Pa. man convicted of terror bomb plot

SCRANTON - Apparently agreeing with the government that Michael Curtis Reynolds is a terrorist and not a terrorist-hunter, a federal jury took little more than an hour yesterday to convict the Wilkes-Barre "loner" of trying to help al-Qaeda destroy fuel pipelines and ruin the U.S. economy.

Reynolds, impassive and silent, nodded once when he heard the first of four terror-related guilty verdicts, as though he expected that outcome. He had no friends or relatives at the five-day trial. He was immediately led off to jail.

Reynolds, 49, was also convicted of a charge of possessing a hand grenade but acquitted of a second grenade-possession charge.

No date on sentencing was announced; he faces about 60 years in prison.

Reynolds was accused of going on the Internet to solicit al-Qaeda in a scheme to blow up the Trans-Continental gas pipeline, a Wyoming refinery, and the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

The jury of six women and six men found that, between October and December 2005, Reynolds attempted to provide "material support to al-Qaeda," as well as "resources to be used in maliciously damaging or destroying property by means of force or explosive."

The jury also found that Reynolds "solicited others to engage in a felony using physical force against property," and that he "knowingly distributed through the Internet information to be used and in furtherance of criminal violence."

"I'm disappointed," was all defense attorney Joseph O'Brien said as he left the courthouse yesterday. Assistant U.S. Attorney John C. Gurganus did not comment.

Shannen Rossmiller, the former judge who hunts extremists on the Web and who first alerted the FBI to Reynolds, said from her Montana home yesterday: "I'm very happy justice prevailed. This will hopefully serve as a deterrent to anyone to cause this country harm in the name of al-Qaeda."

Rossmiller had testified that Reynolds believed she was an al-Qaeda operative and that he had sent her Internet communications with a catastrophic bomb plot to try to break the economy, somehow end the Iraq war, and drive out President Bush. Upon receiving Reynolds' initial e-mail messages, Rossmiller alerted the FBI.

Those communications, along with the knowledge that Reynolds attempted to blow up his parents when he was a teenager, convinced Rossmiller that Reynolds was a "security threat," she said yesterday.

"Obviously," Rossmiller added, "the verdict reflects that."

In 2003, Rossmiller - described as a "formal FBI source" - ensnared a Washington-state National Guardsman who went on the Web to give U.S. tank secrets to al-Qaeda. That man, Ryan Anderson, is in prison for life.

In closing arguments yesterday, O'Brien tried to convince the jury that Reynolds was very much like Rossmiller, trying to serve his country by ferreting out terror. "Maybe he wasn't the best amateur sleuth in the world," O'Brien said. "But that doesn't make him a terrorist."

O'Brien described Reynolds as a very bright "loner," "unorthodox" and "kind of a dreamer." "He was a guy looking for his day in the sun, looking to make his mark," O'Brien said. "He did his best, but maybe he didn't do it in the best way.

"He wasn't turning on his country."

In rebuttal, Gurganus shot up and said: "He did turn on his country." He added that Reynolds had been "exhorting al-Qaeda to strike" against America by sending bomb recipes and diagrams over the Web.

"Money, money, money, money," is what motivated Reynolds, Gurganus said. He wanted al-Qaeda to give him $40,000 in a bag to be left at an Idaho rest stop, the prosecutor said. The FBI placed the bag there, then arrested Reynolds when he went to the rest stop to get it.

By taking the stand this week, Reynolds opened himself to a barrage of questions from Gurganus about inconsistencies in things Reynolds had said and written - from allegedly false diplomas, to alleged exaggerations about his military and employment records, to "glaring holes" in his story that he was a soldier-of-fortune-type interested in taking down al-Qaeda.

"He's like the guy who gets caught in the house saying he's not trying to burglarize it, but only testing the security system," Gurganus said. "It's silly."

During the trial, Reynolds had testified that the bombs he had diagrammed on the Web and sent to the person he thought was from al-Qaeda could not have worked, because he had purposely designed them to fail.

An FBI weapons expert disagreed, saying that the bombs were viable as described.