Thread: DC: Feds investigate plot to attack Metro

Feds investigate plot to attack Metro

By Peter Finn and Greg Miller
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, October 27, 2010; 2:00 PM

Federal law enforcement authorities are investigating a nascent plot to carry out a series of terrorist bombings at stations in the Washington Metro system, according to intelligence and law enforcement sources.

The investigation is focused on a naturalized U.S. citizen, originally from Pakistan, who became the target of an undercover sting operation, the sources said. An administration official said the man drew the attention of law enforcement officials by seeking to obtain unspecified materials. The planned attack was not imminent, the sources said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains under investigation.

The man, Farooque Ahmed, 34, of Ashburn, is believed to have conceived of the plot and planned to carry it out on his own. It is not known how far he proceeded in his preparations.

Ahmed was expected to appear at a hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. at the U.S. District Court in Alexandria. He was arrested in Herndon.

Federal officials stressed that the public was never in danger. They said that, as part of the sting, Ahmed was asked to conduct video surveillance; he later turned that material over to federal agents whom he believed to be connected to al-Qaeda.

Unlike other U.S. citizens implicated in recent terrorism plots, Ahmed does not appear to have received overseas training from al-Qaeda or any of its affiliates, the sources said.

In previous investigations, however, it has taken time to establish overseas links.

The arrest is the latest in a series of cases involving U.S. citizens, including another Pakistani American who was convicted of planning to set off a car bomb in Times Square, that have raised concerns about an increasing number of Americans drawn to violent jihad.
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Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old Connecticut resident, was sentenced to life in prison this month; the bomb he left in a car in Times Square in May failed to detonate.

In other instances, suspects were caught in sting operations.

Earlier this month, a Jordanian man was sentenced to 24 years in prison for attempting to use of a weapon of mass destruction to blow up a Dallas skyscraper. Hosam Smadi, 20, was arrested in September 2009 after leaving what he thought was a truck bomb but was instead a decoy device provided by FBI agents posing as al-Qaeda operatives.

Another man, Michael Finton, 29, awaits trial in March on similar charges, after driving an FBI-supplied van that he believed contained a ton of explosives to blow up the Paul Findley Federal Building and Courthouse in Springfield, Ill., also in September 2009.

At a recent Senate hearing, Michael Leiter, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, said the United States was experiencing a "spike in homegrown violent extremist activity," some of it involving individuals who were radicalized over the Internet.

Since 2009, more than 6o U.S. citizens have been charged or convicted in terrorism cases, according to federal officials.

finnp@washpost.com millergreg@washpost.com

Staff writers Spencer S. Hsu, Anne E. Kornblut, Jerry Markon and Ann Scott Tyson contributed to this report.

I thought it was called treason or is that not politically correct?