New York Man Sentenced To 20 Years For Conspiring To Provide Material Support To ISIL In Connection With Planned New Year's Eve Attack

The U.S. Justice Department released the below information:

Emanuel L. Lutchman, 26, of Rochester, New York, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and 50 years of supervised release for conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), a designated foreign terrorist organization.

Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security Mary B. McCord, Acting U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy, Jr. of the Western District of New York and Special Agent in Charge Adam S. Cohen of the FBI’s Buffalo, New York Division made the announcement. Chief U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci of the Western District of New York handed down the sentence.

“Emanuel Lutchman conspired with an ISIL member located overseas and planned to kill innocent civilians on U.S. soil in the name of the terrorist organization,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General McCord. “Countering terrorist threats remains the highest priority of the National Security Division, and we will continue our efforts to bring to justice those who conspire to provide material support to foreign terrorist organizations. I want to thank the many agents, analysts and prosecutors who contributed to the disruption of this deadly plot.”

“This defendant was in direct personal communication with an individual who was an external attack planner and influential recruiter for ISIL in Syria,” said Acting U.S. Attorney Kennedy. “That individual is now deceased, but, while living, he acted essentially as a terror trainer to Emanuel Lutchman and others. Together the two discussed the defendant’s plan to conduct a murderous attack within the City of Rochester essentially as a means of establishing his value as a future terrorist for ISIL in Syria. Viewed in this context, it would be hard to overstate the danger that Lutchman presented.” Mr. Kennedy emphasized that, “As prosecutors, a significant part of the role we play is to protect the citizens in our community from the threats they face. This sentence accomplishes that.”

"Just over a year ago, we arrested Emanual Lutchman. It was a good day for Rochester, and for people everywhere who would felt the impact of Lutchman's violent acts," said Special Agent in Charge Cohen. "The days preceding Lutchman’s arrest were full of apprehension after Lutchman accepted a directive from Abu Issa Al Amriki – a known ISIL leader – to kill multiple Americans. Today ends the judicial process for this case, but the FBI continues to work hard to protect our communities.”

Lutchman admitted that he conspired with an individual known as Abu Issa Al-Amriki, a now-deceased ISIL member in Syria, and planned to conduct an attack against civilians using knives and a machete on New Year’s Eve in 2015. Lutchman admitted that he intended to conduct an attack that could be claimed by ISIL and that could also help him gain membership into ISIL when he thereafter traveled overseas to join the terrorist organization.

According to court documents, Lutchman posted on social media expressions of support for ISIL, including images, videos and documents relating to ISIL and violent jihad. Lutchman also downloaded and watched terrorism-related videos, including videos relating to ISIL and the now-deceased terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki. The defendant also maintained a digital collection of documents relating to terrorism and terrorist groups. This included all of the issues of Inspire magazine and other documents designed to provide guidance to individuals seeking to travel overseas to engage in violent jihad or engage in “lone wolf” terrorist attacks in the U.S. and elsewhere.

In December 2015, Lutchman obtained an online document written by an ISIL member in Syria, in which the ISIL member provided guidance to supporters who were seeking to travel overseas to join ISIL, including advice about preparation for violent jihad; the use of security measures while traveling to avoid apprehension by law enforcement authorities; instructions for killing non-believers and infidels, or “kuffar”; and contact information for the ISIL member and Al-Amriki.

On Dec. 25, 2015, Lutchman initiated online contact with Al-Amriki, who identified himself as an ISIL member in Syria. In a series of subsequent communications, Al-Amriki told Lutchman to plan an attack on New Year’s Eve and kill a number of kuffar. Al-Amriki advised the defendant to write something before the attack and give it to the ISIL member so that after the attack the ISIL member could post it online to announce Lutchman’s allegiance to ISIL. Al-Amriki told Lutchman that whatever Lutchman sends to ISIL, they would keep it until the attack was complete and then post it and publicize the attack on the Internet. Al-Amriki emphasized that Lutchman is “behind enemy lines,” that Lutchman was the closest person to their most hated enemy and that Lutchman has the chance to do things that ISIL wishes it could do.

