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Tuesday, September 29, 2009 8:56 PM CDT
OUR VIEW: Terrorist bomb plot comes to the prairie
By the JG/T-C Editorial Board editorial@jg-t.com
The news last week that a Decatur man was arrested in connection with a plot to blow up the federal courthouse in Springfield was shocking.
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies deserve credit and our thanks for their attention to the possible catastrophe.
Authorities arrested Michael C. Finton, 29, of Decatur. Finton, who also went by the alias “Talib Islam,” is charged with attempted murder of federal employees and attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction.
If Finton had been able to carry out his plan, it nearly could have been a repeat of the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995 in which two Americans destroyed the federal building in downtown Oklahoma City, Okla. That bombing killed 168 people and injured hundreds more.
Part of the shock of this incident is that it is so close to home.
Finton lives in Decatur but previously lived in Olney and Mount Vernon, all relatively close to Mattoon and Charleston.
Kurt Erickson, chief of the Lee Enterprises’ Springfield Bureau, which serves the Journal Gazette and Times-Courier, reported that Finton’s arrest capped two years of undercover work by the FBI.
This was not a case of someone unhappy with last fall’s election or any partisan politics backlash. Authorities had been tracking Finton since August of 2007.
They learned he had converted to Islam in prison and had written a letter to John Walker Lindh, the American who was captured in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban.
Finton later received money from someone in Saudi Arabia and traveled there in April 2008.
Last Wednesday, Finton drove a van containing what he thought were explosives and parked it in front of the federal building.
Prosecutors say Finton got out of the van, locked the door and got into another vehicle driven by an undercover FBI agent.
A few blocks from the building he entered a few numbers into a cell phone thinking it would remotely detonate the explosives.
The explosives were fakes planted by the FBI and he was arrested immediately.
Arrests don’t just happen.
“This alleged plot drives home the stark reality that we must avoid complacency and remain ever vigilant to the threats that violent extremists may pose to public safety,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Jeffrey B. Lang last week.
Karen Spangenberg, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Springfield division, credited the cooperation of a number of law enforcement agencies with helping “neutralize potential threats before they come to fruition.”
“This case is a prime example of our commitment to protect Americans from terrorist attacks, through prevention,” Spangenberg said.
Not every investigation results in an arrest. Some may be “dead ends.”
But this case, and another similar one in Dallas last week, indicates that a terrorist attack still is possible, even in Central Illinois.
— JG/T-C Editorial Board
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lefty wrote on Sep 30, 2009 1:03 AM: