Mystery in Brooklyn: Bomb factory at Columbia University professor’s home (compare to NYT report)

Michelle Malkin ^ | January 22, 2008 10:03 AM | Michelle Malkin

[enough_idiocy]

Police stumbled upon a bomb-making factory Sunday in the home of a Columbia professor who specializes in the spread of infectious disease - and are investigating whether he and his roommate have terror ties.

Cops evacuated the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood around the Remsen St. home of Michael Clatts, a medical anthropologist, after finding seven pipe bombs fitted with fuses in his flat, police sources said.

The frightening cache was discovered almost by accident - Ivaylo Ivanov, the man living with Clatts, accidentally shot off the tip of his left index finger and sought police help in the street about 1:15 a.m.

When investigators went to the 37-year-old Ivanov’s apartment, they found the bombs, already capped on both ends and filled with powder. One of the pipe bombs was inserted into a Nerf football, cops said.

A 9-mm. handgun, two ammunition magazines, a 12-gauge shotgun, silencers, a bulletproof vest, a crossbow and bomb-making equipment, including a drill and threading machine that could be used to make pipe bombs, were also recovered, cops said. Clatts cannot be located. Who is he?

Clatts is a medical anthropologist with a specialty in epidemiol.ogy - the spread of disease among large populations.

He is an associate professor in Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and holds a Ph.D. from the Ivy League school.

The senior director of communication for the school, Randee Levine, said she cannot comment on a police investigation.

Clatts’ exact relationship with Ivanov is unknown. Building residents said Clatts once described himself and Ivanov as roommates, nothing more.

Cops became suspicious of Ivanov because he first claimed he had been shot by a stranger but then admitted shooting himself. Fearing another person had been injured at the address, police went to the apartment and opened the door to the bomb factory. They immediately sealed the apartment while they got a search warrant, cops said.

Cops called the bomb squad, which evacuated the building and three others nearby and removed the materials. Residents were not allowed back inside for nearly 12 hours.

Police said last night they were uncertain whether all of the bombs were operative.

Ivanov has prior arrests for possession of drug paraphernalia, including hypodermic needles, a police source said. A man with the same name was deported from the U.S. a couple of years ago for drug dealing, but cops are unsure whether this is the same person, a police source said. The NYTimes reports on a bizarre twist in the case: Ivanov has confessed to a string of anti-Jewish vandalism incidents last fall. Ivanov, his lawyer told the media, is himself Jewish.

According to a law enforcement official, detectives are exploring the possibility that Mr. Ivanov had planned to use the pipe bombs against synagogues. The official said that Mr. Ivanov told investigators he intended to use the bombs for fishing; but, given his admission that he painted swastikas on synagogues, investigators became concerned he was planning violence. Detectives have seized his computers, and are searching them for clues, the official said.

[enough_idiocy]

Check out how the NYSLIMES reported this story http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1957679/posts

[Just mythoughts]

What a strange story. How close to the Clintons office?

[Barney Gumble]

"Ivanov has confessed to a string of anti-Jewish vandalism incidents last fall. Ivanov, his lawyer told the media, is himself Jewish"

He's not an anti-Seminite. He's a self hating Jew.

[Incorrigible]

Gun Wound Leads to Weapons Trove
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1957679/posts

[Brilliant]

No mystery to me... He’s a professor at Columbia U, right?

[samtheman]

Unbelievable. The SLIMES is completely calm about all those pipe bombs. Barely mentions them.

[3AngelaD]

Roommate Clatts apparently writes articles about why men have sex with men in public.

[visualops]

The NY Times story in some ways is more informative. What any of this has to do with Mr. Clatts remains to be seen although it would be interesting to find out how these guys met and became roommates. If Mr. Clatts traveled alot then may be Ivanov took advantage of his absences to get his little munitions factory going.
“Neighbors said that Mr. Ivanov shared the apartment with Michael C. Clatts, 50, a medical anthropologist and researcher who is the director for the Institute for International Research on Youth at Risk at National Development and Research Institutes in New York. Mr. Clatts, who owns a unit in the building, according to property records, was commissioned by the Giuliani administration to study New York’s homeless teenagers.”

[enough_idiocy]

That explains why the NYT article doesn’t discuss him too much I suppose.

