Monday, August 06, 2007

South Carolina Bomb Scare Update   [Andy McCarthy]

State authorities in South Carolina are saying there will be a press conference later this morning to announce charges.  The FBI, meanwhile, seems to be throwing cold water on the whole incident — sometimes they do that because it really is a false alarm, but they have also been known, much like the mainstream media, to understate things when Muslims are involved, so we'll just have to see.

Here's what I think the reporting indicates at this point.  In the late evening on Saturday, two non-Americans of Middle Eastern descent, Ahmed Mohamed and Yousef Megahed, who appear to be in the U.S. to pursue engineering studies in Florida, were pulled over for speeding in a van on Highway 176 in Goose Creek, near Charleston, South Carolina.  Goose Creek is home to the United States Naval Weapons Station, which, among other things, houses the brig where some U.S. citizens alleged to be unlawful enemy combatants have been held.

One of the men reportedly tried to hide a laptop computer.  Police became suspicious.  Eventually, the vehicle was searched.  Initially, there was a report that one completed bomb and other explosives related compounds were found.  Later reports indicate that police found PVC (polyvinyl Chloride) piping (which can be used in making pipe bombs but also has many other industrial uses), model rocket motors (model rocket engine igniters can also be used as charges for pipe bombs), and other "suspicious" materials which have not been revealed yet (to make pipe bombs you would need some kind of explosive substance).

Police closed the highway for several hours, well into Sunday morning.  Moreover, at about 2:45 a.m., they did a controlled detonation of something — not yet described although it apparently sounded to witnesses like fireworks.

The FBI is said to be casting doubt on whether there really was a bomb.  Based on what we think we know, this sounds to me like there could be a dispute about whether the components were assembled into something that would qualify under the federal bomb laws (18 USC Sec. 841) as an "explosive material" — as opposed to either (a) uncoupled "blasting agents" and "detonators," which might indicate an intention to assemble bombs, or (b) something totally innocent, which would suggest there has been misreporting about what was found in the van.  I do not know whether South Carolina law defines bombs (or "explosive materials") the same way federal law does.

An FBI spokesman is also reported to have said there are no "links to terrorism."  As the possession of a bomb would actually be an incident of terrorism, not merely a link to it, I have to think this means there is — at least as yet — no indication that the men being detained have ties to known foreign terrorist organizations.   As the intelligence community's recently released NIE related, however, the mass availability of jihadist ideology (via the Internet in particular) is catalyzing jihadism even in the absence of formal connections to a group like al Qaeda.  Thus, the lack of links to known terrorist groups would not be very comforting.  I'd also observe that it's been less than two days since these guys were arrested (on a late Saturday night no less), so there has hardly been time yet to do a thorough investigation of their backgrounds and associations.

It will be interesting to hear what the state authorities have to say. 

UPDATE:  Charleston Post & Courier reports that the vehicle was a sedan, not a van.  Press conference is scheduled for 11:30 a.m.  Any charges filed at this point will be state, not federal.  A CAIR spokesman says it's all a misunderstanding according to the family — the two men are "really naive kids" who were riding around on a pleasure trip to South Carolina in a car that happened to have fireworks left over from the 4th of July.  Feds are continuing to investigate but, again, saying that there are no known links to terrorism at this point.

08/06 10:54 AMShare