A New York woman plotted to bomb the state Capitol in Albany after pledging allegiance to ISIS and celebrating the 9/11 terror attacks, the FBI said Thursday.
Jessica Bowie, 35, from Albany, allegedly began strategizing the attack in July — and planned to place the bomb in a DoorDash food delivery bag, taking apparent glee in the bloodshed it would cause,the feds wrote in a criminal complaint.
“Blowing kafirs [non-Muslims] brains out is beautiful,” she told someone who turned out to be an FBI informant, the complaint said.
She allegedly purchased bomb materials from a Home Depot on Aug. 5, while wearing a burqa, and planned the attack with the help of FBI informants for two weeks, the feds said.
Bowie, who converted to Islam five years ago and was going by the Islamic name “Aisha Saif,” also allegedly tracked the Capitol building for weeks, taking pictures from various vantage points including an “observation hall nearby,” according to the complaint.
Law enforcement had Bowie on their radar for five weeks leading up to her arrest and believe she was “radicalized online,” First Assistant US Attorney John A. Sarcone III said at a press conference Thursday evening.
She sent one of the informants pictures of Downtown Albany with the Capitol circled, indicating it was the building she wanted to target, telling them she would do it on a “day when we know Senators will be meeting,” according to the FBI.
In a message, she said she wanted to “Target my State Capitol… ideally in a way I could get away with and hop on a plane after,” the complaint said.
The ISIS-inspired militant planned to escape to Syria after the attack, according to the feds.
She allegedly messaged an informant, on July 29, that she wanted “to destroy as much of the building as possible and kill the senators while they are meeting. I want them to lose a lot of important documents as well.”
“I don’t want to take this kind of risk and have it kill what, two or three people. What good is that?” Bowie also allegedly quipped.
On Aug. 5, she even boasted to informants that if she was successful, she would return to plan more attacks on US soil — and target “New Year’s Eve in Times Square,” according to the complaint.
She would have preferred bombing the White House “with the President,” but Bowie allegedly whined to one of the informants that it’s “an even harder job.”
“Maybe in the future we go back for that but I figured this is the biggest thing I can do. I can get to it easy you know,” she said, according to the complaint.
A search of Bowie’s social media revealed many fanatical pro-radical Islamist and anti-American posts in the weeks leading up to her planned attack, according to the complaint.
It is unclear which platforms she had accounts on, though they were often suspended for violating terms of use.
On May 28, an account linked to Bowie posted, “Praise be to Allah for September 11th,” according to the FBI complaint.
On May 8, another account believed to be Bowie told another user in Arabic, “I will poison these infidels,” the complaint alleges.
She also discussed her belief that “jihad is an obligation,” and recorded herself reciting a pledge of allegiance to ISIS, according to the FBI.
The FBI informants met Bowie Wednesday and gave her an inert explosive device and an inert handgun, along with instructions on how to detonate the bomb, the complaint said.
During that meeting, Bowie chillingly admitted that she “went from a little girl waving an American flag after 9/11 to now having stickers of the falling towers.”
“Folks, let that sink in,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Albany Field Office Craig L. Tremaroli told reporters.
“Again, Ms. Bowie didn’t just want to kill lawmakers; she wanted a complete destruction of our government.”
She was arrested Wednesday near a McDonald’s not far from the Capitol building and appeared to offer a partial confession during her interview with FBI agents, according to the complaint.
“There’s no helping me, you guys know enough, there’s no helping me, I’m…going to prison for the rest of my life,” she allegedly said.
“Material support is up to 20 years in prison, I already Googled it before, I know I’m going to jail.”
Her ethnicity is unclear, but she is believed to be a US citizen, Sarcone said.
Photos of Bowie at the Central Park Rose Garden in Schenectady in 2014 — seven years before she converted to Islam and became fanatical — show a different woman, snapped smelling flowers and covered in tattoos, including one that said “Pain” on the top of her hand.
Just last month, another radicalized upstate New Yorker, 37-year-old Catherine Beth Washburn, was charged with allegedly supporting an Islamic terrorist organization after donating $30,000 in cryptocurrency to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group in Gaza.
Gov. Kathy Hochul thanked the FBI and law enforcement for thwarting Bowie’s possible attack in a statement Thursday.
“Earlier this year, amid a rise in political violence and threats against public officials, we took steps to strengthen security at the State Capitol and across state government,” she said.
“While there is no immediate threat at this time, we will continue working closely with our law enforcement partners to protect New Yorkers and keep our communities safe.”
