ASSOCIATED PRESS: U.S. authorities declined to pursue a case against an “al Qaeda sympathizer” accused of plotting to bomb police stations and post offices in the New York area because they believed he was mentally unstable and incapable of pulling it off, two law enforcement officials said Monday. New York Police Department investigators sought to get the FBI involved at least twice as their undercover investigation of Jose Pimentel unfolded, the officials said. Both times, the FBI concluded that he wasn’t a serious threat, they said. The FBI concluded that Pimentel “didn’t have the predisposition or the ability to do anything on his own,” one of the officials said. The officials were not authorized to speak about the case and spoke on condition of anonymity. The FBI’s New York office declined to comment Monday. MORE
RELATED: During the two years of NYPD-sanctioned surveillance, the Department had repeatedly approached the FBI about opening an investigation of their own in order to pursue terrorism-related charges against Pimentel. Maybe the FBI didn’t feel threatened by the Christmas decorations — or maybe it was something else — but despite their ongoing pleas, the FBI refused to take on the case. Sources speaking to both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal tell the papers that the Federal Bureau of Investigation declined to become involved in the manhunt for Pimentel because they had “issues” with the case that the NYPD was building. According to sources speaking under condition on anonymity, the FBI reviewed the evidence that the NYPD provided in hopes of establishing federal terrorism charges, though the FBI remained unconcerned. In an AP report Monday morning, an FBI source says that Pimentel lacked “predisposition or the ability to carry out the plot.” This marks the second time this year that federal authorities passed on terrorism-charges that the NYPD was pressuring them to follow through on. It also marks the arrival of a welcoming distraction for Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD as outlets across the world report on the mishandling of Occupy Wall Street protesters — only the latest scandal that the city’s officials have engrossed themselves in. MORE
JUDITH MILLER/FOX NEWS: Jose Pimentel’s Arrest a Timely Reminder That Terror Threat Is Still Very Real
RELATED: Judith Miller (born January 2, 1948) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau. Her coverage of Iraq’s alleged Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program both before and after the 2003 invasion generated much controversy.[1] A number of stories she wrote while working for The New York Times later turned out to be inaccurate or completely false. MORE
RELATED: Pulitzer Prize winner Judith Miller’s series of exclusives about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—courtesy of the now-notorious Ahmad Chalabi—helped the New York Times keep up with the competition and the Bush administration bolster the case for war. How the very same talents that caused her to get the story also caused her to get it wrong. MORE
MAUREEN DOWD: “Judy admitted in the story that she ‘got it totally wrong’ about W.M.D. ‘If your sources are wrong,’ she said, ‘you are wrong.’ But investigative reporting is not stenography. . . Judy told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover ‘the same thing I’ve always covered—threats to our country.’ If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands.” MORE