FBI Thwarts Planned Portland Bombing at Christmas-Tree Lighting

A 19-year-old Somali-born resident of Corvallis, Oregon, who until recently had been a part-time student at Oregon State University was arrested Friday evening for attempting to detonate what he believed was an explosives-laden van parked amid a huge holiday throng attending a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, law-enforcement authorities said.

Mohamed Osman Mohamud was arrested at Union Station in Portland at 5:40 p.m. just after he dialed a cell phone that he allegedly believed would kill or maim hundreds of innocent people, including children, the authorities said.

Prosecutors said that Mohamud and an undercover agent drove to Portland in a white van laden with six 55-gallon drums with detonation cords and plastic caps, all of which were actually inserted. The men parked the van, and met another undercover agent who drove them to the Portland train station, from where Mohamud planned to escape. Mohamud dialed the cell phone given to him by the undercover agents, authorities said. But when the device did not detonate, the agents suggested that he get out of the car to get an improved cell signal and try again. When he did so, he was arrested. Mohamud reportedly yelled, "Allahu Akbar!" -- Arabic for "God is the greatest!" – and tried to kick the FBI agents and police officers who apprehended him.

The chilling details of the scheme are contained in an FBI affidavit that outlines the plot's origins and design, which was apparently to kill and maim as many innocent Americans as possible. It did not come to fruition, according to the authorities, because the men Mohamud believed to be fellow jihadists were actually FBI undercover agents who had become aware of his intentions many months ago. Although these agents had accompanied Mohamud on a trial bombing run in a rural area on Nov. 4, the explosives planted Friday at Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square were actually fake.

It was on that Nov. 4 drive back to Mohamud's home in Corvallis, the authorities said, that he was queried specifically by the agents about his willingness to slaughter innocent people. Mohamud allegedly responded that he was looking for a "huge mass (of victims) that will ... be attacked in their own element with their families celebrating the holidays."

Reminded that many children would be present at the Christmas tree lighting, Mohamud was asked point-blank if he would be capable of viewing the bodies of people he had killed. "I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave either dead or injured," he is said to have replied. Later that day, the FBI said, Mohamud recorded a video in which he read a written statement offering his rationale for the attack.

Mohamud was identified by the authorities as a naturalized U.S. citizen. He has been studying "non-degree pre-engineering," according to an Oregon State student directory. Mohamud had been coordinating with like-minded Islamic terrorists in Pakistan since August 2009, according to the affidavit, and by his own account contemplating a terrorist attack since he was 15 years old. How he and his family came to be in this country was not immediately known. Nor did authorities offer any detail about how the suspect came to be radicalized. Officials at Oregon State released a statement Saturday evening saying that Mohamud was a non-degree student who dropped all his classes in early October.

Somewhere along the line, however, authorities became aware of his intentions. According to the FBI affidavit, the investigation into Mohamud's activities commenced in August 2009 when he was exchanging e-mail messages with a suspected terrorist who lives overseas. In December 2009, the two men discussed the feasibility of Mohamud traveling to the Pakistani frontier to participate in violent jihad.

By June 2010, Mohamud was discussing his plans with another contact he believed could help facilitate his desire to wage holy war -- except that this second person was an undercover FBI agent. Mohamud told this source that he was determined to become "operational," but that he needed assistance putting a bomb together, the authorities said. At this point, the government said, Mohamud also told his newfound accomplice that he had a target in mind: "the Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square on Nov. 26, 2010."

"This defendant's chilling determination," Dwight C. Holton, U.S. attorney for the District of Oregon, said Friday, "is a stark reminder that there are people -- even here in Oregon -- who are determined to kill Americans."