January 21, 2008

While the Professor Was Away, Did His Roommate Amass an Arsenal?

New York City police officers discovered a small arsenal of weapons and explosives on Sunday in an apartment owned by a university researcher after his roommate accidentally shot himself in the hand, The New York Sun reported today.

The arsenal, which included seven pipe bombs, was found in an apartment owned by Michael C. Clatts, a medical anthropologist and AIDS researcher affiliated with the University of Puerto Rico and with the National Development and Research Institutes, a nonprofit organization that works to deal with HIV-AIDS, substance abuse, and other social and health ills.

Mr. Clatts was not present at the time of the incident, and neighbors said he might be out of the country. His biographical sketch on the institutes’ Web site says he is also an associate professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, but a follow-up article by the Sun reported that a Columbia spokeswoman denied that he taught at the university or was on its payroll.

Mr. Clatts’s roommate, Ivaylo Ivanov, was arrested on charges in connection with the arsenal, which also contained bomb-making equipment, a shotgun, a rifle, a crossbow, a machete, gun silencers, ammunition, and bulletproof vests. He also was charged with marking swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti in the neighborhood last fall.

Mr. Ivanov, who was said to have shared the apartment with Mr. Clatts for six years, initially told the police he had been shot by an unknown assailant. He later confessed to accidentally shooting himself, an admission that led the police to examine his apartment. The police were also checking into his possible ties to terrorist groups.

The Sun quoted a police official as saying that Mr. Ivanov might have built up the arsenal while Mr. Clatts was away. Still, the official said, the police were looking for Mr. Clatts and eager to interview him. —Andrew Mytelka

Comments

1. How could it possible for Mr. Clatts not to know the arnenal. Both of them seem to be collaborators against some hateful crime. The society should be thankful that somehow they were caught.

   — kvc    Jan 21, 05:32 PM    #

2. Hope you’re not on the jury, kvc. I’d expect readers of the Chronicle to know better than to jump to conclusions before all the facts are in.

   — swish    Jan 22, 09:03 AM    #

3. Wow. I think there’s one of those elitist references about readers of the Chronicle in almost every string of comments here. Give me a break. They share an apartment for 6 years and the guy waits until the good professor leaves the country before he goes nuts and assembles the arsenal they described? I’m not saying he’s guilty, but it seems there’s a darn good chance the professor knew about his roomate’s hobby.

   — scooter    Jan 22, 09:30 AM    #

4. whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

   — AM    Jan 22, 10:23 AM    #

5. Probably went the same way as critical thinking?

   — Bill j    Jan 22, 10:40 AM    #

6. One word: Dostoevsky

   — marci    Jan 22, 11:32 AM    #

7. Not everyone delves into their roommate’s personal business. Many act like landlords and stay out of the roommate’s private space unless they’re invited in or they need to make repairs.

   — Carlo    Jan 22, 12:44 PM    #

8. Guilty or not, it appears the NDRI may need to explain why a senior staffer’s tauted (though possibly false) affilitaiton with Columbia was not discovered during a background check. Of course it could be an innocent mistake.

   — seth    Jan 22, 04:03 PM    #

9. Innocent until proven guilty doesn’t mean that you have to abandon common sense when posting comments in a venue like this. After living with someone for six years, you could reasonably assume that it would take a herculean effort for one roommate to conceal this kind of activity from the other.

   — Al    Jan 22, 06:14 PM    #

10. Well, he’s listed on the Columbia website (http://www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu/sms/faculty/clatts.html) as faculty so it’s more than him lying to the NDRI...could it be that the esteemed university is distancing itself. Way to stand up for your faculty.

    — A    Jan 23, 02:09 AM    #

11. Clatts is a clinical professor, who receives no salary from the university and has no lab space there. He is more like an adjunct than like a traditional faculty member. His ties to both NDRI and the University of Puerto Rico are much stronger than those to Columbia.

    — CU Alum    Jan 23, 02:57 PM    #

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