How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing 'Terrorists' - and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook

[Octafish]

Old news to some, big news to the majority who get their news exclusively from ABCNNBCBSFauxNoiseNutworks:

How FBI Entrapment Is Inventing 'Terrorists' - and Letting Bad Guys Off the Hook

By Rick Perlstein
Rolling Stone, May 15, 2012

This past October, at an Occupy encampment in Cleveland, Ohio, "suspicious males with walkie-talkies around their necks" and "scarves or towels around their heads" were heard grumbling at the protesters' unwillingness to act violently. At meetings a few months later, one of them, a 26-year-old with a black Mohawk known as "Cyco," explained to his anarchist colleagues how "you can make plastic explosives with bleach," and the group of five men fantasized about what they might blow up. Cyco suggested a small bridge. One of the others thought they’d have a better chance of not hurting people if they blew up a cargo ship. A third, however, argued for a big bridge – "Gotta slow the traffic that's going to make them money" – and won. He then led them to a connection who sold them C-4 explosives for $450. Then, the night before the May Day Occupy protests, they allegedly put the plan into motion – and just as the would-be terrorists fiddled with the detonator they hoped would blow to smithereens a scenic bridge in Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley National Park traversed by 13,610 vehicles every day, the FBI swooped in to arrest them.

Right in the nick of time, just like in the movies. The authorities couldn’t have more effectively made the Occupy movement look like a danger to the republic if they had scripted it. Maybe that's because, more or less, they did.

The guy who convinced the plotters to blow up a big bridge, led them to the arms merchant, and drove the team to the bomb site was an FBI informant. The merchant was an FBI agent. The bomb, of course, was a dud. And the arrest was part of a pattern of entrapment by federal law enforcement since September 11, 2001, not of terrorist suspects, but of young men federal agents have had to talk into embracing violence in the first place. One of the Cleveland arrestees, Connor Stevens, complained to his sister of feeling "very pressured" by the guy who turned out to be an informant and was recorded in 2011 rejecting property destruction: "We're in it for the long haul and those kind of tactics just don't cut it," he said. "And it's actually harder to be non-violent than it is to do stuff like that." Though when Cleveland's NEWS Channel 5 broadcast that footage, they headlined it "Accused Bomb Plot Suspect Caught on Camera Talking Violence."

In all these law enforcement schemes the alleged terrorists masterminds end up seeming, when the full story comes out, unable to terrorize their way out of a paper bag without law enforcement tutelage. ("They teach you how to make all this stuff out of simple household items," one of the kids says on a recording quoted in the FBI affidavit about a book he has just discovered, The Anarchist Cookbook. Someone asks him how much it says explosives cost. "I'm not sure," he responds, "I just downloaded it last night.&quot It’s a perfect example of how post-9/11 fear made law enforcement tactics seem acceptable that were previously beyond the pale. Previously, however, the targets have been Muslims; now they’re white kids from Ohio. And maybe you could argue that this is acceptable, if the feds were actually acting out of a good-faith assessment of what threats are imminent and which are not. But that's not what they're doing at all. Instead, they are arrogating to themselves a downright Orwellian power – the power to deploy the might of the State to shape a fundamental narrative about which ideas Americans must be most scared of, and which ones they should not fear much at all, independent of the relative objective dangerousness of the people who hold those ideas.

SNIP...

Not everything is the same since the 1970s, of course. The media has changed: Newsday editorialized in 1972 of the Camden case, "We have come to expect such tactics from totalitarian nations that have no respect for individual rights permitting dissent. They have no place in American and those who advocate them have no place in this government." You don’t see that sort of language much any more. Indeed, Newsday appears not to have covered the arrest and trial of Hemant Lakhami at all. "Such tactics" are just not a very big deal any more.

CONTINUED w/links...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/how-fbi-entrapment-is-inventing-terrorists-and-letting-bad-guys-off-the-hook-20120515

Weird how Corporate McPravda never mentioned that in all their coverage of Terror of late.

[Wednesdays]

1. K & R

[Octafish]

3. How the FBI Helps Terrorists Succeed

This should be a topic of discussion in Washington and across the nation, but it's not. What that shies is the corrupt nature of the press corpse and our "elected" representatives.

How the FBI Helps Terrorists Succeed

Why the U.S. provided at least 150 people with bombs, transportation and other means of carrying out terrorist plots.

By Heather Maher
The Atlantic, Feb. 26, 2013

Since September 11, 2001, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has claimed many victories in the war on terror.

Each time a domestic terror suspect is arrested, the public is told that another horrific plot has been averted.

But after combing through thousands of pages of court documents, investigative journalist Trevor Aaronson came to a different conclusion -- that most of the men arrested could never have done what they were accused of if the FBI hadn't given them the tools to do so.

