(Contra Costa Times) Shocking enough are the allegations that a long-perceived unassuming state senator tried brokering an international arms deal with military-style rifles and rocket launchers, but Leland Yee may have narrowly escaped an even more ominous label: supporter of terrorism.
Yee, whose arrest after an FBI undercover sting shook the California political world last week, would likely have been charged with aiding terrorists if not for a bureaucratic label missing from the militant Filipino group that he is accused of sourcing for an international arms deal, counterterrorism experts told this newspaper.
His ties to the group, whose leader has said he personally met with Osama Bin Laden, are spelled out in a 137-page affidavit. It accuses Yee and two associates of conspiring with an undercover FBI agent posing as a Mafia gangster to purchase up to $2.5 million in weapons from a source with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines.
