Parents Of Ohio Man Accused In Plot To Bomb U.S. Capitol, Kill Officials Speak Out
CINCINNATI (CBSNewYork/AP) -- The parents of an Ohio man accused of plotting to bomb the U.S. Capitol and shoot lawmakers are coming to his defense, saying he was just lost and misguided.
Christopher Lee Cornell, also known as Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah, told an FBI informant they should "wage jihad,'' and showed his plans for bombing the Capitol and shooting people, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in Ohio Wednesday. The FBI said the 20-year-old expressed his support for the Islamic State.
The complaint against Cornell charges him with attempting to kill officers and employees of the United States.
Cornell was arrested Wednesday after buying two semi-automatic rifles and about 600 rounds of ammunition, authorities said.
Parents Of Ohio Man Accused In Plot To Bomb U.S. Capitol Speak Out
The public was never in danger, said John Barrios, acting special agent in charge of the FBI's Cincinnati division.
The complaint alleges that an FBI informant began supplying agents with information about Cornell last year. The informant and Cornell, who lives in Green Township, first began communicating through Twitter in August 2014 and then through an instant messaging platform separate from Twitter, according to the complaint.
"I believe we should meet up and make our own group in alliance with the Islamic State here and plan operations ourselves,'' Cornell wrote in an instant message, according to the court document.
The two met in October in Cincinnati and again in November, the complaint states. Cornell told the informant at the November meeting that he considered the members of Congress as enemies and that he intended to conduct an attack on the Capitol, according to the complaint. The document says Cornell discussed his plan for them to travel to Washington and conduct reconnaissance of the security of government buildings including the Capitol before executing "a plan of attack.''
Cornell planned for the two to detonate pipe bombs at and near the Capitol and then shoot and kill employees and officials, and Cornell had saved money to fund the attack, according to the complaint.
But Cornell's parents say their son is a good person and a homebody.
"He would do anything in the world for ya," his mother, Angela Carmen, said. "He would not hurt nobody."
"He might be 20, but he was more like a 16-year-old kid," his father, John Cornell, said. "Barely ever left the house, played video games, his best friend is a cat."
His family said he's only been out of high school for two years and just recently converted to Islam.
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton spoke out about the case Thursday.
Bratton: New York Remains Vigilant
"That does exemplify what we've constantly been talking about, the potential of the lone wolf," Bratton said. "Particularly, in the year I've been commissioner, the threat has morphed from the focus on al Qaeda and al Qaeda in Yemen, which appears to have been responsible for the Paris assault. ISIS, which nobody knew about a year ago, now has emerged, has created, for lack of a better term, a state in the middle of the Mideast. Those two entities seem to be competing with each other for attention, ISIS and al Qaeda. ISIS in particular has been encouraging the lone wolf, the idea you don't have to go to Syria to fight and learn how to fight. Pick up an ax, as the character that attacked our four officers did. So the threat has morphed into more potential threats, more lone wolf type activity. So, what you're talking about, the Ohio incident, is an example of that."
The NYPD has been on alert for copycats after the attack on the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper and the subsequent standoffs in Paris. Bratton said New York remains vigilant.
"There's no city in America that has more resources committed to this issue than New York," Bratton said. "Many cities around the country don't have the resources to stay as involved as we do. We remain one of the most likely targets in the country if not the world, so we have to keep committing resources to this issue. And we are very good at it and we have excellent relationships with our federal colleagues who are also very good at it. So for 13 years we've been incident free with the exception of the ax attack on our officers, and we work very hard to keep it that way."
Bratton said he is also broadening the department's counterterrorism base, 1010 WINS' Juliet Papa reported.
"More officers trained like our emergency services officers to respond with better weaponry, better tactics and training and we'll be also expanding our active shooter training," he said.
The NYPD warned earlier this week of a threat against police officers and soldiers by Islamic State militants.
John Miller, the NYPD's deputy commissioner of intelligence and counter-terrorism, said the message put out by ISIS was a renewal of a call from mid-September, just before a series of attacks in Canada and a hatchet attack against NYPD officers in October. The FBI said the man responsible for the New York attack was inspired by terrorist videos.
Miller said the NYPD issued an advisory to police officers informing them of the message and reminding them to be "extra vigilant."
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