Unemployed bomber Jose Pimentel, who New York City officials captured last week on the eve of his plot to blow up a mail box to see if his pipe bomb design actually worked, was never targeted by the FBI, officials indicate, despite repeated attempts by the city police to solicit involvement.
The FBI concluded, based on what they were given by the NYPD, that Pimentel “didn’t have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own” and that he didn’t pose any sort of real threat.
Police say Pimentel got the idea to build the bomb in August when he saw an article in Inspire Magazine describing how to built it. The mayor said the blogger was a big fan of both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and suggested once changing his name to Osama Hussein.
Even though Pimentel nominally only attempted to build the relative simple explosive device in August, officials say they had been following his “every move” since May 2009. The photo “mock-up” of the explosive amounted to little more than a clock, a small piece of pipe and a nine volt battery that they say he bought at Home Depot, so it is unclear why it took him several months to cobble it together.