[samtheman]

Which is bigger?

A weapons trove?
A weapons cache?
A hoard of weapons?
An arsenal?
A weapons stockpile?

Does the SLIMES put out guidelines on this?

[F-117A]

NY Times

[SengirV]

The difference being?

[enough_idiocy]

If a Republican knew this guy in grade school the headline would be much different -

Man Republican Went to School with Arrested for Pipebomb Factory, Possible Terrorist Bombmaker Tied to Republican.

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

Mr. Clatts, who owns a unit in the building, according to property records, was commissioned by the Giuliani administration to study New York’s homeless teenagers.

They had a homicidal homosexual in charge of "studying" homeless teenagers?

Good God, that could provide half a season's worth of CSI episodes.

[catman67]

Wonder if he has a license from the BATFE for that “drill and threading machine?

Notice that the prof is from the Mailman School of Public Health. Talk about going postal!

[polymuser]

No mystery to me... He’s a professor at Columbia U, right?

You've got that right. Everyone here should know Columbia's history, especially as it relates to The Frankfurt School.

[enough_idiocy]

“Everyone here should know Columbia’s history, especially as it relates to The Frankfurt School.”

Student waiting for the lesson, do tell...

[rickomatic]

He is an associate professor in Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and holds a Ph.D. from the Ivy League school.

Looks like he was getting ready to "go postal".

[Jedidah]

There’s nothing wrong with how the New York Times reported the story.

The link you posted was to yesterday’s article. Malkin’s column is dated today. The Times has an update today, too, with much more information:

“The police had also not reached Mr. Clatts as of Monday night. He directs the organization’s Institute for International Research on Youth at Risk and is believed to be traveling, one official said. He could be in Puerto Rico, where he is a university professor, or in Vietnam, where he is conducting research on H.I.V. risk among young intravenous drug users, according to a colleague.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/22/nyregion/22arrest.html?ref=nyregion

This Ivanov character is obviously bad news. Guess we’ll know more about Clatts when they find him.

Really, really weird story. There are a lot of dangerous people out there.

Thanks for posting.

[fleagle]

I love the lead from the NYTimes story: A 37-year old man who was storing weapons, including pipe bombs, crossbows, guns and silencers, in his Brooklyn Heights apartment...

It's like, ho hum, a man in Brooklyn was storing pipe bombs, guns and silencers in his apartment. The writer sounds positively bored with this story.

[polymuser]

Student waiting for the lesson, do tell...
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Columbia+University%22+%22Frankfurt+School%22&btnG=Google+Search

[Lorianne]

The guy arrested was not a Columbia professor (at least according to the article).

[NEPA]

The official said that Mr. Ivanov told investigators he intended to use the bombs for fishing;

A redneck in Brooklyn?

I lived in in Brooklyn for a while but fished the normal way. Of course my old Jeep pick up with a wood box kind made me stand out a bit. The (empty) gun rack in the back window probably didn't help.

That said, what is it with Ivy leaguers and their anti Semitism?

[Poincare]

...a bomb-making factory Sunday in the home of a Columbia professor who specializes in the spread of infectious disease - and are investigating whether he and his roommate have terror ties.

Anthrax?

[csvset]

bump for later

[Candor7]

Pipe Bombs and guns are just a beginning.

The signs of Liberal Fascism are all around us. Obama is the catalyst.And no one is talking about it much, except for Danial Pipes:

*****************************

Liberal fascism sounds like an oxymoron – or a term for conservatives to insult liberals. Actually, it was coined by a socialist writer, none other than the respected and influential left-winger H.G. Wells, who in 1931 called on fellow progressives to become "liberal fascists" and "enlightened Nazis." Really.

His words, indeed, fit a much larger pattern of fusing socialism with fascism: Mussolini was a leading socialist figure who, during World War I, turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend Fascism. Likewise, Hitler headed the National Socialist German Workers Party.

These facts jar because they contradict the political spectrum that has shaped our worldview since the late 1930s, which places communism at the far left, followed by socialism, liberalism in the center, conservatism, and then fascism on the far right. But this spectrum, Jonah Goldberg points out in his brilliant, profound, and original new book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (Doubleday), reflects Stalin's use of fascist as an epithet to discredit anyone he wished – Trotsky, Churchill, Russian peasants – and distorts reality. Already in 1946, George Orwell noted that fascism had degenerated to signify "something not desirable."