In his new book, "The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism," Aaronson argues that the U.S. government is responsible for "hatching and financing more terrorist plots in the United States than any other group." He spoke to Heather Maher.

You began your research by asking whether the FBI is "busting terrorist plots -- or leading them?" What did you find out?

Trevor Aaronson: The FBI is looking for what they term "a lone wolf terrorist," which is someone holed up in an apartment somewhere who sympathizes with Al-Qaeda but may lack the specific means to do that. And so the FBI uses sting operations to [find] these people -- these people who may want to commit an act of terrorism, are right on that line from moving from sympathizer to operator -- and then through these sting operations, lure them out and get them involved in a terrorism plot that they're ultimately prosecuted for.

But what I found is that of these cases, we can point to a handful of real, dangerous terrorists, like Faisal Shahzad, who came close to bombing [New York's] Times Square, or Najibullah Zazi, who came close to bombing the New York City subway system. But so many more of them, more than 150 people, were these men who were caught in sting operations who never had the means and, in some cases, never had the idea for the terrorism plot, and it was the FBI that provided them with everything -- the bomb, the transportation, everything they needed to move forward in a terrorism plot that on their own, they never would have been able to do. And certainly evidence suggests that in most of these cases, they never had any specific connections to terrorism. So it's really hard to believe that they ever would have had or acquired the means to commit some sort of act of terrorism.

CONTINUED...

http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/02/how-the-fbi-helps-terrorists-succeed/273537/

I'm so old, I remember when judges actually tied oit entrapment cases. They still believed in thr Constitution, then.

[sabrina 1]

8. They're so busy hatching their own terrorist plots, (makes them look needed I guess, if you

can't find a terrorist, make one!) that on numerous occasions now they have ignored real terrorists, like the Underwear Bomber who got on a plane despite warnings by his own father, without a passport, and thankfully was unable to carry out his plan, due mainly to ordinary people.

How many times has that happened? At least four times by my count. People the FBI has been alerted about allowed to go about their lives, 'cleared' or 'ignored' by the FBI until they blow or try to blow something up.

[noiretextatique]

9. what a gigantic waste of money, time and resources

it's absolutely insane.

[scarletwoman]

2. Thanks, Octafish. I brought this up last Saturday:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2726085

The FBI has been too busy setting up "sting" operations to bother with actual investigations.

Ever since 9/11 we've been treated to one story after another about how the FBI has thwarted various terrorist plots, which have all turned out to be eleborate entrapments of total losers who were lured into "plotting" a terrorist attack by FBI informers who supplied them with fake bombs and shit. And then the FBI crows about another successful arrest in the Great War on Terror. It's such bullshit!

They fucking talk some idiot bozos into dreaming big, set them up, and then call it great police work. It appears they wouldn't know how to investigate a *real* threat if it bit them in the ass!

sw

[Octafish]

4. Thank you, scarletwoman.

It's incredible, the FBI. The only crooks they can find, they have to assist. When an agent like Coleen Rowley wants to investigate an obvious hijacker and all of a sudden they want to protect the guy's civil rights.

Here's the happy MI-Complex origins:

From Christopher Simpson, info on how Poppy started the big ball of wax when he pried control out of the bed-ridden Pruneface:

George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of "Counter-Terrorism"

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan-Bush era yields valuable information on how counter-terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter-terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.

SNIP...

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

CONTINUED...

http://books.google.com/books?id=YZqRyj_QXf8C&pg=PA75&lpg=PA75&dq=christopher+simpson+The+Uses+of+%E2%80%98Counter-Terrorism%E2%80%99&source=bl&ots=8klB0PzATX&sig=hi9DpE3qF43Oefh7iGn79W4jXQs&hl=en&ei=zAFQTeriBsr2gAfu1Mgc&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=christopher%20simpson%20The%20Uses%20of%20%E2%80%98Counter-Terrorism%E2%80%99&f=false

Gangster times would be a picnic compared to what these are become. Thank you for standing up to them, Scarlet.

[MinM]

5. This American Life: The Convert

The ex-FBI informant with a change of heart: 'There is no real hunt. It's fixed'

Craig Monteilh describes how he pretended to be a radical Muslim in order to root out potential threats, shining a light on some of the bureau's more ethically murky practices...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/20/fbi-informant

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101645055

[Octafish]

11. 'There is no real hunt. It's fixed'

Craig Monteilh should be a household name, particularly on DU.

