Man Charged in Model Airplane Plot To Bomb Pentagon

garymortimer writes "A 26-year-old Massachusetts man with a physics degree was arrested and charged Wednesday with plotting an attack on the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol with remote-controlled model aircraft, authorities said. Rezwan Ferdaus, a U.S. citizen from Ashland, Massachusetts, planned to use model aircraft filled with C-4 plastic explosives. As a result of an undercover FBI investigation, Ferdaus, who has a physics degree from Northeastern University in Boston, was charged with attempting to provide material support and resources to al Qaeda for attacks on U.S. soldiers overseas. His federal public defender couldn't be reached immediately for comment."

Re:Did anyone tell him

[Anonymous Coward]

These things frequently end up being about hypothetical explosives that the FBI contact is telling the suspect they can obtain.

Re:So now we're down to catching the nutcases

[rusl]

We're down to supplying nutcases with the fake tools that make them think they are playing a "terrorist" video game. Then we charge them for their unfulfilled intention to use the tools that they though were real that we gave them.

Re:Did anyone tell him

[bsDaemon]

Well, I just watched the video on CNN. The "models" were 1/10 scale replicas of an F4 Phantom and an F86 Sabre. The plan was to use them as drones, and the explosions were mostly just a decoy. He and his helpers would then use the assault rifles to fire on people while they left the buildings, since you can bet your butt the pentagon and, especially, the Capitol building have evacuation procedures and that people would be coming out.

Besides, the goals of "terrorism," ever since the Anglo-Irish War, has always been to cause the enemy to grossly over-react, thus causing domestic support for your oppressors to erode. Example: in 1922, the IRA assassinated 6 British special police within the span of about an hour. The auxiliary police and army then shot up a gaelic football match, killing civilians. There was then backlash in England and a loss of support for continued occupation of Ireland.

This plan really wasn't that bad, all things considered -- especially when you realize that any semblance of a successful attack on those two targets would bring down a crack-down on civil liberties so fast we'd all start reminiscing about when we had all those freedoms left under the PATRIOT ACT.

Re:So now we're down to catching the nutcases

[AK Marc]

The full sized airplane had trouble breaking windows. A well kept secret is that the Pentagon windows were stronger than the building itself. The idea being that a sniper trying to shoot someone would prefer the window (stopping nearly everything, including most sniper rifles), while the walls wouldn't. No need to armor the walls when nobody would try to shoot through them. They collected most of the windows undamaged from the rubble.