The FBI has reportedly stopped a planned terror attack intended for San Francisco’s Pier 39 on Christmas day.
According to court documents obtained by ABC News, police have arrested Everitt Aaron Jameson of Modesto, California. Jameson is reportedly a former Marine, though it is currently unclear when he served or what type of discharge he received.
According to reports, Jameson was in contact with an undercover FBI agent as he planned the attack, and was taken into custody earlier this week following the execution of a search warrant on his home in Modesto on December 20th. Authorities found several firearms, as well as fireworks that are illegal in the state of California, and far more damning, a white envelope containing a hand written letter indicating his intentions and containing his last will and testament.
ABC News has reported that Jameson was qualified as a “sharp shooter” by the Marine Corps, which is being addressed by a number of news outlets as an indicator of the veteran turned accused terrorist’s precision shooting capability. However, it’s important to note that, under Marine Corps marksmanship standards, Sharpshooter is a qualification awarded to Marines that fall within acceptable shooting standards, but not those who excel. Marine Corps rifle qualifications include Marksman (the lowest qualified shooters), Sharpshooter (moderately qualified shooters) and Expert (those who attain the highest level of proficiency with the firearm).
The documents show that Jameson chose San Francisco’s tourist-heavy Pier 39 because he “had been there before and knew it was a heavily crowded area.” He went on to state that he knew it would be easy to “funnel” people into an area of the pier where he anticipated that he could inflict maximum casualties.
The letter, which claims the name “Abdallah adu Everitt ibn Gordon,” states, “You’ve allowed Donald J Trump to give away Al Quds to the Jews. Both You and he are wrong, it belongs to the Muslemeen.”
“Al Quds” is the Arabic name for the city of Jerusalem. President Donald Trump recently formally acknowledged Jerusalem as the diplomatic capital of Israel.
The FBI affidavit goes to recount Jameson’s social media activities, which included liking and posting pro-ISIS content on Facebook, as well as facets of his conversations with the undercover agent. It appears Jameson drew inspiration from the October terror attack in New York City, wherein a man drove a vehicle into a crowd, killing eight people, as well as a deadly 2015 shooting in San Bernardino. According to the agent, Jameson seemed to be planning to use a combination of the two methods, first inflicting casualties using a vehicle, then killing more people with his firearms. Based on his requests to the FBI agent, as well as the fireworks found in his house, it seems likely that Jameson also intended to use explosives in the attack.
Jameson further indicated that he intended to die during the attack, and that he was going to seek approval from “his bosses,” who was listed as al-Baghdadi in the criminal complaint.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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