FBI stops potential terrorist attack on Kansas City

Joshua Goldberg is held in custody after suspected of potential bombing in Kansas City.

TNS

Jeh Johnson, United States Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, speaks during the 2015 Service of Remembrance at the Flight 93 National Memorial on Friday, Sept. 11, 2015 in Pittsburgh, Pa. (Michael Henning/erPittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS) photo courtesy of MCT Campus

by Zoe Butler, Social Media Editor

There were plans by a 20-year-old man from Florida to perform a terrorist act in Kansas City Sept. 11. The FBI raided the home of the suspect, Joshua Ryne Goldberg, taking him into custody.

Goldberg used a direct messaging application to talk with an informant about the plans of the attack. Kansas City became the target, when the informant was already in the Midwest. The conversation between these two people over the messaging application started Aug. 20.

They discussed where a popular place was that they could place the explosives. They decided on the Kansas City 9/11 Memorial Stair Climb at the Town Pavilion. This is annual event is very popular, especially with the firefighters participating and paying tribute to the firefighters who sacrificed their lives during the terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001.
Goldberg was accused of telling the informant to dip nails, screws and glass in rat poison and put it in a pressure cooker bomb, trying to kill as many people as they could.

Retired FBI agent Michael Tabman described how timing is everything.

“If we didn’t get control of it, he might have gone to someone else that we didn’t know about, and might have gotten someone who had the wherewithal to pull it off,” Tabman said.