The Terrorist Capture — Funny Story, Actually

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

I know, I know.  Very little blogging this past week.  I just have a lot going on… what can I say?  Hopefully my embedded twitter feed let everyone know I was paying attention to events.

The big news today was, of course, the arrest of suspect Ahmad Khan Rahami, the bomber of a Chelsea neighborhood in NYC this past weekend, as well as the guy who planted a pressure cooked bomb on 37th street, plus various bombs in New Jersey over the weekend.  He is a U.S. citizen, a nationalized immigrant who came to America as a child.

Uh,,,, by being a child without radicalized views.  Idiot.

I don’t want to understate the incredible police work of the FBI and NYPD and other government agencies.  It was an amazingly quick investigation and capture.  Less than 48 hours.  Look, this is a triumph for the war on terrorism, although Trump will spin it otherwise.

However, there’s a little humor to the whole thing.

(1)  Had it not been for thieves, the police might not have found out about some of the bombs.  Really, how much more New York can this story be?  This Rahami guy placed the pressure cooked in a suitcase, and placed the suitcase on the sidewalk on 27th street.  What happened next?  What do you THINK happened in NY?  A couple of guys apparently saw the suitcase, opened it, saw the pressure cooker thing and, not knowing what it was, they left it behind — and exposed — while they stole the suitcase.  The same thing happened in New Jersey at the Elizabeth subway station.  Some guys found a knapsack, stole it, carried it away, opened it, and saw what appeared to be a pipe bomb.  To their credit, they called the police.

With the discovery of these devices, the police were able to get surveillance tapes, two of which showed the bomber.

(2)  This Rahami guy was not what you call an expert bombmaker.  Let’s set aside the fact that most of his devices failed to explode, and focus on another aspect of his bomb-building.  He used cell phones as detonating devices. But he appears to have used his actual cell phones – not burner phones purchased for this specific purpose but ones he’d used in the past, calling friends and associates, storing personal information. In at least one case, that phone was part of a bomb that didn’t detonate. So NYPD and FBI investigators were able to secure the phone and download lots of personal information, call records etc.  This may have been the key thing in first identifying him.

(3)  Nor was he much of a hider.  On the radio as I came to work this morning, the pundits were talking about how this bomber (assuming it was one, which it apparently is) was now definitely underground.  A reasonable assumption, but… nope. Initial reports say Rahami was found sleeping in the doorway of a local bar in Linden, New Jersey, about four miles away from his home. It’s not clear whether he just decided this place was a good place to sleep or whether he maybe got drunk in the bar. But he was apparently in plain view, asleep in the doorway, when a Linden police officer recognized him from the wanted poster and approached.

I know Trump and others like to hype terrorism, but sometimes these aren’t the brightest bulbs.