shoe bomber,” the “underwear bomber,” the package bomb plot in October, and now the alleged would-be Pioneer Square bomber – all were thwarted by good police work…”
Good “police” work….you bet. You would think that cooperation with the FBI on anti-terrorism would occur at all levels of government.
Guess again.
It is hard to believe that Portland is the ONLY major city to opt out of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. The mayor (Potter)/city council (Sam Adams) did this over five years ago and nothing has been done by the current mayor/council to reverse this. Continued homage to the liberal left/ACLU agenda at the expense of public safety.
If we don’t weed out the would be terroriists we would be inviting every nut case to have open season on us. The FBI is doing their job and part of that is to infiltrate these groups or individuals and trip them up on their own schemes. Good going to our FBI keep it up. I would hate to think that people are so inane that they would say Entrapment, well how would you like your children or family to be a victim of someon who could have been entrapped but wasn’t?
Ah Booga booga booga – BE AFRAID! Be Very Afraid! Usama binDead since Dec 2001 and his gang of born-again gay mexican muslims are comin t getcha’. Oh yeah, gonna steal all the jobs and rape all the (white) women.
When did we become such a nation of squaws?