FBI Press Release
Atlanta Field Office
Gregory Jones, Special Agent in Charge

Contact: SA Stephen Emmett
Desk: (404) 679-6451
Cell:  (404) 392-2506

For Immediate Release
Monday, April 09, 2007

Atlanta – Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Gregory Jones, FBI Atlanta, announces the arrest today of John Tanabe, age 27, of Atlanta (formerly of Chicago, Illinois), on federal charges of providing false information related to two telephonic bomb threat incidents last month which targeted two federal facilities.

On March 8, 2007 , the emergency hotline of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) received a telephone call from a male caller who advised of plot to bomb a federal courthouse on Pryor Street in Atlanta , Georgia . The caller, alleged in a criminal complaint to be Tanabe, relayed that an individual known to him only as “Abdul” showed him a backpack containing explosives and was asking the caller for additional items or components to complete a “device” or bomb. The caller went on to allege additional details of this plot by “Abdul”.

In response to this call, officers of the Atlanta Police Department searched all parking garages in the vicinity that the caller described. In addition, the U.S. Homeland Security as well as the Federal Protective Service conducted a perimeter check of all federal facilities in the downtown area. No such device as described by the caller was located nor was any person matching the description of “Abdul” located.

On March 29, 2007 , the Atlanta office FBI received a similar call, again alleged in the complaint to be Tanabe, wherein the caller had been approached earlier in the day by an individual who was in the process of constructing several explosive devices whose target was the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) facility in Atlanta .