A federal judge Thursday sentenced a former U.S. Navy sailor to 12 years in prison for plotting a terrorist attack at Naval Station Great Lakes in Chicago’s north suburbs and seeking to help the Iranian government move radioactive material into the U.S. for a dirty bomb.
Xuanyu Harry Pang, 39, a naturalized U.S. citizen from China who immigrated here in 1998, was charged in a sealed criminal complaint in 2022 and pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to and attempting to destroy national defense premises.
In handing down the sentence, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Daniel, who is a Marine veteran, said when he reviewed the facts of Pang’s case. he immediately thought about the 1983 terrorist bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut that killed more than 200 U.S. Marines, sailors and soldiers.
“Here, Mr. Pang, a service member himself, had raised his hand not to swear an oath to the Constitution but to participate in an attack” on his own fellow service members “here in Illinois,” Daniel said.
Pang, dressed in green jail clothes, did not have any visible reaction to the sentence.
In his plea agreement with prosecutors, Pang, who had trained at the Great Lakes facility near Waukegan, admitted taking surveillance photos and videos of the outside and inside of the base and agreeing to provide the undercover operative military uniforms and a phone that could be used as a detonator for an explosive device.
Prosecutors say Pang also scouted other locations he thought would cause “max damage” and casualties, including Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago and the Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park affectionately known as The Bean.
“Remember, like you told me, like, you guys are looking for max damage, right?” Pang asked his accomplice, who he thought was an Iranian terrorist but was actually working undercover for the FBI. “You saw the street. It was packed. So think about it, like, if you have one guy just walking down the street, all of a sudden (rapid firing sound).”
In asking for a sentence of a little more than 13 years in prison, prosecutors wrote in a recent court filing that Pang’s efforts constituted a “monstrous betrayal” of his service to the country, one that would have assisted in the “slaughter of our youngest servicemembers” in exchange for what he hoped would be millions of dollars in payments.
“Pang’s efforts, if successful, would have resulted in horrifying losses of life here and around the world and incalculable damage to our national security,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Aaron Bond and Vikas Didwania wrote. “His conduct is deserving of our strongest condemnation.”
Prosecutors did say Pang deserved a bit of a break, however, because of his decision to admit guilt and provide substantial undercover assistance to the government in the investigation, the results of which were outlined in a filing under seal.
When the time came to discuss that cooperation on Thursday, the judge ordered the courtroom cleared of spectators and media. He later said he did so because the arguments had to do with “ongoing investigations involving national security” as well as “concerns to Mr. Pang’s safety.”
Pang’s attorney, William Hardwicke, filed his entire sentencing memorandum under seal, including a letter that his client wrote to the judge in lieu of addressing the court directly on Thursday.
Hardwicke argued in court that while Pang’s conduct was serious, it was an aberration in his otherwise law-abiding life and occurred during a period where he was using drugs and having a “mental health crisis.”
“His behavior during that period is criminal,” Hardwicke said. “It’s also frankly bizarre, it’s inept, and its a break from his ordinary pattern of behavior and really anyone’s pattern of behavior.”
Prosecutors, however, said the fact that Pang was willing to slaughter fellow sailors at the base where he lived just for monetary gain showed “a complete lack of a moral compass.”
“Mr. Pang was not a mope; he was not a bump on a log,” Didwania said. “He was calculating and sophisticated.”
The sentencing comes as Naval Station Great Lakes has been in the news for altogether different reasons -- serving as the headquarters for some 300 federal agents as part of President Donald Trump’s expected immigration enforcement crackdown in Chicago.
More than 20,000 sailors, soldiers, Marines and Department of Defense civilians live and work on the installation, which also houses the Navy’s only boot camp, according to federal prosecutors.
Pang’s case is not the first terrorism-related investigation to surface recently involving the Naval Station Great Lakes as a potential target.
In 2019, two friends from far north suburban Zion, Edward Schimenti and Joseph Jones, were convicted of attempting to aid the Islamic State terrorist group by providing cellphones to an undercover FBI agent to be used as detonators for bombs. Although no violence occurred, prosecutors alleged that Schimenti at one point expressed to an undercover informant a desire to attack soldiers at the base, which was near his home.
According to the charges against Pang, the FBI uncovered details of his involvement after an undercover employee of the agency reached out to a known terrorist in Colombia about a plan to attack the U.S. to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian Republican Guard general killed in 2020 by the U.S. military.
Soleimani headed a sect of the IRG called the Quds Force that “conducts unconventional warfare and intelligence activities outside of Iran,” according to a release from the U.S. Justice Department.
The undercover FBI employee, who was posing as an affiliate of the Quds Force, was later put in touch with Pang, who at the time was living at Naval Station Great Lakes. The person in Colombia referred to Pang as their “contact” in Chicago who could help move the plan forward, according to the charges.
“At the moment there is work but he will talk to you to fix your return and visit the places you want to see in Chicago,” the person in Colombia, referred to only as Individual A, messaged to the undercover FBI employee on Sept. 11, 2022, according to the charges.
Individual A also forwarded Pang’s personal cellphone number. “That’s our contact his name is Harry,” they wrote, according to the charges.
Meanwhile, the FBI was able to extract data from Pang’s personal cellphone, which he’d been required to turn in during his basic training with the Navy, the charges alleged. The information showed he’d talked extensively with Individual A beginning in 2021 about a potential attack, including one involving the detonation of radioactive material that could be smuggled into the country.
“Those gringos are going to die,” Individual A wrote in one conversation with Pang on Jan. 11, 2022, according to the charges. “I really believe they can disappear a city.”
Pang replied, “It will be of great damage,” according to the charges.
Three weeks later, the two had another lengthy conversation in which Individual A referenced an alleged terror plot already underway that would pale in comparison to Osama bin Laden, the deceased Al Qaeda leader who masterminded the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., according to the charges.
“I think that it will be in the gringa capitol,” Individual A wrote, according to the charges. “He will make history that not even Bin Laden would do.”
“Noted, I will keep my family far from that area,” Pang responded. “Thank you, brother. Not a word. Promise.”
Pang enlisted in the Navy on Feb. 1, 2022, just days after that conversation, according to prosecutors.
The charges allege that Pang at one point expected to be paid millions of dollars for his efforts, which would include helping the Iranians smuggle weapons and polonium, a radioactive metal that can be used to covertly poison humans, into the U.S.
But those ideas never came to fruition, as Pang focused instead on finding a suitable location for an attack, according to the charges.
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