CNS News: “[O]nline bombmaking guides like the Anarchist Cookbook and Inspire Magazine…are not, in my view, protected by the First Amendment and should be removed from the Internet,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a statement released on Thursday.
Velentzas (l) and Siddiqui (r)
She was commenting on the arrests of two women accused of plotting a terror attack in New York City. According to the Associated Press, Noelle Velentzas, 28, and Asia Siddiqui, 31, were arrested at their homes in Queens early Thursday following a sting operation. A search of their homes turned up three propane gas tanks, a pressure cooker, fertilizer, handwritten notes on recipes for bomb-making (Anarchist Cookbook) and jihadist literature (Inspire), court papers say.
The women are being held without bail, and New York City Mayor Bill DiBlasio said there was never any imminent threat to New Yorkers.
Sen. Feinstein released the following statement after learning of the arrests:
The arrests of two women in New York accused of plotting to carry out bombings remind us that the threat of terrorism inside the United States endures. We must remain vigilant against these types of attacks and place a high priority on tracking and interdicting such plots.
I am particularly struck that the alleged bombers made use of online bombmaking guides like the Anarchist Cookbook and Inspire Magazine. These documents are not, in my view, protected by the First Amendment and should be removed from the Internet.
I commend the FBI and the New York City Police Department for their work in preventing this and other potential attacks and am pleased that Loretta Lynch, a very distinguished attorney, will be leading the prosecution.
According to the criminal complaint, the women “researched and acquired some of the components of a car bomb, like the one used in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; a fertilizer bomb, like the one used in the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City; and a pressure cooker bomb, like the one used in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.”
The complaint also cites a poem written by Siddiqui that appeared in a magazine (Inspire) published by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula that declared there is “no excuse to sit back and wait — for the skies rain martyrdom,” investigators wrote in court papers.
Velentzas called bin Laden one of her heroes, and said she and Siddiqui were “citizens of the Islamic State,” they said.
The Anarchist Cookbook has been around since the 1970s and is now available online.
DCG