Civilian Stings
I guess I don't quite understand why Shannon Rossmiller wants to publicize what she is doing. One presumes she has a reason for doing so, but it seems it might endanger her or her family or potentially undermine her effectiveness.
Shannon Rossmiller hunts terrorists on-line.
Like a hunter using a duck call, Shannen Rossmiller invites the online attentions of would-be terrorists by adorning her e-mail with video clips of Westerners getting their heads cut off.
"They get pumped up when they see beheadings. For them, it's like rock videos," Rossmiller said. "I always give the appearance that I am one of them."
Appearances deceive. At her Montana high school, Rossmiller was a cheerleader — a farm girl whose slight frame meant she was the one hoisted to the top of the human pyramid. Now 35, she is a mother of three, a part-time paralegal and a $23,000-a-year municipal court judge in a town north of here.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, she has found herself an unpaid night job. She uses the Internet to find terrorism suspects, she said, hunting for them while her family sleeps, spending the hours between 3 a.m. and dawn at her home computer. Her husband, Randy, a wireless network technician, keeps eight computers and two broadband systems working in their house.
Posing as an al-Qaeda operative, she has helped federal agents set up stings that have netted two Americans — a Washington state National Guardsman convicted in 2004 of attempted espionage, and a Pennsylvania man who prosecutors say sought to blow up oil installations in the United States. Rossmiller was a key prosecution witness against the Guardsman, who is serving a life sentence, and said she has been told she will be called as a witness in the Pennsylvania case.
Most of Rossmiller's terrorist tracking, though, has focused on foreign suspects, she said. By her count, she has turned over to federal investigators about 60 "packages" of information on suspects outside the United States.
She provided The Washington Post with hundreds of pages of e-mail exchanges that she said are transcripts of her conversations with would-be jihadists outside this country. Rossmiller said she meets nearly every week with U.S. intelligence contacts in Montana, and that they have periodically given her feedback about the usefulness of her information. She said she has been told that foreign intelligence officers have detained more than a dozen individuals whom she helped identify.
But while Rossmiller has been vital in uncovering two cases of domestic terrorism, it is not clear how extensive a role she has played in the global fight against terrorism. Federal intelligence sources confirmed that for several years she has provided the FBI and the CIA with useful information, but refused to characterize it or say how it has been used. Her assertions about detentions of foreign suspects could not be independently confirmed, and officials from the FBI and CIA declined to speak publicly about her.
She apparently has been seeking publicity on her activities, which by the account in the WaPo are extensive. It sounds as if she has been very useful in tracking down some people, but appears to be frustrated that the FBI and other government agencies do not publicly acknowledge her role. Local law enforcement have been discussing how to keep her and her family safe, so the job she is doing is extremely risky. I don't think I would want to publicize it, personally.
But thank you for your service, Ms. Rossmiller.
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Blue Crab Boulevard » Blog Archive » Internet Jihadis — September 30, 2006 @ 1:09 pm
By Shawn, June 4, 2006 @ 6:47 pm
If this is the woman I read about a year or so ago she is a true patriot. And she is risking her own well-being by doing what she does. Gee, do you think that John Kerry’s wife would be willing to make a commitment to her country and her fellow Americans as this woman has?