NOVANEWS
A participant in Occupy Wall Street protest is arrested by police during a rally to mark the one year anniversary of the movement in New York.
Morgan Gliedman, 27, and boyfriend Aaron Greene, 31, were arrested on a weapons-possession charge after police officers say they found the dangerous materials in the couple’s apartment, the New York Post reported. The officers claim they found 7 grams of HMTD, a highly explosive white powder, as well as an instructional stack of papers titled “The Terrorist Encyclopedia”.
Police claim that they also discovered a flare launcher that replicates a grenade launcher, a modified 12 gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun, ammunition, and nine high-capacity rifle magazines, unnamed sources told the Post.
The officers obtained a search warrant to enter the apartment stemming from a case of credit card-theft, which Gliedman was allegedly wanted for.
The suspects come from privileged backgrounds that are unusual for suspected terrorists. Gliedman is the daughter of the well-respected Dr. Paul Gliedman, director of radiation oncology at the Beth Israel Hospital, Brooklyn Division, and Susyan Schops Gliedman, a realtor. In 2011, the young woman’s father was listed as one of America’s top doctors in New York Magazine.
Greene received both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from Harvard University and was an Occupy Wall Street activist.
Gliedman and Greene live together in an apartment in Greenwich Village and are expecting a baby. A neighbor who resides in the apartment at 8 West 9thStreet told the Gothamist that they are “hippie types”. The unnamed man said Gliedman is “very friendly, very nice”, whereas Greene is “kind of cold, not the type of person who encouraged politeness.”
Some have begun to question the events of the strange arrest, which were surprising considering the couple’s background. The Post reported the claims made by the New York Police Department, but did not report the defendant’s case.
“The case really does have all the makings of a tabloid reporter’s dream: a super-privileged mom-to-be, living in one of the cushiest neighborhoods in Manhattan, apparently devising bombs with her OWS boyfriend,” writes Alexander Abad-Santos for The Atlantic. “ What Gliedman and Greene were allegedly up to, of course, would be pretty terrifying no matter what neighborhood they were doing it in.”
Authorities allege that Greene has had five run-ins with the police and was previously charged with assault and weapons possession.
Now, the Harvard grad will likely become the father of a newborn while imprisoned. Greene was arraigned Sunday and is being held without bail until his Jan. 4 hearing. Gliedman’s arraignment has been delayed while she is in labor. She is currently in the hospital.
“The whole situation’s sad,” attorney Lisa Pelosi, who is representing Greene, told the Associated Press. She declined to comment about the case any further, leaving the details on the defendant’s side unknown until the case progresses.
NY Couple Not Terrorists, Say Cops, Just Rich Kids With Drug Habits
thedailybeast.com
New York City police have decided that a couple arrested for possession of weapons and explosives don’t appear to be terrorists, just privileged kids with drug habits. By Michael Daly and Lizzie Crocker
The very pregnant rich kid and her Harvard-educated boyfriend arrested on December 29 in New York’s Greenwich Village for possession of explosives and weapons do not appear to be terrorists after all, police say.
Investigators say they believe 27-year-old Morgan Gliedman and 31-year-old Aaron Greene are just two more products of privilege squandering their advantages on drugs.
“It looks like they’re junkies,” a high-level police source says. “Well-to-do junkies, not terrorists.”
Indeed, in the first days of the investigation police reached the tentative conclusion that the explosives and weapons were just part of a drug-fueled, twisted sense of what constitutes cool.
Cops discovered the weapons cache when they executed a search warrant at the couple’s W. 9th Street apartment at 6 a.m. Saturday, acting on a credit-card fraud charge against Gliedman. What they found initially suggested that Gliedman and Greene might be throwbacks to the rich-kid Weatherman radicals who had blown themselves up just two blocks uptown back in 1970.
The added twist was Gliedman’s pregnancy. Not even the most radical radicals of yore had resided amidst explosives while in the ninth month.
Gliedman’s arrest date apparently coincided with her due date and she was taken to a hospital on Saturday while her prospective baby daddy was arraigned on explosives and weapons charges. He entered a not guilty plea and was remanded without bail.
Officials declined to name the hospital where Gliedman had been taken, or to confirm or deny a report that she had given birth. She appears to have no prior arrest record and no previous troubles with the law, beyond the credit-card charge that led to her arrest.
She grew up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and attended Dalton Academy, a prestigious private school. Her parents, prominent oncologist Dr. Paul Gliedman and realtor Susyn Schops Gliedman, could not be reached for comment. A check of her Facebook friends showed a who’s who of the sons and daughters of some of New York’s richest and most notable families.
According to a neighbor who asked not to be named, a very different Gliedman moved into the apartment seven years ago, when she was an undergraduate at NYU.
“She was seemingly a happy-go-lucky girl,” the neighbor told The Daily Beast.
To cops, Greene appears to be living proof that going to Harvard does not necessarily make you any less a knucklehead.
After graduating from NYU, Gliedman earned a master’s degree in creative writing at the Art Institute of Chicago, according to her Facebook page. She returned to her apartment two years ago, no longer manifestly happy and not looking so lucky.
“A very changed person,” the neighbor says.
Greene moved in around the same time, according to her neighbor, who describes both Greene and this very different Gliedman as “very unsociable people.”
“They were very insular and seemed kind of in their own world,” the neighbor says.
The neighbor remembers that Gliedman often had friends to the apartment during her NYU days. That changed when Greene took up residence.
“They kept the apartment filthy and they had vermin problems,” the neighbor says.
The neighbor lends credence to the police view when he adds, “There was always a heavy cloud of smoke emanating from the place, and one got the sense that they were both heavily into drugs.”
Green’s personal hygiene, cops say, is what might have been expected of a junkie.
“To be honest, you could smell him before you saw him,” the neighbor says.
The neighbor said that he could not help but be concerned on seeing that Gliedman was pregnant. He reports that Gliedman’s mother had visited often in recent days, as might be expected with the baby’s imminent arrival.
The other visitors were the police. The criminal complaint filed against Greene and Gliedman says that the cops discovered a plastic container in the living room holding seven grams of a white power that was identified as Hexamethylene Triperoxide Diamine, or HMTD, an easy-to-make explosive and a favorite of actual terrorists.
The complaint says that police also found the makings for more of the stuff, as well as a sawed-off 12-gauge Mossberg 500 shotgun, a Ruger 12-gauge shotgun, a dozen 12-gauge shotgun shells, 9 high-capacity rifle magazines, and 60 5.56-caliber tracer rounds. There was also a 37mm flare launcher, a replica of a M203 grenade launcher.
The complaint also lists a number of books and manuals said to be found in the apartment:
– The Terrorist’s Encyclopedia V. 1.02
– FM 5-25 Explosives and Demolitions
– FM 5-31 Booby Traps
– Improvised and Modified Firearms: Deadly Homemade Weapons
– A Do-It-Yourself Submachine Gun
– Street Sweeper: A Home Workshop Shotgun
– Building the M11/9: A Guide to Construction and Coercion
– FM 5-25 Explosives and Demolitions
– FM 5-31 Booby Traps
