We now have a complete theatrical production - a mass audience willing to believe simplistic notions of religion, willing reality program participants willing to strap on an exploding box, and popularly elected producers who want "
Springtime for Hitler".
Federal authorities have arrested two women who were allegedly planning to detonate a bomb in the New York City area after being radicalized at least in part by ISIS, sources familiar with the arrests told ABC News.
The public was never in danger, as it was all part of a lengthy undercover FBI operation.
The women have been identified as Noelle Velentzas and Asia Siddiqui, roommates living in Queens, N.Y.
Court records allege the pair was looking to build an improvised explosive device with propane tanks, but it’s unclear how far along their plan had reached.
Both women, U.S. citizens who were until recently roommates in a Queens apartment, are expected to appear in Brooklyn federal court later Thursday. Siddiqui has repeatedly contacted members of al-Qaida overseas to offer her support, the complaint alleges. She also sent a letter of support to Mohammed Mohamud, the man arrested in November 2010 after trying to blow up a Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon; the return address was linked to York College in Jamaica.
The women -- in their 20s and 30s -- were arrested earlier today in New York without incident, and authorities are convinced ISIS propaganda and their alleged online activities contributed to their ultimate shift toward violence, ABC News was told.
They are expected to appear in federal court in Brooklyn, N.Y., later this afternoon.
Such arrests tied to ISIS have become a regular occurrence recently.
The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.
But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested...
This is legal, but is it legitimate? Without the F.B.I., would the culprits commit violence on their own? Is cultivating potential terrorists the best use of the manpower designed to find the real ones? Judging by their official answers, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department are sure of themselves — too sure, perhaps.
Carefully orchestrated sting operations usually hold up in court. Defendants invariably claim entrapment and almost always lose, because the law requires that they show no predisposition to commit the crime, even when induced by government agents. To underscore their predisposition, many suspects are “warned about the seriousness of their plots and given opportunities to back out,” said Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman. But not always, recorded conversations show. Sometimes they are coaxed to continue.
Be careful what you click on....when Googling becomes Thought Crime.
Miller said there is evidence the women looked at Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) propaganda on the Internet. But authorities say it didn't appear they had direct contact with the group.
In 2009, Siddiqui wrote a poem in a magazine published by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula that declared there is "no excuse to sit back and wait - for the skies rain martyrdom," investigators wrote in court papers. Velentzas called Osama bin Laden one of her heroes, and said she and Siddiqui were "citizens of the Islamic State," they said.
Since 2014, the pair plotted to build an explosive device for use in a terrorist attack on American soil, the complaint says. They "researched and acquired some of the components of a car bomb, like the one used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; a fertilizer bomb, like the one used in the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City; and a pressure cooker bomb, like the one used in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing," authorities wrote.
At the time of her arrest, Siddiqui was "in possession of multiple propane gas tanks, as well as instructions for how to transform propane tanks into explosive devices," the complaint says.