August 30, 2010
On Tapes, Terror Suspect Brags and Reveals His Hate
By KAREEM FAHIM
On hours of recordings, James Cromitie cursed loudly and made empty boasts, threatened violence, complained of discrimination and revealed his noxious hate. More than anything, though, he talked. And talked some more.
“Sometime, I think I’m talking too much,” Mr. Cromitie said to the informer who recorded dozens of their conversations from October 2008 to May 2009 — in a diner, cars, an F.B.I. safe house in New York and a hotel in Philadelphia. After those conversations, Mr. Cromitie and three other men were arrested in May 2009 on charges that they had planted bombs outside two Bronx synagogues, and had plotted to fire missiles at military planes.
In several hours of tapes that were played in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Monday, Mr. Cromitie sounded at times weary or jovial. He complained about the way Jewish people treated him and talked about “jumping up and killing one of them.”
He bragged about acts of violence — sending “ashcan” bombs into a Bronx police station house — that probably never happened. He mused about Islam, justifications for violence and possible terror targets, including a Brooklyn synagogue and a power plant.
But he also talked about peace and said, “I know Allah didn’t bring me here to fight a war.”
Prosecutors contend that Mr. Cromitie, whom they have called the leader of the group, and the other men — David Williams IV, Onta Williams and Laguerre Payen — willingly participated in a plot presented to them by the informer, Shahed Hussain, who spent his second day on the witness stand on Monday. During an 11-month investigation, Mr. Hussain, using the name Maqsood, posed as a wealthy Pakistani businessman who tried to recruit the men for a fictional terror plot.
Defense lawyers are arguing that their clients were illegally entrapped by the government. They say Mr. Hussain played an especially active role in turning the men toward a kind of violence to which they were not predisposed, in part by offering a lot of money if they joined the plot.
In segments of the recordings that prosecutors played for jurors on Monday, Mr. Cromitie often seemed to need no encouragement. He talked about making “a big noise,” and said he “agrees” with an imam who talked about the need to “make jihad right here in America.”
“Somebody need to send one, one great big message, bigger than the World Trade Center,” he said. Mr. Hussain could be heard cautioning Mr. Cromitie not to do things for the money.
At other times, though, Mr. Hussain’s words seemed intended to inflame the conversation. He mentioned overseas terrorism attacks — in Pakistan and India — that Mr. Cromitie knew nothing about, steering their talks in that direction. Mr. Hussain also mentioned, as an aside, that the president’s advisers were Jewish.
“I think that evil is reaching too high at a point where you, me, all these brothers have to come up with a solution to take the evil down,” Mr. Hussain said.
Some of the talks went nowhere, possibly because of Mr. Cromitie’s tendency toward exaggeration. Mr. Hussain testified that Mr. Cromitie talked a lot about a vaunted “sutra team” — a security team — but that, despite Mr. Hussain’s requests, he was never able to meet the team. In another conversation, Mr. Cromitie talked about guns he had stolen from Wal-Mart, where he worked — though at the time, the chain was not selling guns.
Other conversations between the two men, in hindsight, rang with irony. “Don’t be surprised if one day you might see me in handcuffs again,” Mr. Cromitie said. “I have zero tolerance for people who disrespect Muslims.”
In another conversation, Mr. Hussain told Mr. Cromitie he did not want to manipulate him.
“With your intelligence, I know you can manipulate someone,” Mr. Cromitie said. “But not me, because I’m intelligent. I’m Muslim. I know how far to go. You understand?”
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment