The FBI arrested a 35-year-old woman for allegedly plotting an Islamic State-inspired attack on the New York Capitol building, federal officials said Thursday.
Jessica Bowie of Albany, New York, was charged with attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization, officials said.
Bowie was in federal custody Thursday and appeared in court, where she was formally notified of the charges.
She converted to Islam about five years ago and created several social media profiles to “espouse anti-American messages,” according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
John A. Sarcone III, first assistant U.S. attorney for the district, called the allegations “deeply disturbing.”
The complaint contains extensive details about Bowie’s alleged plans, extracted in part by undercover FBI agents posing as Islamic State facilitators in communications with her.
Bowie allegedly began communicating plans to attack the state Capitol in mid-July, sharing the information with a person she was unaware was a confidential FBI source, officials said. The communications continued for more than a month until her arrest this week, they said.
She allegedly told the source she wanted help making explosives to “target my state capitol … ideally in a way I could get away with and hop on a plane after.” She added that she didn’t know whether it was “doable,” according to excerpts from their conversation included in the complaint.
In the same conversation, Bowie allegedly confirmed that she was an Islamic State supporter and that she lived less than two miles from the state Capitol. She said she wanted “to do something to benifit the ummah and harm the enemies of god,” according to the complaint. “Ummah” refers to the global Muslim community, but an agent states in the documents that the Islamic State narrows the term “community” down to refer to its own active members and loyal supporters.
The complaint alleges Bowie walked around the Capitol building on five occasions from July 21 to Aug. 9, sending dozens of pictures of the building to the FBI’s confidential source.
She told the source she was spending time there to learn more about its security, the complaint states. In another conversation, she allegedly told a different FBI source that she estimated the building contained 200 people and that she hoped to “take out” roughly half of them.
On Wednesday, Bowie met two confidential FBI sources who gave her what she believed was an explosive device created with materials she had worked with them to acquire, the document said.
The two people showed her how to use the inert explosive device and solicited a donation from her to create devices for future operations. Upon exiting a vehicle with the two sources, she was arrested by FBI agents. Officials said she was arrested at a McDonald’s not far from the Capitol.
She waived her rights and agreed to an interview with FBI agents, court documents state.
“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.”
The Northern District of New York’s Office of the Federal Public Defender did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In a statement, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said there was no immediate threat to the Capitol and security had been strengthened across state government buildings this year because of a rise in political violence.
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