The chats provide new insight into a boy who at age 15 allegedly began helping Colleen LaRose, the 48-year-old "Jihad Jane" from Pennsburg, who U.S. officials say represents a disturbing new face of homegrown terrorism.
Mohammed K. was 17 and a high school senior in Ellicott City, Md., when he allegedly wrote those threatening words. The Inquirer is not publishing his last name because he is a juvenile.
Mohammed's chat room friend was Emerson Begolly, a Pennsylvania State University student who was soon charged with soliciting unrelated terror attacks. Transcripts of the chats were publicly filed in that case.
During the Nov. 22 chat, Mohammed told Begolly he lived near National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.
"The place where I live is a HOTBED of NSA and all the security agencies of Amrika [sic]," Mohammed wrote. "And the kids who study in my school proudly state that their parents work in NSA and FBI, and even carry key chains - piss me off."
"Like Columbine?" Begolly asked.
"Na'am, lol" Mohammed wrote, using the Arabic word for "yes" and Internet slang for "laughing out loud."
It could not be determined Saturday whether the authorities took any immediate action based on the threatening remarks, which were reported to the FBI by an anti-jihadist group's blog, "The Jawa Report."
Neither Jeffrey Lindy, the Philadelphia lawyer representing Mohammed K., nor FBI spokesman J.J. Klaver would comment. Police and school officials in Howard County, Md., could not be reached.
Juvenile cases in federal court are rare, and terror cases rarer still. Federal law prohibits government officials from discussing them.
In February, LaRose pleaded guilty to terror-conspiracy charges as part of a failed plot to kill a Swedish artist whose cartoon of the prophet Muhammad with a dog's head had insulted many Muslims.
