Dianne Feinstein doesn't seem to be aware that the book "The Anarchist Cookbook" is sold on Amazon, among other places.
In the wake of the arrest of two women on Thursday accused of attempting to build a bomb, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) wrote on her website that a 1971 book on bomb-making, which may have helped terrorism suspects in some way, should be “removed from the Internet.”.
The senator seems to have failed to realize that The Anarchist Cookbook has been in print for decades (it's sold on Amazon!), but has also been openly circulating online for almost the same amount of time. In short, removing it from the Internet would be impossible.
“I am particularly struck by the fact that the alleged bombers made use of online bombmaking guides such as The Anarchist Cookbook and Inspire Magazine,” Feinstein wrote. “These documents, in my view, are not protected by the First Amendment and should be removed from the Internet.”.
On Thursday, federal prosecutors charged two New York with conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction. The 29-page complaint details how the two women, Asia Siddiqui and Noelle Velentzas, began meetings with an unnamed undercover agent in 2013, where they expressed extremist ideology and sympathy for al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and related groups.
According to the FBI affidavit , in August 2014, the women discussed studying “science” in order to learn how to make a homebrew explosive. The women and the agent then went to the library to study basic chemistry.
By November 2014, as the women's investigation continued, the undercover agent told them that he or she had downloaded The Anarchist Cookbook—the complaint seems to indicate that it was the agent who passed the text on to the women.
