Published: November 21, 2011
The suspect had little money to speak of, was unable to pay his
cellphone bill and scrounged for money to buy the drill bits that court
papers said he required to make his pipe bombs. Initially, he had
trouble drilling the small holes that needed to be made in the metal
tubes.
Pool photo by Jefferson Siegel
Jose Pimentel is accused of plotting to set off bombs.
The suspect,
Jose Pimentel,
according to several people briefed on the case, would seek help from a
neighbor in Upper Manhattan as well as a confidential informer. That
informer provided companionship and a staging area so Mr. Pimentel, a
Muslim convert, could build three pipe bombs while the Intelligence
Division of the
New York Police Department built its case.
But it was the informer’s role, and that of his police handlers, that have now been cited as among the reasons the
F.B.I.,
which had its own parallel investigation of Mr. Pimentel, did not
pursue the case, which was announced on Sunday night in a news
conference at City Hall. Terrorism cases are generally handled by
federal authorities.
There was concern that the informer might have played too active a role
in helping Mr. Pimentel, said several people who were briefed on the
case, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity, either because of the
tense relations between the Intelligence Division and the F.B.I. or
because the case was continuing.
Some of those officials said the state’s prosecution of Mr. Pimentel was
strong enough to most likely gain a conviction, emphasizing that Mr.
Pimentel, who was nearing completion of the pipe bombs, had to be
arrested.
But there are other issues that could complicate the case, in which Mr.
Pimentel has been charged with criminal possession of a weapon in the
first degree as a crime of terrorism, for which he could face 25 years
to life in prison if convicted, and other charges, including conspiracy
as a crime of terrorism.
Mr. Pimentel, 27, who lived with his uncle in the Hamilton Heights
neighborhood after his mother threw him out recently, appears to be
unstable, according to several of the people briefed on the case, three
of whom said he had tried to circumcise himself.
And Mr. Pimentel, several of the people said, also smoked
marijuana
with the confidential informant, and some recordings in which he makes
incriminating statements were made after the men had done so. His
lawyer, Joseph Zablocki, did not return a call on Monday seeking
comment.
Asked about the F.B.I.’s concerns, Paul J. Browne, the Police
Department’s chief spokesman, said: “I’ve never heard that issue about
the C.I. at all. I don’t think the person telling you that is familiar
with the investigation.”
“It sounds like some people speaking anonymously who are not
particularly familiar with the case are trying to undermine it,” he
added, suggesting that the evidence in the case was considerable. “The
fact remains that the words and actions of the suspect speak for
themselves.”
Intelligence Division detectives have had Mr. Pimentel, a native of the
Dominican Republic and naturalized American citizen, under surveillance
for more than two years and made more than 400 hours of secret
recordings, but his efforts to make the pipe bombs did not develop until
mid-October, according to the criminal complaint against him.
The news conference at City Hall on Sunday night was the second time in
six months that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg; his police commissioner,
Raymond W. Kelly; and Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., the Manhattan district
attorney, announced the break-up of what Mr. Kelly cast as a major
terrorism case that federal authorities had chosen not to pursue.
In the earlier case, in May, the police and the district attorney’s
office, using undercover officers, had discovered a terrorist plot in
which two men were set on bombing synagogues and churches. But a grand
jury declined to bring charges of second-degree conspiracy as a crime of
terrorism and as a hate crime, the top charges sought against the two
men, Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh.
In the current case, federal agents were first told of Mr. Pimentel
about a year ago, or more, when the Police Department’s Intelligence
Division asked the F.B.I.-
N.Y.P.D. Joint Terrorism Task Force, staffed with police detectives and federal agents, if they wanted to pursue a case.
Then, in recent days and weeks, the Intelligence Division again
approached federal agents when it became apparent that Mr. Pimentel had
begun building a bomb. But the federal government again declined.
As late as Saturday, after Mr. Pimentel was arrested, the Intelligence
Division invited the task force to interview Mr. Pimentel and view the
partially constructed incendiary device, a person briefed on the
investigation said.
In the task force, investigators were concerned that the case raised
some entrapment questions, two people said. They added that some
investigators wondered whether Mr. Pimentel had the even small amount of
money or technical know-how necessary to produce a pipe bomb on his
own, had he not received help from the informer.
A spokesman for the New York F.B.I. office, Timothy Flannelly, said that
the task force was consulted regarding the New York police
investigation into Mr. Pimentel, and that the decision was made to take
the case to the Manhattan district attorney.
One federal law enforcement official said the tensions between competing
agencies could sometimes obscure what he said was their primary goal.
“There is an overarching important good picture to this which is the
whole point of what we do — trying to keep people safe and protect
them,” the official said.
There is a practical advantage to bringing the case in New York State
court: state prosecutors said they were allowed to charge Mr. Pimentel
with a conspiracy, even if he were acting with just the informant;
federal law does not permit charging such a conspiracy.
The Police Department became aware of Mr. Pimentel in May 2009, when it
was told by a police department in the Albany area that he was speaking
about plans to go to Yemen for terrorism training and then to return to
the United States, Mr. Browne said.
He said Mr. Pimentel’s talk did not “turn to action” until recently; Mr.
Kelly, at the Sunday news conference, said Mr. Pimentel clearly “jacked
up his speed after the elimination” of the Yemeni cleric Anwar
al-Awlaki, who was killed by an American drone strike in September.
At the building where Mr. Pimentel lived on West 137th Street, his uncle
said Sunday that the only recent change he noticed in his nephew was
his conversion to Islam. On Monday, Mr. Pimentel’s mother, Carmen Sosa,
apologized to the city — “I’m sorry about my son,” she said at one point
as she faced reporters in the hallway of the apartment building. She
also thanked the police.
But she said, in Spanish, “My son is not a terrorist.” She added, in
English, “My son was like an normal boy, like a normal guy.”
“He likes the way of the Muslims,” she said, explaining that he had
converted from Roman Catholicism. She also said: “In the beginning, he
wasn’t fanatic. He was a regular Muslim.”
Reporters asked her if her son had ever talked about Saddam Hussein or
Osama bin Laden or had ever said he wanted to harm American soldiers, as
the criminal complaint said. She answered each question no.
Some in the neighborhood described Mr. Pimentel as a somewhat solitary
figure who at times appeared to be lost in his own thoughts. At the
Cachet barber shop on 138th Street and Broadway, people said he would
sit on a bench there for hours without talking. “He’s like a zombie;
he’s in limbo all the time,” Ralphie Sanchez, 59, said.
One reporter asked Mr. Pimentel’s mother if her son had deserved to be
arrested. “Deserves is a strong word,” she said. “It’s difficult to say.
Justice has to be done.”
Reporting was contributed by James Barron, Matt Flegenheimer, Colin Moynihan and Scott Shane.
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