FBI Agent Begins Testimony in Bronx Synagogue Bomb Plot Trial

Special Agent Robert Fuller hoisted a six-foot-long heat-seeking Stinger missile launcher onto his right shoulder, gazed through the eye piece and aimed the gun towards the back of the federal courtroom in lower Manhattan.

No one flinched. If anything, the jurors leaned in for a better look.

That’s because the military weapon resting on Fuller’s shoulder was fake — rendered inert by lab technicians in an FBI lab in Quantico, VA, and designed solely to fool four Newburgh men into thinking they were a step closer to shooting down military planes at Stewart International Airport last May.

Fuller said he paid a confidential informant about a $100,000 to help catch the men plotting to blow up Bronx synagogues and military planes last year. But defense lawyers say the FBI agent came up with the whole plot in the first place.

As the prosecution's first witness, Fuller told the court how he told that confidential informant, Shaheed Hussain, to visit a Newburgh mosque to find radical Muslims. Hussain frequented the Masjid Al-Ikhlas mosque in Newburgh, NY at least 12 times, and met defendant James Cromitie in June 2009. Fuller instructed Hussain to tell Cromitie he was an import-export businessman and a representative of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a Pakistani terrorist organization.

Fuller testified on Wednesday that he coached Hussain to be "passive" and "ask open-ended questions" as he got to know Cromitie. But defense lawyers attempted to show on cross-examination that Hussain went much further than that and suggested that Fuller scripted out the crimes he wanted the defendants to commit. 

Over 11 months, Fuller testified, he supplied the four defendants — Cromitie, Onta Williams, David Williams and Laguerre Payen — with cars, cellphones, a handgun, digital cameras, three inert IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and two inert heat-seeking Stinger missiles. He located storage spaces for the weapons and held on to the storage key. Fuller also provided money to help the defendants — who were struggling with unemployment and have criminal records — with groceries, rent and cell phone bills.

That was the key, said Alicia McWilliams, the aunt of defendant David Williams. "When you have ex-offenders coming home, and people don't have jobs, money plays a factor in our community," said McWilliams, speaking with WNYC outside the courtroom. "And the government should be ashamed."

The defendants were allegedly promised thousands of dollars more and even a BMW if they went along with the plan.

Thirty five meetings between Hussain and the defendants were recorded by the FBI, and the contents of those audio and video recordings have still not been played in court. When defense lawyer Mark Gombiner tried to have one 57-minute video played of an October 2008 meeting between Hussain and Cromitie, prosecutors objected vehemently, arguing that playing the video on the second day of the trial would disrupt the order of the whole proceeding.

Gombiner argued that the video will show Hussain pressured Cromitie from the start to wage jihad according to the government's well-scripted play — and that prosecutors shouldn't be trying to get defense lawyers to play along as well.

"We are not actors in their play," said Gombiner. "Our job here is not to be little marionettes."

Judge Colleen McMahon said she would reserve judgment on the matter until Thursday.