TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2010


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Politics & The Nation A5 Group seeks companies’ pledge not to use corporate money for campaigns BY DAN EGGEN Several prominent Democrat-


ic politicians announced a new coalition Monday aimed at pres- suring major companies not to use corporate money for political campaigns. The Coalition for Accountabil-


ity in Political Spending, spear- headed by New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio (D), aims to secure promises from major corporations to fully disclose po- litical spending and, ideally, to


4 defendants in FBI sting meant to kill, jury is told


BY TOM HAYS


new york —Four men accused of plotting to blow up synagogues and shoot down military planes thought the scheme, concocted in a government sting, would kill innocentNewYorkers, a prosecu- tor said Monday in closing argu- ments at the men’s trial. “The defendants thought this


was real — real bombs, real mis- siles — every step of the way,” Assistant U.S. Attorney David Raskin told jurors in federal court inManhattan. Attorneys for alleged master-


mind James Cromitie and co- defendants Onta Williams, David Williams and Laguerre Payen have accusedtheU.S.government of entrapping harmless dupes with a paid FBI informant posing as a representative of a Pakistani terrorist organization. Raskin argued that the men


needed no prompting to launch a jihad operation. “The FBI did exactly what it’s supposed to do,” he said. “It caught four dangerous men be- fore they could do any real harm. . . . Ordinary people wouldn’t even dream of what these defen- dants did.” The prosecutor cited secretly recorded tapes that he said showed Cromitie didn’t flinch whenthe informant,ShahedHus- sain, said he would finance and provide weapons for the attacks. “He didn’t say, ‘I’mout of here.


This crazy Pakistani is not for me,’ ” Raskin said. “It wasn’t the CI doing any convincing. Cromi- tie wanted those weapons.” The tapes, Raskin said, showed Cromitie “wanted to be a soldier in America, but not for America.” In his closing argument, Cro-


mitie attorney Vincent Briccetti attacked the credibility of Hus- sain, 53, a Pakistani immigrant with a fraud conviction. Briccetti accused Hussain of selectively taping Briccetti’s “impoverished and unsophisticated” client to distort the truth, win favor with the FBIandavoid being deported. Hussain “is a liar, straight up,”


Briccetti told the jury. “He’s not just any old liar:He lied to you.” The defense has dismissed the


tapes as a “movie written, pro- duced and directed” by the FBI. “There’s no proof James Cro-


mitie had the ability to carry out this type of crime,” Briccetti said. “Without the help of the FBI, Cromitie wasn’t going to do any- thing.” The closing arguments were


expected to continue Tuesday be- fore the case goes to the jury this week.


Cromitie, 44, Williams, 34, Wil-


liams, 29, and Payen, 28, have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction and conspiracy to acquire and use antiaircraft missiles to kill U.S. officers and employees. Prosecutors allege that with


Hussain’s encouragement, Cro- mitie hatched the scheme to blow up synagogues in the Bronx with remote-controlled bombs. They say the men wanted to shoot down planes at the Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y., about an hour north of New York City.


Agents arrested the men last


yearaftertheyplantedthedevices — fakes supplied by the FBI — in the Riverdale section of the Bronx while under heavy surveillance. Hussain testified during 13


days on the witness stand that he met Cromitie in 2008 after being sent by the FBI to infiltrate a Newburgh mosque. After that, Hussain helped make hundreds of hours of video and audio tapes that were played during the trial. One video shows themenprac-


ticing with a shoulder missile launcher and praying together two weeks before the planned attack. In other tapes, Cromitie is heard ranting about wanting to kill Jewsandretaliate againstU.S. aggression in theMiddle East. —Associated Press


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avoid spending corporate money directly on elections. The effort marks the latest response to the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling early this year in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which al- lows corporations, unions and nonprofit groups to spend un- limited amounts of money on elections. The ruling has helped fuel a record year for spending by outside interest groups, mostly in favor of Republicans, records


show. The new coalition springs out


of a successful effort by de Blasio, who serves as a trustee for New York City’s largest pension fund, to persuade Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase andMorgan Stan- ley to adopt policies that forbid spending money from their gen- eral treasuries on campaigns. The firms can still run their political action committees, which are operated indepen- dently, officials said.


De Blasio said in an interview


that the national effort is neces- sary because Congress could not agree on new disclosure require- ments for corporations. “The efforts to respond to


Citizens United on the federal level haven’t worked, so it’s time for states and localities to step up,” de Blasio said. “We have to encourage transparency and dis- courage bad corporate behavior.” Other Democrats joining de Blasio in the coalition are Illinois


Gov. Pat Quinn; Pennsylvania Treasurer Rob McCord; Los An- geles Controller Wendy Greuel; New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and North Carolina Treasurer Janet Cowell. President Obama has sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s decision on corporate political spending, but Democrats twice could not push legislation through the Senate that would increase disclosure require- ments for companies. Republi-


cans accuse Democrats of at- tempting to quash the free- speech rights of corporations, in part because business groups tend to lean toward the GOP. De Blasio said the anti-spend-


ing coalition welcomes Republi- cans and said many GOP officials on the local and state levels are more likely than national Repub- licans to share the group’s con- cerns. “I fully expect this to be a bipartisan effort,” he said. eggend@washpost.com


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