Mohamed Osman Mohamud's car bomb was a (government-constructed) dud. But that teeny little fact hasn't kept shockwaves from coursing through City Hall in the aftermath of the bogus attack. One of the biggest has been whether Portland should rejoin the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force it withdrew from five years ago.
Dan Saltzman, seizing the moment, is saying yes. (Although his chief of staff told me Wednesday that Saltzman now may be willing to wait until after next week's council meeting...)
And Mayor Sam Adams is saying no—for now—while he waits for the city attorney's office to confirm whether Barack Obama's Justice Department has been more ethical than George W. Bush's. Other commissioners are open to at least asking the question.
But not Randy Leonard. He's not having any of it—and he's mad that some people are saying "the Portland Police Bureau was not fully engaged with the FBI in the investigation and arrest of the suspected Pioneer Courthouse Square terrorist."
The Mercury got to see an email he sent last night to his fellow commissioners and others, including Police Chief Mike Reese and the police bureau's top operations manager, Mike Kuykendall, formerly of the Portland Business Alliance. In it Leonard said officials like Saltzman are asking the wrong question.
The correct one, as Leonard sees it?
"What would have happened that didn’t happen in the successful apprehension of the Pioneer Courthouse Square suspect if the City were a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force?"
And wouldn't you know—after extensively citing the 2005 resolution that memorialized the city's withdrawal from the FBI's group—that Leonard also has an answer to his question:
It is clear from the 2005 resolution that the same coordination between the FBI and the Portland Police Bureau is required when a specific terrorist threat exists whether the City of Portland is a member of the JTTF or not.
Leonard, along with then-Mayor Tom Potter, was among the 4-1 majority voting to extract Portland's cops from the control of an FBI that many feared wasn't playing ball with judicial safeguards. (Case in point: Brandon Mayfield.) Adams also voted in the majority, with Saltzman as the lone dissenter.
To see Leonard's full e-mail keep reading. (Also click here, just to balance things out.)