To understand fascism in its full expression requires putting aside Stalin's misrepresentation of the term and also look beyond the Holocaust, and instead return to the period Goldberg terms the "fascist moment," roughly 1910-35. A statist ideology, fascism uses politics as the tool to transform society from atomized individuals into an organic whole. It does so by exalting the state over the individual, expert knowledge over democracy, enforced consensus over debate, and socialism over capitalism. It is totalitarian in Mussolini's original meaning of the term, of "Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State." Fascism's message boils down to "Enough talk, more action!" Its lasting appeal is getting things done.

In contrast, conservatism calls for limited government, individualism, democratic debate, and capitalism. Its appeal is liberty and leaving citizens alone.

Goldberg's triumph is establishing the kinship between communism, fascism, and liberalism. All derive from the same tradition that goes back to the Jacobins of the French Revolution. His revised political spectrum would focus on the role of the state and go from libertarianism to conservatism to fascism in its many guises – American, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, and so on.

As this listing suggests, fascism is flexible; different iterations differ in specifics but they share "emotional or instinctual impulses." Mussolini tweaked the socialist agenda to emphasize the state; Lenin made workers the vanguard party; Hitler added race. If the German version was militaristic, the American one (which Goldberg calls liberal fascism) is nearly pacifist. Goldberg quotes historian Richard Pipes on this point: "Bolshevism and Fascism were heresies of socialism." He proves this confluence in two ways.

Woodrow Wilson's Progressivism featured a "militaristic, fanatically nationalist, imperialist, racist" program, enabled by the exigencies of World War I.

Franklin D. Roosevelt's "fascist New Deal" built on and extended Wilson's government.

Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society established the modern welfare state, "the ultimate fruition" (so far) of this statist tradition.

The youthful New Left revolutionaries of the 1960s brought about "an Americanized updating" of the European Old Right.

Hillary Clinton hopes "to insert the state deep into family life," an essential step of the totalitarian project.

To sum up a near-century of history, if the American political system traditionally encouraged the pursuit of happiness, "more and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered."

Second, Goldberg dissects American liberal programs – racial, economic, environmental, even the "cult of the organic" – and shows their affinities to those of Mussolini and Hitler.

If this summary sounds mind-numbingly implausible, read Liberal Fascism in full for its colorful quotes and convincing documentation. The author, hitherto known as a smart, sharp-elbowed polemicist, has proven himself a major political thinker.

Beyond offering a radically different way to understand modern politics, in which fascist is no more a slander than socialist, Goldberg's extraordinary book provides conservatives with the tools to reply to their liberal tormentors and eventually go on the offensive. If liberals can eternally raise the specter of Joseph McCarthy, conservatives can counter with that of Benito Mussolini.

****************************

The Obama FileDon't Leave Home Without It!

[Right Wing Assault]

No mystery to me... He’s a professor at Columbia U, right?

Yep. Typical 'normal' behavior.

[tanaka]

“A man with the same name was deported from the U.S. a couple of years ago for drug dealing,”

Another potentially interesting aspect here. Juan McCain’s “Amnesty which is not Amnesty” bill gave feds 24 hours to check if the applicant (illegal immigrant) has a criminal background, otherwise he gets permanent residency. Here, cops are unsure about this days after the incident even though this may be terror related case.

[Brilliant]

True... the professor owned the home, and was living with the suspect, but for some reason cannot be located.

Maybe the story here is just that the prof was living with an anti-Semite, but since there were bombs in his house, you have to wonder.

[Osage Orange]

Ah come on..!!

The guy was just building "fishing bombs."

[kcvl]

Michael Clatts, an AIDS researcher at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and the National Development and Research Institutes

[kcvl]

They could try his email. lol!

michael.clatts@ndri.org

[kcvl]

The Centre is delighted to welcome Dr Michael Clatts, Director of the Center for International Research on Youth at Risk and Professor of Public Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Puerto Rico as a visiting academic to the Children’s Research Centre.

The Children’s Research Centre undertakes multi-disciplinary and policy relevant research into the lives of children and young people, and the contexts within which they live their lives.

[Ann Archy]

He's not an anti-Seminite. He's a self hating Jew.

