Ragged Threads And Loose Ends

I haven't been able to blog as much or as often as I would have liked lately, and I've been forced to neglect many of the stories that I'd been following, some of which continue to develop. I can't write a full post about each of these stories, but I don't want to forget them altogether, so here they are: a collection of ragged threads and loose ends that have been in danger of being cut off ...

~~~

Derrick Shareef has been sentenced to 35 years in prison after trading a pair of car stereo speakers for a box which he was told contained four grenades, a handgun and some ammunition. According to the official account, Shareef was planning to attack CherryVale Mall in Rockford, Illinois, in December of 2006. In reality, the mastermind behind the plot to bomb the mall was Jameel Chrisman, an informant sent to Rockford by the FBI to entrap Shareef, who they hoped would lead his friend, Hassan Abujihaad, to incriminate himself.

~~~

The entrapment of Shareef was part of an effort by the FBI to bolster their case against Abujihaad, a former US Navy signalman who allegedly passed secret information to a terrorist website while he was serving aboard the USS Benfold. The prosecution admitted there was no forensic footprint connecting him to the information they found when Babar Ahmad was arrested in England. Abujihaad, who despite the lack of evidence was convicted of supporting terrorism, has requested a new trial, on the grounds that no actual evidence was presented against him.

~~~

Amateur rocket-fuel experimenter Ronald Swerlein has been sentenced to 6 years probation and 200 hours of community service for making and detonating explosive compounds, in his Longmont, Colorado, home. He's also been billed $30,000 by the Longmont Police Department for the expenses the police incurred in firing seven cannisters of tear gas into his his living room, rather than knocking on the door and asking him to step outside; plus the four days they spent cataloging and taking away his his chemistry set, his library, his firearms and so on.

~~~

In Canada, a guilty verdict has been handed down against a teenager whose name cannot be published (because he's under-age), who was charged under the country's "strong" new anti-terrorism law. How strong? As Toronto's Globe and Mail reported:

Despite the fact there was no evidence that he planned, or even knew about, any specific plot, he was found guilty of participating in a terrorist group.

We discussed this case back in June when the chief witness for the prosecution admitted that the young man who was found guilty was unaware of any plot to commit acts of terrorism, that he merely went along on a camping trip with the others, who were so secretive that they spent part of their weekend eating donuts in the parking lot of a popular store.
The International Herald Tribune notes:

Despite the guilty verdict, the man, now 20 years old, has not yet been formally convicted. His conviction cannot be entered until the court reviews an abuse-of-process application from his lawyer contending that many of the group's activities were made possible by a paid police informant who, the lawyer says, committed illegal acts himself.

There's more on the story here, at the Galloping Beaver (and here too) and here, at Creekside (and thanks to McJ.)

~~~

I made an error of omission (which has been corrected) in yesterday's post, "A Formula For Endless War: The Wounded Shark, The Quest For Victory, And The Illusion Of Success", when I wrote about

a common thread running through all our wars: every piece of equipment ruined must be replaced. Every bomb used, every bullet fired, every meal eaten must be supplied by somebody who is making money on the deal.

I failed to mention, of course, the intimidation factor.

Every other country in the world must measure each action, plan, or strategic idea according to a number of factors, including whether they think the Americans will stand for it.

The bombing, invasion, destruction and subsequent occupation of Iraq -- based on no credible evidence to support any of the claims which supposedly made this course of action necessary, says to every other nation on the planet:

"Who wants to be next?"

As Jonah Goldberg explained in National Review in 2002:

I've long been an admirer of, if not a full-fledged subscriber to, what I call the "Ledeen Doctrine." I'm not sure my friend Michael Ledeen will thank me for ascribing authorship to him and he may have only been semi-serious when he crafted it, but here is the bedrock tenet of the Ledeen Doctrine in more or less his own words: "Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business." That's at least how I remember Michael phrasing it at a speech at the American Enterprise Institute about a decade ago (Ledeen is one of the most entertaining public speakers I've ever heard, by the way).

Yep. He's entertaining as all hell, for some people.

And this may be God's way of preparing them for the journey.

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

Ronald Swerlein Pleads Guilty To Three Of Ten Explosives Charges; Plea Bargain Will Likely Keep Amateur Rocket Scientist Out Of Prison

Ronald Swerlein, an amateur rocket enthusiast from Longmont, Colorado, pleaded guilty last week to three counts of illegal possession of explosives, in a deal which seems likely to keep him out of prison.

He had been charged with ten counts of possession of explosives; he pleaded not guilty to those charges last December.

He had also been charged with one count of drug possession; that charge has been dismissed.

Swelein has been free on bond since shortly after his arrest, and he remains free pending his sentencing, which is scheduled for August 8th.

If the judge accepts the agreement that has been reached between the prosecutors and Swerlein's attorney, Swerlein will face six years of probation, community service and a mental health check.

Ron Swerlein was an electrical engineer with a half a dozen patents to his name when he suffered career-ending injuries in a car accident. Unable to work, but still curious and inventive, Swerlein turned to an old hobby: chemistry. He started buying glassware and chemicals from internet suppliers, and synthesizing compounds he couldn't buy.

Swerlein could make virtually anything he wanted, apparently, including nitroglycerin.

He tested some of these compounds as potential rocket fuels, lighting small amounts of various mixtures to see how they would burn. Sometimes his fuels would burn too fast, causing a small explosion. It's not the sort of thing you normally see in a house, in a residential area, across the street from an elementary school. Some of the neighbors were concerned.

Eventually, after an unexpected explosion in the house, Swerlein moved his center of operations to his garage. There he would test potential fuels late at night, and into the wee hours -- and causing a wee explosion every now and then.

Some of his neighbors called the police, who sent a patrol car to sit and listen in the neighborhood, but the police never saw or heard any explosions, so nothing came of the neighbors' concern, initially.

Some time later, somebody else in Longmont thought it would be funny to pack some shells with gunpowder and scatter them in parking lots, where they might explode if stepped on or driven over. The police asked for help in locating any bomb-makers in the area, and once again Swerlein's neighbors mentioned the strange goings-on at his place.

This time police did a more serious investigation, which involved looking through Swerlein's garbage and culminated in a tear-gas assault on his house.

The bomb squad detonated the nitroglycerin in Swerlein's driveway, and the police took everything else that interested them. Most of the chemicals, they say, have since been destroyed.

Police have never considered Ron Swerlein a terrorist or even a potential terrorist, and his actions seem to bear out their opinion. He had made enough nitroglycerin to fuel a car-bomb, but he kept tinkering with various fuel mixtures, sometimes disturbing the peace in his sleeping neighborhood, but never hurting anybody.

A few times he even tested a fuel with a model rocket, launching it in his backyard and seeing with a thrill that it rose above his rooftop. Not a particularly severe menace to society.

The sentence Swerlein will likely receive seems fairer to me than his treatment by the police, or his treatment by the Colorado media, at least one of which printed false comments from a so-called expert who said the compounds Swelein was testing were never used in model rocketry.

Personally, I am glad to see Ron Swerlein avoid serving prison time, especially since it's so clear that he never intended to hurt anyone.

But I wonder, what if his name were Abdullah or Mohammed? What if he had brown skin, or spoke a foreign language, or read the Koran? Would he have been treated as fairly as this?

One would hope so.