The ex-FBI informant with a change of heart: 'There is no real hunt. It's fixed'

Craig Monteilh describes how he pretended to be a radical Muslim in order to root out potential threats, shining a light on some of the bureau's more ethically murky practices

Paul Harris in Irvine, California
The Guardian, March 20, 2012

Craig Monteilh says he did not balk when his FBI handlers gave him the OK to have sex with the Muslim women his undercover operation was targeting. Nor, at the time, did he shy away from recording their pillow talk.

"They said, if it would enhance the intelligence, go ahead and have sex. So I did," Monteilh told the Guardian as he described his year as a confidential FBI informant sent on a secret mission to infiltrate southern Californian mosques.

It is an astonishing admission that goes to the heart of the intelligence surveillance of Muslim communities in America in the years after 9/11. While police and FBI leaders have insisted they are acting to defend America from a terrorist attack, civil liberties groups have insisted they have repeatedly gone too far and treated an entire religious group as suspicious.

Monteilh was involved in one of the most controversial tactics: the use of "confidential informants" in so-called entrapment cases. This is when suspects carry out or plot fake terrorist "attacks" at the request or under the close supervision of an FBI undercover operation using secret informants. Often those informants have serious criminal records or are supplied with a financial motivation to net suspects.

In the case of the Newburgh Four – where four men were convicted for a fake terror attack on Jewish targets in the Bronx – a confidential informant offered $250,000, a free holiday and a car to one suspect for help with the attack.

CONTINUED...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/20/fbi-informant

Thank you, MinM. One would think these sorts of revelations would be front page news in a Democracy.

[ck4829]

6. K&R

[Octafish]

12. THE FBI'S ''HATCHING AND FINANCING'' OF TERRORIST PLOTS

An interesting listen...

THE FBI'S "HATCHING AND FINANCING" OF TERRORIST PLOTS

Since 9/11, the FBI has stepped up its reliance on sting operations to catch potential terrorists before they strike. But in the process, says journalist Trevor Aaronson, the agency has ended up "hatching and financing more terrorist plots in the United States than any other group." Bob talks with Aaronson about his new book, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism.

SOURCE with Audio:

http://www.onthemedia.org/2013/feb/01/fbis-hatching-and-financing-terrorist-plots/

Interesting comment, there:

Here in Portland we've been listening to the trial details but what grabbed my ear in your report is the 3 billion dollar a year FBI investment in terrorism. Frontline's 01/23/2013 episode, "The Untouchables", (cites) this departure from traditional FBI activities as one reason for the lack of prosecutions of Wall Street executes after their corrupt institutions created demand for mortgage-backed securities that fueled the financial crisis of 2008 leading to world economic recession.

TH
Portland, OR
Feb. 05 2013

[BethanyQuartz]

7. They've been doing this crap for decades

When will activists learn not to be provoked into committing serious crimes by these guys? It almost serves the would be bridge blower uppers right. What point is there in blowing up a bridge in the first place?

[woo me with science]

10. K&R

[Octafish]

13. FBI Ignored Deadly Threat to Occupiers

US Intelligence Machine Instead Plotted with Bankers to Attack Protest Movement

FBI Ignored Deadly Threat to Occupiers

by DAVE LINDORFF
CounterPunch DECEMBER 28-30, 2012

New documents obtained from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security by the Partnership for Civil Justice and released this past week show that the FBI and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies began a campaign of monitoring, spying and disrupting the Occupy Movement at least two months before the first occupation actions began in late September 2011.

As early as August, while acknowledging that the incipient Occupy Movement was “peaceful” in nature, federal, state and local officials from the FBI, the DHS and the many Fusion Centers and Joint Terrorism Task Force centers around the country were meeting with local financial institutions and their private security organizations to plot out a strategy for countering the Occupy Movement’s campaign.

Interestingly, one document obtained by PCJ from the Houston FBI office refers to what appears to have been a plan by some group, the name of which is blacked out in the released document, to determine who the leaders were of the Occupy Movement in Houston, and then to assassinate them with “suppressed” sniper rifles, meaning sniper rifles equipped with silencers.

The chilling document in question reads as follows:

“One identified BLANK as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary. An identified BLANK had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. BLANK planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest group and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership by suppressed sniper rifles.”

The wording does not sound like it’s some crank Tea Party faction they’re talking about — especially the words “deemed necessary” and the reference to “gathering intelligence against the leaders of the protest group.” Fortunately, in any case, no such assassination campaign materialized in Houston or anywhere else during the wave of Occupy actions across the country, but at the same time, there were never any arrests of whatever organization or individuals that the FBI clearly knew to be planning such a terrorist action against the Occupy activists.

CONTINUED...

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/28/fbi-ignored-deadly-threat-to-occupiers/

I don't know why some people don't seem to understand why Secret Government is un-democratic.

[HiPointDem]

14. kr