Maybe not....he might just be a PERPETUAL VICTIM Jew....making other Jews think one of theirs is being tormented. Like the black guy that hung nooses on doorknobs.

[kcvl]

In September he was a suspect for the anti-Semitic spray paintings on three houses, two cars and two synagogues. He wasn’t charged, but after the weapons were found in his apartment he linked himself to those cases and was detained. He was charged for hate crimes.

Ivanov pleaded not guilty at the arraignment on charges of harassment, 46 counts of criminal mischief and criminal possession. His bail was set at $300,000, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney's office.

[kcvl]

Police official did not believe that the professor knew about the arsenal due to the fact that he was out of the country.

[DBrow]

“turned away from internationalism in favor of Italian nationalism and called the blend Fascism.”

Named, I think, after the bundle of sticks (fasces) the Roman legislature used as a symbolic staff of office. In times of peace the fasces had no axe or spear but in times of war, they added a spear or an axe. It symbolized power, but also working together collectively, which is why leftism, socialism, and communism all tend to produce fascist doctrines.

The US dime has a fasces with flames coming out of it. The motto on many coins is From Many, One, a socialist concept which, combined with the fasces, is Fascist.

Liberals try to paint Fascism and National Socialism as a right wing phenomenon, but the roots are socialist, progressive, or “liberal”.

[flutters]

Ewww, ewwwww, ewwwwww...

Abstract

Grant Number: 1R01DA019400-01
Project Title: Ethno-Epidemiology in an Emergent MSM Risk Environment
PI Information: Name Email Title
CLATTS, MICHAEL C. michael.clatts@ndri.org DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL RE

Abstract: DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application proposes a mixed method, ethno-epidemiological study of MSM Poz Parties in NYC. Poz Parties are an emerging type of sexual risk environment that are being replicated throughout the US and explicitly scripted for unrestricted sexual exchanges between HIV+ MSM. Specific aims of the proposed study include the following: 1. To describe MSM Poz Parties, including characteristics of the physical settings, participants, and social interactions, that collectively define this emerging MSM risk environment; 2. To describe the complex personal and social meanings that HIV+ MSM attach to sexual interactions in these environments, notably interactions that are explicitly scripted for sex without condoms and/or sex with multiple concurrent partners; 3. To describe the use of drugs within this environment, and the role that Poz Parties may have in facilitating exposure to, and initiation of, new types of drug and sexual interactions among HIV+ MSM; 4. To examine HIV+ MSM’s rationales and motivations for participating in Poz Parties, and to compare sexual exchanges at Poz Parties with those outside Poz parties, with an interest in exploring sero-sorting and sero-disclosure dynamics. Both structured survey and ethnographic methodologies will be used: Structured screener survey will be conducted among 400 subjects attending one of an estimated 30 Poz Party events over the two years of data collection, with an additional 800 interviews among subjects attending multiple events. Screener surveys will be used to select subjects for a series of subsequent ethnographic interviews (N=75) that will be the source of intensive narrative data about 5 thematic domains, including Life History, Drug Initiation Practices, Sex Party Initiation/Practices, Unprotected Sex (Barebacking), and Dynamics of Sero-Status Disclosure in Non Poz Party sexual encounters. The study will inform our understanding of the sexual practices of HIV+ MSM, including sex with HIV- or serostatus unknown partners, risk for STD’s, initiation of new drug and sexual practices, and HIV superinfection.

Institution: NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT & RES INSTITUTES
RESEARCH INSTITUTES, INC.
NEW YORK, NY 100103509
Fiscal Year: 2005
Department:
Project Start: 01-MAR-2005
Project End: 28-FEB-2008
ICD: NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON DRUG ABUSE
IRG: ZRG1

http://crisp.cit.nih.gov/crisp/CRISP_LIB.getdoc?textkey=6893224&p_grant_num=1R01DA019400-01&p_query=&ticket=17017750&p_audit_session_id=79909479&p_keywords=

[Billthedrill]

Ivaylo Ivanov, the man living with Clatts, accidentally shot off the tip of his left index finger...

I hate it when that happens. Why can't the guy just use a hand grenade for fishing like normal people do?

[enough_idiocy]

That assumes he was out of the country before this activity was taking place. He could’ve had the factory running the whole time.