Lutchman ultimately told Al-Amriki that he has a couple of “brothers” that want to make hijra and plan an attack. Al-Amriki encouraged Lutchman to complete an attack and stated that, if the Syrian borders open and the attack does not succeed, he would help Lutchman and his “brothers” make hijra. Al-Amriki told Lutchman to show ISIL how serious he is, stating, “New years is here soon. Do operations and kill some kuffar.” Lutchman told Al-Amriki that he hates it in the U.S., that he wants to join the ranks of ISIL and that he is ready to “give everything up” to be in Syria with ISIL. Al-Amriki told Lutchman, for the time being, to do what he can in the U.S.

In late December 2015, Lutchman was communicating with other individuals (referred to as Individuals A, B, and C in the plea agreement) who, unbeknownst to Lutchman, were cooperating with the FBI. In these communications, Lutchman made statements expressing his strong support of ISIL and his desire to travel overseas to join ISIL. He also discussed in detail his online communications with Al-Amriki and the ISIL member. In subsequent communications, Lutchman referred at various times to Individuals A, B and C as “brothers” who would be involved in the New Year’s Eve attack.

Lutchman admitted that on Dec. 27, 2015, he and Al-Amriki discussed potential targets, and Al-Amriki told Lutchman to find the most populated area and kill as many people as possible. Al-Amriki reiterated that, after the operation was done, he would vouch for Lutchman and the other participants in the attack, and he would start sending “brothers” to ISIL in Libya, to which Lutchman agreed.

Lutchman admitted that he met with Individual C on Dec. 28, 2015, and indicated that he wanted to target a club or bar and proposed that they kidnap a couple of people and kill them. Lutchman stated that they would have to wear masks during the operation in order to avoid getting caught by law enforcement authorities. As they drove by a particular restaurant/bar in Rochester, Lutchman identified it as the target of the attack.

Lutchman admitted that on the evening of Dec. 29, 2015, Lutchman and Individual C went to a store in Rochester to purchase weapons and supplies for the attack, including two black ski masks, two knives, a machete, zip-ties, duct tape, ammonia and latex gloves. Lutchman told Individual C that “the operation is a go,” and noted that many victims would have to be killed. The defendant and Individual C discussed making a video before the operation, at Al-Amriki’s direction, in which they would explain their rationale for the attack and swear bayah (allegiance) to the leader of ISIL, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Lutchman said that he planned to release the video after the completion of the attack.

Lutchman admitted that on Dec. 30, 2015, he made a video pledging allegiance to ISIL and al-Baghdadi, and stated that ISIL was going to establish the caliphate in the land of Islam. In reference to the planned New Year’s Eve attack, Lutchman stated, “the blood that you spill of the Muslim overseas we gonna spill the blood of the kuffar,” and asked Allah to “make this a victory.” In the video, Lutchman covered all of his face except for his eyes and he held one index finger in the air, which is a sign commonly used by ISIL members and supporters. Immediately thereafter, law enforcement agents arrested Lutchman and recovered the items purchased by Lutchman and Individual C the previous day from Lutchman’s residence.

Lutchman has been detained in federal custody since his arrest on Dec. 30, 2015 by members of the FBI’s Rochester Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF).

The investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Rochester JTTF. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Brett A. Harvey of the Western District of New York, with the assistance of Trial Attorney Larry Schneider of the National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section.

Man, 70, Robbed Bank To Get Away From Wife

The Toronto Sun offers a piece on a man (seen in the above photo) who robbed a bank to get away from his wife. (photo of the wife was not available).

Bet she didn’t tell you why her husband went there [jail]?”

“How come?”

“To get away from Jeannie!”

-- Henry Hill explains to his wife a criminal confederate’s motives for going to prison in GoodFellas.

Taking a page from Goodfellas, Lawrence Ripple wanted to get away from his wife too. 

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.torontosun.com/2017/01/24/man-70-robbed-bank-to-get-away-from-wife

Scottish Cold War Nuclear Submarine Collision Kept Secret For 43 years

Matthew Weaver at the British newspaper the Guardian offers a piece on a collision between an American submarine and a Soviet submarine off the US nuclear submarine base in Holy Loch, Scotland in 1974. (I was stationed on a Navy harbor tugboat at the Holy Loch submarine base at the time). 

Documents published by CIA reveal crash between US and Soviet subs a few miles off coast of Scotland in 1974

Two nuclear submarines from rival sides in the cold war collided a few miles off the coast of Scotland in an incident that was covered up for 43 years.

