By DAVID K. SHIPLER
Published: April 28, 2012
THE United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in
recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was
intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and
shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in
Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes
into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.
Clay Rodery
But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover
agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake
C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training.
Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.
When an Oregon college student, Mohamed Osman Mohamud,
thought of using a car bomb to attack a festive Christmas-tree lighting
ceremony in Portland, the F.B.I. provided a van loaded with six
55-gallon drums of “inert material,” harmless blasting caps, a detonator
cord and a gallon of diesel fuel to make the van smell flammable. An
undercover F.B.I. agent even did the driving, with Mr. Mohamud in the
passenger seat. To trigger the bomb the student punched a number into a
cellphone and got no boom, only a bust.
This is legal, but is it legitimate? Without the F.B.I., would the
culprits commit violence on their own? Is cultivating potential
terrorists the best use of the manpower designed to find the real ones?
Judging by their official answers, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department
are sure of themselves — too sure, perhaps.
Carefully orchestrated sting operations usually hold up in court.
Defendants invariably claim entrapment and almost always lose, because
the law requires that they show no predisposition to commit the crime,
even when induced by government agents. To underscore their
predisposition, many suspects are “warned about the seriousness of their
plots and given opportunities to back out,” said Dean Boyd, a Justice
Department spokesman. But not always, recorded conversations show.
Sometimes they are coaxed to continue.
Story continues at nytimes.com
2 comments:
Well, when you have a massive an organization as the FBI and damned little real crime* they are allowed to chase, one has to gin up something to keep busy. Thus, the high number of sting operations involving really stupid would-be "terrorists".
*Real crime as in thieving bankers, cooked politicians and big corporation law-breaking. These the FBI cannot touch.
Bob - Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with "damned little real crime* they are allowed to chase"
It's strictly hands off the "thieving bankers, cooked politicians and big corporations."
We certainly see this issue from the same perspective.
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