[Candor7]

Liberals try to paint Fascism and National Socialism as a right wing phenomenon, but the roots are socialist, progressive, or “liberal”.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Exactly. And we need to remind the liberals stridently in the presence of our conservative friends.

[Master of Orion]

Currently, Dr. Clatts is leading a NIDA-funded study of HIV risk among young injectors in the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam.

http://www.ndri.org/about/bios.html

[PapaBear3625]

He's not an anti-Seminite. He's a self hating Jew.

Or somebody who has something to gain from the perception that anti-Semitism is on the rise

[Jedidah]

Calm down, all of you!

The jumping-to-conclusions on this thread is alarming.

I suggest we just stop and watch and wait and see what happens.

Have you even considered that this Dr. Clatts, planning on being out of the country for some months, subleased his apartment to this bad guy and hasn’t a clue about what the kook was doing?

Can we please give the prof the benefit of our doubts until the full story is known?

[visualops]

whoa that’s an eerie pic

[redgolum]

Nothing to see here! Move along! Just another isolated event!/sarcasm

[Cacique]

ping

[Kevmo]

bmflr

[rmlew]

I just sent an email to the kids at Columbia for news. I guess I missed a big one!

From the Columbia Daily Spectator

---

Police Find Weapons in Home of CU Affiliate

By Alix Pianin
PUBLISHED JANUARY 22

A cache of guns and homemade explosives was discovered Sunday in the apartment of an AIDS researcher affiliated with Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Police were sent to investigate researcher Michael Clatts’ Brooklyn Heights apartment after Ivanov Ivaylo, Clatts’ roommate, was admitted to Long Island College Hospital early Sunday morning with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the hand. Upon investigation, police discovered a cache of weapons in the apartment, which Clatts owns.

Neighbor Penny Kaufman said police knocked on her door at 3:20 a.m., mistaking it for Clatts’ and Ivaylo’s. She then accompanied them to the correct apartment.

“One of the police opened the door more and said, ‘Oh, a pipe bomb,’” Kaufman said.

The apartment building, a co-op, was evacuated and residents were moved into the lobby of a neighboring building until 11:30 that morning.

Police and a bomb squad continued the investigation and discovered “an improvised explosive device and other weapons,” according to the police report. The New York Times reported that the arsenal included seven pipe bombs, a rifle, a shotgun, a pistol, two pellet rifles, ammunition, silencers, a bulletproof vest, a machete, and a crossbow and arrows.

Police have not named Clatts as a suspect in their investigation.

A medical anthropologist known for his extensive AIDS research, Clatts works as principal investigator at the National Development and Research Institutes and is a professor at the Universidad de Puerto Rico. He is also listed as an associate professor in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health on both the Mailman School Web site and in his National Development and Research Institute profile.

But Senior Director of Communications Randee Sacks Levine said in a statement that Clatts is not a University employee, nor on the University payroll.

“He does not teach nor is he involved in projects through the Mailman School,” Levine wrote in the statement. “He is among a large number of individuals who are employed elsewhere in the New York metropolitan area but have a voluntary affiliation, without an office or reimbursement, because of the relevant public health research conducted by him and his employer.”

Originally from Bulgaria, Ivaylo has lived with Clatts since 2000.

“Ivo seemed like a party kid, himself. ... kind of a punky kid, very pleasant. We shared a love of animals. He never worked, from what I could tell,” Kaufman said.

Clatts, she said, kept to himself and spent much of his time traveling for work. Currently, he is leading a study on HIV risk in Vietnam.

“I would call him an egghead, I guess,” Kaufman said. “Very intelligent, did AIDS research, kind of a loner as far as I could tell.”

Since his arrest, Ivaylo has also claimed responsibility for spray-painting swastikas on two synagogues, three houses, and two cars in the Brooklyn Heights area this past September. He has been charged with 23 counts of aggravated assault, two of which are being charged as hate crimes.

Clatts could not be reached for comment, and is said to be out of the country.

“They just seemed like two guys who lived upstairs. They had a dog. They went camping a lot,” Kaufman said. “I just considered him [Ivaylo] kind of an odd person. I never thought he was dangerous.”

alix.pianin@columbiaspectator.com

[G Larry]

Too far North for fishing w pipe bombs!