A Former FBI Agent’s View of the Lodi “Terrorism” Case

Out here in the Central Valley of california, the criminal prosecution of two Pakistani’s accused of being members of a terrorist cell received much attention.  One jury deadlocked on the charges for one defendant (an ice cream triuck driver) and conviocted the other.  The LA Times recently ran a story about a decorated FBI agent who reviewed the video of the interrogation on which the cases were based:

Before the wins and losses are tallied up and the war on terror goes down in the books as either wisdom or folly, it might be recalled what took place this spring on the 13th floor of the federal courthouse in Sacramento. There, in a perfectly dignified room, in front of prosecutors, defense attorneys and judge, a tall, gaunt man named James Wedick Jr. was fighting for a chance to testify, to tell jurors about the 35 years he spent in the FBI and how it came to be that he was standing before them not on the side of the U.S. government but next to two Pakistani Muslims, son and father, whose books and prayers and immigrant dreams were now being picked over in the first terrorism trial in California.

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If the whole story sounded too bizarre to be true, the 22-year-old jihadist and his 47-year-old father—the neighborhood ice cream man—had confessed to everything on camera. At home in the Gold River suburbs of Sacramento, Jim Wedick agreed to study the FBI video as a favor to one of the defense attorneys. He was fully expecting to call the attorney back and advise him that son and father, guilty as charged, needed to strike a quick plea deal. It was hard to trump a confession, and in this instance the feds were holding not one confession but two. Even so, Wedick always had been the kind of investigator who needed to measure every bit of evidence for himself. So he stuck the video in his player and sat back on the couch to watch. . . .  The video ended and Wedick picked up the phone and called defense attorney Johnny L. Griffin. Whatever hesitation he had about taking on the FBI office that he, more than anyone, had put on the map—the office where his wife still worked as an agent—was now gone. “Johnny, it’s the sorriest interrogation, the sorriest confession, I’ve ever seen.”

KJ