~~~

eighth in a series

Ronald Swerlein Pleads Not Guilty To All Ten Explosives Charges

Amateur rocketry enthusiast Ronald Swerlein of Longmont, Colorado, appeared in Boulder District Court today and pleaded not guilty to ten counts of illegal possession of explosives.

Swerlein remains free on $50,000 bond with his trial set to begin in April, following a motions hearing in March.

Swerlein was arrested in June after two police searches of his home turned up an assortment of chemicals, some of which were described as explosives. Swerlein says he was using the chemicals to experiment with new rocket fuels.

Police searched Swerlein's home after neighbors reported seeing and hearing explosions coming from the Swerlein garage late at night. Swerlein said he was experimenting with different fuels and sometimes the fuel mixture would explode, but there was never any danger because the amounts he was using were so small.

Curiously, police Sgt. Tim Lewis said at the time that Swerlein didn't have enough explosives to mount a terrorist attack. Then the police detonated half a pound of home-made nitroglycerin in Swerlein's driveway.

According to Vanessa Miller of the Boulder Daily Camera:

[Swerlein] didn't address the court this morning, and he declined comment after the brief hearing.

Following his arrest, Swerlein told invesetigators he is “nerd” teaching himself about rocket-fuel technology, according to police records.

At the time, one of his friends told the Camera that Swerlein is a brilliant, curious man who loves to take things apart, adding that he’s just a “tinkerer.”

Police apparently believe his story; he's been free on bond since shortly after his arrest, and local police have been at pains to reassure the neighbors that they are in no danger.

I hope to have more on this story before too long.

~~~

seventh in a series

Ronald Swerlein, Amateur Rocket Scientist, To Be Arraigned December 18th On Explosives Charges

For the first time in four months, there's news about Ronald Swerlein of Longmont, Colorado [on the right in this photo], whose case we discussed quite a bit during the summer.

Swerlein, as regular readers of this page may remember, is free on bail after police raided his home in June and seized several firearms as well as a wide variety of explosive chemicals, some of which Swerlein had made himself. His neighbors had become suspicious after a series of explosions in the Swerlein garage. Swerlein, a former electrical engineer, claims he was interested in rocketry and trying to develop new high-performance rocket fuels.

Swerlein's explanation appeared bizarre at first, and it was portrayed as even more bizarre by the Longmont police and the local media. But the more I dug into it, the more sense it made. So I've been keeping a close eye on this case, in which there has been no new news since July...

... until now. Here's the news, from the Boulder Daily Camera:

Accused chemical hoarder's hearing postponed

An attorney for a man accused of having a dangerous cache of chemicals in his home asked a Boulder County District Court judge Friday for more time to read through 2,000 new pages of discovery.

Ronald Swerlein, 50, is charged with 10 felonies after police say they found more than 400 chemicals in his home at 2404 Sunset Drive [Longmont, Colorado] in June, including a half-pound of [nitroglycerine] the main ingredient in dynamite [which the police detonated in Swerlein's driveway].

Judge James Klein reset the arraignment hearing for Dec. 18.

So Ron Swerlein will be in court again -- or else his attorney, Jeffrey Larson, will be in court on his behalf -- a week before Christmas (unless the date is postponed before then). I'll be keeping my eyes open.

For a detailed look at this fascinating and largely unreported story, start here:

This Ain't Exactly Rocket Science ... Unless Of Course It Is!

~~~

sixth in a series