The potentially catastrophic crash occurred in November 1974 when the SSBN James Madison, armed with 16 Poseidon nuclear missiles, was heading out of the US naval base at Holy Loch, 30 miles north-west of Glasgow.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/25/nuclear-submarine-collision-cold-war-cia-scotland 

Joint Chiefs Warn Of Increased Cooperation Of Terrorist, Criminal Networks

Morgan Chalfant at the Free Beacon offers a piece on the Joint Chiefs' warning about terrorist and criminal groups cooperating.

Criminal and terrorist networks are evolving “out of view” of U.S. intelligence and increasingly cooperating to achieve their goals, according to a new document from the U.S. military that calls for a better coordinated effort between the Pentagon and other government agencies to counter threat networks.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for the United States to deter threats from transnational networks such as terrorist organizations and groups trafficking illicit goods, according to the document from the Joint Chiefs of Staff published in late December.

The Joint Publication 3-25, which was recently highlighted by the Federation of American Scientists, evaluated the United States’ efforts to counter networks threatening U.S. interests at home and abroad, calling for more interagency work and partnerships with international organizations and allies to deter them.

“Traditional threats like insurgencies and criminal gangs have been exploiting weak or corrupt governments for years, but the rise of transnational extremists and their active cooperation with traditional threats has changed the global dynamic,” the document dated Dec. 21, 2016, stated. “Successful deterrence and elimination of these illicit networks is more complicated and less predictable than in the past.”

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://freebeacon.com/national-security/joint-chiefs-warn-evolving-threat-networks/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=57cbd2fb1e-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_01_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-57cbd2fb1e-45599609

My Washington Times Review Of ‘Hemingway at War: Ernest Hemingway’s Adventures as a World War II Correspondent’

My review of Terry Mort's Hemingway at War: Ernest Hemingway's Adventures as a World War II Correspondent appeared in the Washington Times.

You can read the review via the below link or the below text:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/23/book-review-hemingway-at-war-ernest-hemingways-adv/  

As a Hemingway aficionado since my early teens, I’ve read all of Ernest Hemingway’s novels, short stories, his letters and most of the biographies written about him. I’ve also read collections of his journalism, including the six articles he wrote as a war correspondent for Collier’s magazine during World War II.

Since his suicide in 1961, there has been a steady stream of books about Hemingway, whom many suggest may be the greatest and most influential writer of the 20th century.

 

Of course, Hemingway has his detractors. Hemingway weaved his real life through his fiction, thus creating the Hemingway persona and the quintessential macho fictional Hemingway hero. This has made it easy for the Hemingway haters to zero in on his personal life and disparage both his life and his work by emphasizing his bragging, bullying and boozing. They have also delighted in deflating his tough guy image by zeroing in on his time as a World War II combat correspondent, branding him a coward, a liar and a fake journalist.

 

Terry Mort, a writer who has written seven novels and six nonfiction books, including “The Hemingway Patrols: Ernest Hemingway and His Hunt for U-Boats,” offers an evenhanded look at Hemingway’s wartime role in “Hemingway at War.”

 

“Hemingway had a talent for being at the center of important events. Those events — and some of the people connected with them — are a large part of this story. He was with the Allied landings on D-Day. He flew with the RAF on at least one bombing mission. He flew with them during an attack of V-1 flying bombs. He operated with the French Resistance and the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as the Allies advanced to Paris.

 

And he was present and indeed active during the horrendous carnage of the battle for the Hurtgenwald in Germany’s Siegfried Line. As such he provides a useful lens to examine these events and also some of the people, both the troops who fought and the civilian journalists who covered the fighting,” Mr. Mort writes in his introduction. “Inevitably and understandably, his exposure to people and events affected his journalism, and later his fiction. This book attempts therefore to place him in the context of this history and in so doing expand understanding of those events and their effect on him, personally and professionally.”

 

I believe Mr. Mort largely succeeded in his goal.

 

At the outbreak of World War II, Hemingway was a world-famous author basking in the critical and commercial success of his Spanish Civil War novel, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” and living in Cuba with his third wife, journalist Martha Gellhorn. She took off to cover the war for Collier’s, while Hemingway remained in Cuba. With his fishing boat and friends he joined the “Hooligan Navy,” the hundreds of volunteer yachtsmen, fisherman and civilian pilots who took to the sea to provide intelligence to the Navy about Nazi German U-boat submarines.

