As Chinese siblings are charged with planting an IED at CENTCOM headquarters, the question must be asked.
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Screengrab via Youtube
Was there just an attempt to carry out a mass casualty attack at CENTCOM headquarters?
MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida is where the headquarters of CENTCOM, the United States Central Command are located. CENTCOM oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, Central Asia, and some areas of South Asia, and that means that it is involved in U.S. actions against the Islamic Republic of Iran. Recently, an improvised explosive device was discovered outside a gate at MacDill; it didn’t go off, but if it had, the damage could have been extensive. Was someone targeting CENTCOM? And if so, who?The more one examines this story, the more questions multiply.
One possibility, however, can be ruled out with near-certainty: this doesn’t seem to have been a jihad attack. Yet the points of resemblance between this story and accounts of Islamic jihad plots are not limited to the fact that the weapon of choice was an IED, and that the target was likely American military personnel. Fox 13 Tampa Bay adds the most piquant of details, that the would-be bombers’ “motive remains unknown,” which we are told virtually every time a Muslim with a Qur’an in his backpack screams “Allahu akbar” and starts killing infidels. Yet this time, there is no indication whatsoever that the accused pairare Islamic jihadis, and their motive really is unclear. They are, however, Chinese, and that raises a whole new host of questions.
Fox 13 reported Thursday that Alen Zheng, who is only 20 years old, “faces multiple federal charges, including attempting to damage government property, unlawfully making a destructive device and possessing an unregistered destructive device.” He is, however, unlikely to go to trial for these charges, for he has “fled to China.” His sister, Ann Mary Zheng, who is seven years older than Alen, on the other hand, will likely have to answer for what she and her brother were trying to do: she “is now in custody,” and “was booked on charges of witness tampering and acting as an accessory after the fact.”
It all started on March 10, when “a 911 call warned of a bomb near the base’s visitor center. At the time, no device had been located.” Who made the call? No one knew at the time, but it turned out to be Alen Zheng, using a burner phone he bought at Best Buy. He apparently made the call in the hope of terrorizingthe people at MacDill. At the time of the call itself, however, no one at MacDill appeared to be particularly concerned about it, as nothing was found, and the people on the base went about their business.
On March 16, however, the situation suddenly changed: “An Air Force service member discovered a hidden explosive device near the visitor center. Investigators later determined it was an improvised explosive device capable of causing serious harm or death.” Alen and Ann Mary Zheng “quickly made plans to leave the country. The day after the bomb threat, the pair allegedly sold the vehicle used to transport the device to CarMax and booked flights to China. They both left for China by March 12.”
Ann Mary Zheng, however, “later returned to the U.S. and was stopped in Detroit, Mich., on March 17.” Apparently she came back to try to conceal evidence of the bomb plot: “Authorities allege she helped her brother escape and tried to get rid of evidence tied to the investigation.” She failed: “During a search of Alen Zheng’s Land O’Lakes home, investigators said they found items consistent with those used to build the explosive device. Traces of explosive residue were also reportedly found in the vehicle the pair sold.”
Further complicating the case, meanwhile, is the fact that it isjust part of “a federal investigation that also led to charges against another individual, identified as Jonathan James Elder, 35, who is accused of making threatening phone calls to the base days after the device was discovered.”
U.S. Attorney Gregory Kehoe says: “We are exploring every avenue to get [Alen] Zheng back to the United States.” That’s great. We hope he succeeds, and that eventually we will get answers to the numerous questions involved in this case: Were the Zhengs acting alone, out of some personal animus, or were they agents of the Chinese Communist government? Was this an attempt to disrupt CENTCOM’s operations, or just a couple of leftist nuts acting upon their hatred of the United States? If the People’s Republic was behind it, there are all sorts of reasons to downplay the incident at this time, but will any response be made? Could we at least get that program to bring over 500,000 Chinese nationals canceled?
We’ll likely never know what really happened here, and the story will be forgotten by the next news cycle. The number of stories of that kind would fill a good-sized volume. Someday, maybe, we’ll find out what is really going on.
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