FBI charges soldier with sharing bomb-making recipes
An Army private at Fort Riley, Kansas, has been arrested on charges of providing instructions on how to make bombs to people he met online, including an undercover FBI agent.
Pfc. Jarrett William Smith, 24, was charged with distributing information related to explosives and weapons of mass destruction. In a criminal complaint, FBI officials said Smith provided bomb-making recipes in Facebook conversations.
Using the acronym for improvised explosive devices, Smith allegedly wrote in a Facebook chat in December: “Oh yeah, I got knowledge of IEDs for days. We can make cellphone IEDs in the style of the Afghans. I can teach you that.”
Court records did not list an attorney for Smith.
The FBI was alerted to Smith’s statements on Facebook, and used a confidential informant as well as an undercover agent to engage in online discuslocal sions with him. Over time, Smith allegedly offered bomb-making formulas to them both.
Investigators found Smith had talked about joining a farright Ukrainian paramilitary group in 2016, but ended up joining the U.S. Army a year later.
In his group conversation, Smith wrote last month that he was looking for more “radicals” like himself, and talked about possibly killing far-left protesters known as antifa, or possibly destroying cell towers or a news station, authorities alleged.
That same month, he also talked about possibly using a vehicle bomb to attack the headquarters of a major news network, according to the criminal complaint, although authorities did not identify the network in court papers.
On Friday, Smith and the undercover FBI agent began talking online about different types of bombs that could be built from everyday materials, the complaint says.
It describes some of those bomb recipes as accurate; others were not or were only accurate if the right type of ingredients were acquired.
FBI agents arrested Smith on Saturday, and officials say after his arrest he made several incriminating statements acknowledging he had shared bomb-making recipes with others. FBI Special Agent Brandon LaMar said in an affidavit that Smith admitted to him “that he knows how to make improvised explosives devices.”