 

He later contacted Collier’s editors and arranged to become their European frontline correspondent. Hemingway was nothing if not competitive, so perhaps he was in competition with his wife, who thought he was stealing her plum assignment.

 

Mr. Mort offers fine sketches of Hemingway’s fellow war correspondents, A.J. Liebling, Ernie Pyle and others, as well as the military people Hemingway accompanied throughout the war, such as OSS Col. David Bruce, Private Archie “Red” Pelkey and Col. Charles “Buck” Lanham, who commanded Hemingway’s favorite infantry outfit, the 4th Division’s 22nd Regiment.

 

In a letter Lanham wrote to his wife, he described Hemingway: “He is probably the bravest man I have ever known, with an unquenchable lust for battle and adventure.” So much for Hemingway being a coward. Lanham also confirms that Hemingway did indeed fight alongside his troops while under heavy attack.

 

But as a former naval officer during the Vietnam War, Mr. Mort disputes some of Hemingway’s piece on the D-Day landings, noting that Hemingway got some of the command terminology wrong and Hemingway’s descriptions of the actions of the landing craft’s officer and coxswain ring false.

 

I was disappointed in Hemingway’s World War II novel, “Across the River and Into the Trees,” thinking he ought to have written a war novel more akin to his short story, “Black Ass at the Crossroads,” but Mr. Mort’s book makes me think differently about the novel and I plan to reread it.

 

“Hemingway at War” is about much more than Hemingway, offering what some might think of as padding, but I found Mr. Mort’s character sketches and descriptions of momentous events that were the backdrop to the Hemingway story to be interesting and informative.

 

This is a well-written and well-researched book that will interest admirers of Hemingway, as well as those interested in the war in Europe.

 

• Paul Davis is a writer who covers crime, espionage, terrorism and the military. 

On This Day In History North Korea Seized The USS Pueblo

As History.com notes, on this day in 1968 the North Koreans seized the USS Pueblo.

The U.S. intelligence-gathering ship Pueblo is seized by North Korean naval vessels and charged with spying and violating North Korean territorial waters. Negotiations to free the 83-man crew of the U.S. ship dragged on for nearly a year, damaging the credibility of and confidence in the foreign policy of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/north-korea-seizes-u-s-ship-pueblo?cmpid=email-hist-tdih-2017-0123-01232017&om_rid=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa&om_mid=140849403&kx_EmailCampaignID=9449&kx_EmailCampaignName=email-hist-tdih-2017-0123-01232017&kx_EmailRecipientID=de5e4076c942a595dbda53f758321d197499484f6d117f61b6ac5c08e0d6f0aa

You can also read my Washington Times review of Jack Cheevers' Act of War: Lyndon Johnson, North Korea, and the Capture of the Spy Ship Pueblo via the below link:

 http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2014/02/my-washington-times-review-of-act-of.html 

Krauthammer: By Freeing Traitor Manning And Other Acts Obama Shows His True Colors as He Leaves Office

Charles Krauthammer's column in National Review Online offers his take on Obama's true colors.

Barack Obama did not go out quietly. His unquiet final acts were overshadowed, in part by a successor who refused to come in quietly, and in part by Obama’s own endless, sentimental farewell tour. But there was nothing nostalgic or sentimental about Obama’s last acts. Two of them were simply shocking. 

Perhaps we should have known. At the 2015 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, he joked about whether he had a bucket list: “Well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list.”

Turns out, he wasn’t kidding. Commuting the sentence of Chelsea Manning, one of the great traitors of our time, is finger-in-the-eye willfulness. Obama took 28 years off the sentence of a soldier who stole and then released through WikiLeaks almost half a million military reports plus another quarter-million State Department documents. 

The cables were embarrassing; the military secrets were almost certainly deadly. They jeopardized the lives not just of American soldiers on two active fronts — Iraq and Afghanistan — but of locals who were, at great peril, secretly aiding and abetting us. After Manning’s documents release, the Taliban “went on a killing spree” (according to intelligence sources quoted by Fox News) of those who fit the description of individuals working with the United States.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444044/barack-obama-exit-reveals-true-colors?utm_source=sailthru&utm_campaign=colors&utm_medium=email&utm_content=krauthammer&utm_term=VDHM