San Francisco Pier 39 Christmas Terror Plot Defused By Undercover Sting

Modesto man was allegedly looking to detonate explosives and shoot up iconic San Francisco attraction

SAN FRANCISCO — A Modesto man and Marine-trained sharpshooter is accused of helming a Christmas Day plot to detonate explosives and unleash a hail of bullets at Pier 39, but was thwarted because he was talking to undercover FBI agents who defused the plan to terrorize the iconic waterfront attraction, authorities said.

Everitt Aaron Jameson, 26, was arrested Friday and has since been charged in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California with attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. He was arraigned Friday in Fresno, but did not enter a plea.

“We are grateful that our hardworking law enforcement partners remain vigilant in protecting our communities, especially during this holiday season,” Eastern District U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert said in a statement.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions even chimed in on the arrest.

“Today, our incredible law enforcement officers have once again helped thwart an alleged plot to kill Americans,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement. “The threat from radical Islamic terrorism is real — and it is serious — but the American people can be assured that the Department of Justice remains vigilant in protecting our homeland.”

According to a criminal complaint, Jameson was identified as an ISIS supporter in September based on his social-media activity, which was brought to authorities’ attention by an agency informant. From that point, FBI agents posing as terrorist sympathizers began routinely communicating with Jameson to draw out his possible intentions for mass violence.

Jameson offered his wages, his vehicle access as a tow truck driver, and his military experience — he trained as a sharpshooter with the U.S. Marine Corps but was discharged shortly after completing basic training for not disclosing an asthma condition — as resources for an attack in San Francisco, the FBI asserts.

While in communication with the undercover agents, Jameson reportedly expressed admiration for the 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting, and the Oct. 31 terror attack in New York City in which a driver drove a box truck through a busy pedestrian and bicyclist thruway in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people.

Jameson’s alleged plan for the San Francisco attack was to set off pipe bombs at the pier to “funnel” fleeing people into an area where he would be waiting to attack them with an assault rifle, the complaint states. He reportedly described Christmas as “the perfect day” for an attack and also expressed willingness to sacrifice his life for the cause.

“Jameson said he did not have and did not need an escape plan because he was ready to die,” the criminal complaint reads.

The FBI contends that when Jameson met with undercover agents Dec. 16, it was under the guise that he was making contact with high-level ISIS leadership. At the meeting, he is said to have requested “ammunition, powder, tubing and nails,” and suggested he assemble pipe bombs at a remote campground.

Two days before he was arrested, Jameson apparently tried to back out out of the plan.

“I don’t think I can do this after all. I’ve reconsidered,” Jameson said, according to the criminal complaint.

It was too late: Two days later on Wednesday, FBI agents descended on Jameson’s home in Modesto and served a search warrant that reportedly turned up two handguns, a small-caliber rifle, assorted fireworks, and a last will and testament notarized a month ago.

Pier 39 declined immediate comment on the news that broke Friday morning.

Jameson’s aunt, Merced resident Sarah Jameson, told KTVU on Friday that she was shocked by the arrest, but noted that he had been “hardened” by a divorce and recently losing custody of his two young children.

“We knew he had switched his religion,” Sarah Jameson said to KTVU. “But we didn’t know how much it had affected him. We just had no idea. That’s not the Everitt I know.”

In a handwritten letter found at his home that seemingly forecasted the attack, he signed with the name Abdallah abu Everitt ibn Gordon al-Amriki, according to the FBI.

This type of undercover sting has long been criticized by a camp of legal experts and civil-rights advocates on the premise it conflates viable threats with delusional terrorist sympathizers who are incapable of carrying out a terrorist act without the government’s help and encouragement.

Mike German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and former senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, voiced that sentiment in an interview with this news organization after the 2013 arrest of a San Jose man who plotted to bomb a Bank of America branch in Oakland, only to be similarly foiled by undercover FBI agents.

“They’re aggrandizing the threat in a way that’s completely beyond the ability of the individual to carry out,” German said at the time.

The time and resources expended on these cases, German added, make it “more difficult for the search for real terrorists.”

In that 2013 case, Matthew Aaron Llaneza, who was made to believe he was working with the Taliban, eventually reached a plea agreement with the government and was given a 15-year federal prison sentence.

Staff writer Emily DeRuy contributed to this report.

Source: Mercury News