FBI says no terrorism link for Reston man found with weapons

A Virginia man arrested in New Jersey with a cache of weapons, a map of a U.S. military installation and a traditional Middle Eastern headdress has no apparent terrorist ties, the FBI said Tuesday. Lloyd R. Woodson, 43, of Reston, is charged with multiple weapons offenses after being arrested Monday in Branchburg, N.J. Detectives searching his hotel room found the map, the red-and-white headdress, a grenade launcher, a semiautomatic assault rifle with a defaced serial number, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, prosecutors said.

The federal Joint Terrorism Task Force was called in to investigate, but FBI Special Agent Brian Travers, a spokesman for the Newark field office, said the "preliminary assessment is that there is no terrorist link." Travers said agents based that tentative conclusion on "the fact that he has no connection to a known terrorist group and there doesn't seem to be any specific terrorist plot." Investigators said that Woodson's intentions remain unclear and that the investigation is continuing.

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Man with weapons, map of military base arrested

A man was arrested Monday after police found an arsenal of high-powered weapons and a map of a U.S. military base in his New Jersey hotel. Lloyd R. Woodson, 43, was arrested and faces multiple weapons charges after an investigation into his suspicious behavior at a store in Branchburg, New Jersey, said local prosecutor Wayne J. Forrest.

Woodson, wearing a military jacket, went to a store called Quick Chek on Monday afternoon and was acting suspiciously, Forrest said in a statement. The clerk called authorities. When officers arrived, Woodson ran into the woods. He was subdued after wrestling with officers, the statement said.

During the struggle, officers noticed that Woodson was wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying an assault rifle in his coat. Officers searched Woodson's hotel room and found another assault rifle, a grenade launcher, a police scanner, another bulletproof vest, a map of a U.S. military base, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a Middle Eastern-style headdress.

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Corruption New Jersey style: Update 1

New Jersey corruption case advances with two guilty pleas

A corruption scandal case that shook New Jersey – involving three mayors, five rabbis, two state legislators, and a man accused of organ trafficking – took a step forward Wednesday when two of the accused entered guilty pleas.

Guy Catrillo, a former planning aide, and Maher Khalil, the suspended deputy director of the Jersey City Department of Health and Human Services, admitted to a federal judge that they took bribes – worth tens of thousands of dollars – from an undercover witness to facilitate business deals.

The undercover sting, which stretched for two years across multiple countries and netted as many as 44 people, exposed the deep and wide roots of graft in New Jersey.News of the sting has captured attention in New Jersey and beyond, as much for its cast of characters as for the outlandish details of the sting, as the New York Times described in July:

It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.

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Corruption New Jersey style, complete with body parts trafficking

A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said.

The case began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, it mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past.

It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash — once in a box of Apple Jacks cereal stuffed with $97,000.

“For these defendants, corruption was a way of life,” Ralph J. Marra Jr., the acting United States attorney in New Jersey, said at a news conference. “They existed in an ethics-free zone.” Mr. Marra said that average citizens “don’t have a chance” against the culture of influence peddling the investigation had unearthed.

As 44 people walked before cameras last week, their hands in cuffs, after they were arrested in the state’s biggest corruption scandal in years — but not, to be sure, that many years — even their most scandal-fatigued constituents, from the gritty precincts of Journal Square in Jersey City to the glittering new condominiums on the Hudson in Hoboken, began to wonder: Why is New Jersey so unshakably corrupt?

That answer, it turns out, has as many nuances as corruption itself. Interviews with law enforcement officials, prosecutors and, perhaps the best authority on the subject — those arrested in previous sweeps, like Mr. Botti — reveal a culture of corruption so ingrained that it has become impossible to resist when the envelope appears.

• "44 Charged by U.S. in New Jersey Corruption Sweep", New York Times, 7/23/09.
• "The Man Who Sank New Jersey", Forbes, 7/23/09.
• "With arrests, New Jersey stakes claim as corruption capital", Christian Science Monitor, 7/23/09.
• "The beautiful side of New Jersey corruption", Time, 7/24/09.
• "Officials decry New Jersey corruption", Time, 7/24/09.
  
• "In New Jersey, Ideal Conditions for Corruption", New York Times, 7/26/09.
• "About That New Jersey Organ Scandal", Wall Street Journal, 7/26/09.

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