"There's not a question a lot of thinking and work went into the plan," he writes on Dec. 1, 2005, to his al-Qaeda contact, now FBI special agent Mark Seyler, taking over for terrorist hunter Shannen Rossmiller.
Reynolds tells al-Qaeda what materials to buy at Wal-Mart, Radio Shack and other stores, how to make and place the bombs, how to escape - even which Motel 6 to stay in.
"Buy. Build. Leave," he writes. "My kind of operation."
Worried about consequences, he delineates the stakes: "If I am discovered, I could get life in prison, perhaps even execution as a traitor."
Reynolds and his online contact agree on a pickup point for the money: a picnic table at a rest area, off Idaho's I-15, called Hell's Half Acre. It gets the name from a nearby field of hardened lava that locals say looks like the moon.
The ground is covered with crystallized snow. The wind blows, and it's 10 degrees above zero.
An FBI video camera hidden behind sagebrush shows the mustached, 6-foot-3 Reynolds in a bulky blue waistcoat, dark pants and black ski cap walk toward the spot where the black-and-red money bag is sitting. It's 12:47 p.m. on Dec. 5, 2005.
Reynolds bends over toward the bag, then turns quickly to his right, as though he hears footsteps in the crunchy snow.
An FBI SWAT team closes in, forces him on his belly, then handcuffs him.
In the 20-minute car ride to the Pocatello FBI office, Reynolds says he was merely checking to see that the money was there. Then he was going to call a private security group called Northbridge to capture the al-Qaeda terrorists he was communicating with.
"I was enticing them," he says.
"That story," an FBI agent tells Reynolds, "makes no sense."
A swift verdict
She looks calm, at least.
How could anyone in the courtroom know that a minute ago she was getting sick in the women's room?
Taking the stand in the trial of United States v. Michael Curtis Reynolds in Scranton two weeks ago, Rossmiller does her best to keep it together.
