By N. Clark Judd
When law enforcement officers shattered the window of an SUV on Independence Avenue the night of May 20, the shards left on the ground spread out like a puzzle.
Members of the NYPD Emergency Services Unit broke the window to apprehend four men — James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen — accused of attempting to bomb two Jewish centers within blocks of one another in Riverdale.
What the plotters allegedly planned to do was spelled out in disturbing detail in a criminal complaint from the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. But why they planned to do it in Riverdale remains unclear.
There are, however, clues.
Prosecutors say federal agents and police didn’t just dash apart a window that warm quiet night — they destroyed a plot almost one year in the making, crafted by a band of anti-Semitic extremists hoping to get back at the U.S. for its involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The criminal complaint against Mr. Cromitie quotes him telling an FBI informant that he thought the Riverdale institutions would be a “piece of cake” to attack.
The day after the sting, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a press briefing that Riverdale may also have been chosen as a target as a matter of convenience, because of its proximity to the Henry Hudson Parkway.
And Riverdale may have been more convenient for law enforcement as well. An official familiar with the operation stated that investigators sought to keep the men from attacking an area of Brooklyn where it would have been logistically more difficult to apprehend them.
The C-4 explosive the men allegedly planned to use had been provided by an FBI informant, and couldn’t actually explode, Mr. Kelly and others have repeatedly said. The “target” neighborhood was never in any actual danger.
Nevertheless, although the police never informed the synagogues that they were targets, they sent what one official described as “a big burly” undercover agent into the Riverdale Temple building on a pretext, just in case.
