March 18--An undercover FBI agent will testify from behind a screen out of view of the public in the upcoming trial of a suburban man charged with attempting to detonate a car bomb outside a Loop bar in an alleged terrorist plot, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
Prosecutors had cited national security and potential danger to the agent and his family in asking that the agent be allowed to wear a "light disguise" and testify in a courtroom cleared of spectators in the trial of Adel Daoud. They also raised concerns of jeopardizing other undercover investigations involving the same agent.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman said Wednesday she would not clear the courtroom or allow the agent to wear a disguise. But after conferring with other judges and courthouse staff about what's been done in previous trials, Coleman said she decided to have a tall partition installed across the width of her courtroom, blocking spectators' view of the agent's testimony but allowing Daoud, his attorneys and the jury to have full access to the witness.
"Everyone on counsel's side will see the witness as he looked at the time he dealt with Mr. Daoud," Coleman said. "But there is no need to do anything beyond that."
When Daoud's attorney, Thomas Anthony Durkin, began to object by bringing up the Spanish Inquisition, Coleman cut him off politely, saying, "Your objection is noted."
"I think it's sad, that's all," Durkin said.
After the hearing, Durkin told reporters that having the agent testify under such unusual -- but not unprecedented -- circumstances would create a "circus atmosphere" and could send a subliminal message to the jury that Daoud is a dangerous person.
"I'm not criticizing the judge but the hysteria of the times," said Durkin, a frequent critic of the U.S. government's war on terror.
While open courtrooms have long been a bedrock of the U.S. justice system, judges at Chicago's federal courthouse have on occasion taken measures to protect the identity of witnesses in sensitive cases involving terrorism, international conspiracy or the mob.
Coleman's ruling Wednesday appeared to be modeled after the 2009 trial of John Ambrose, a deputy U.S. marshal in Chicago accused of leaking information to the mob about hit man Nicholas Calabrese's secret cooperation with authorities. In that trial, U.S. District Judge John Grady had an 8-foot-tall gray partition installed across the width of his courtroom during sensitive testimony from agents involved in the federal witness protection program.
In the Daoud case, Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division, wrote in a sworn statement in October that public disclosure of the undercover agent's true identity or physical image "would jeopardize other undercover investigations and pose a risk of danger to the undercover employee and his family."
Daoud, now 21, of Hillside, came under FBI scrutiny in 2011 after posting messages online about killing Americans. FBI analysts posing as terrorists exchanged messages with Daoud and eventually got him to meet with the undercover agent, who was described as a "cousin" interested in waging jihad, according to the charges.
Over the next several months, Daoud and the undercover agent met several times in the Chicago area to discuss potential targets for an attack, the charges alleged. In one meeting in Villa Park in August 2012, Daoud allegedly told the agent he wanted to maximize the carnage so he would feel like he "accomplished something."
"If it's only like five, 10 people, I'm not gonna feel that good," the charges quoted Daoud as saying. "I wanted something that's ... massive. I want something that's gonna make it in the news like tonight."
Daoud, then 18, was arrested in September 2012 as he stood in a Loop alley, moments after punching the trigger of the fake bomb, authorities said.
He was also charged in 2013 with soliciting the agent's murder while being held without bail in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in order to keep the agent from testifying against him.
Daoud's trial is scheduled to begin July 27.
jmeisner@tribune.com
