Another Fabricated Terror Threat
By Anthony Gregory • Wednesday October 27, 2010 3:06 PM PDT • 10 Comments
The latest accused prospective terrorist apprehended by the Feds, Farooque Ahmed, was allegedly casing metro stations and the Pentagon, with plans to attack military personnel, having been egged on by people he assumed were al Qaeda. How does the FBI know this to be true? Because FBI agents were the ones, posing as al Qaeda, to egg him on.
This is hardly the only one in the last nine years to fit this profile: A sap, encouraged by the government to do foolish and potentially very criminal and murderous things, caught just in the nick of time — just before the supposed plan, promoted if not completely concocted by government agents, comes to fruition.
Some questions:
(1) How are we made safer by government agents entrapping people into planning violent crimes?
(2) What if the agents one day actually get someone to commit violent acts and don’t stop him in time?
(3) If the feds are so certain that they have a handle on the situation — if they are confident that they are not putting Americans at risk by egging on this kind of potentially violent behavior — how can we say that the arrested would-be “terrorists” posed any risk in the first place?
(4) How can anyone both breathe a sigh of relief that Ahmed and others in this situation were not able to pull off their nefarious deeds, and yet also defend the federal government coming up with these deeds in the first place?
The FBI: Preventing the crimes they themselves conceive of since 9/11. Or actually, years before.
See also my post reflecting on the “Hutaree militia” scare from March, when the FBI goaded these Michigan survivalist types into talking about committing crimes against police. They were so dangerous a judge released them on bond—but they might still be convicted for conspiring, with government officials, to commit violence.
I think it’s a stretch to suggest that someone goes from “poor sap” to “willing to blow up buildings” entirely on the strength of FBI entrapment. Far more likely is that this guy had radical Islamic tendencies and contacts and the FBI probed him to see how far he was willing to go in the name of jihad.
When it comes to the threat of radical Islam, we are far better off erring on the side of caution. I would decry the methods you describe for catching a drug dealer and maybe even a run-of-the-mill violent criminal, but certainly not for a terrorist (or potential terrorist).
Dave | Oct 27, 2010 | Reply
Dave, so the more serious the offense, the more the FBI should goad people into committing it? Consider the record, so far, of FBI infiltrators inciting people to plan crimes and then nab them.
The paintball terrorists, for example.
Or Randy Weaver.
For the record, I never called this man a “poor sap.” I called him a sap—and he was indeed a fool, as were many of the other people arrested by the very federal agents who prompted them to conspire to commit crimes in the first place.
Further, what makes a “potential terrorist” worse than a “violent criminal,” assuming the violent crime is of the same severity? I understand the distinction between “potential terrorists” and drug dealers, since I don’t think the government should be trying to arrest drug dealers in the first place. But what makes a “potential terrorist” worthy of abandoning the rule of law?
Anthony Gregory | Oct 27, 2010 | Reply
The proverbial ‘err on the side of caution’ argument. Just how far that ‘side’ extends until it becomes the ‘slippery slope’ is lost in the ‘fog of war’. Were the Branch Davidians in Waco ‘radical Islamic terrorists’? Can I get a ‘decry’ on that one, Dave?
How does entrapment ‘stings’ differ from false flag operations? Has the FBI ever arrested CIA conspirators violating U.S. law?
D. Frank Robinson | Oct 27, 2010 | Reply
(2) What if the agents one day actually get someone to commit violent acts and don’t stop him in time?
The FBI doesn’t need to worry about this because the American people will never know. The budget for the FBI will be increased and agents will get promotions. Drones will fly and flag-waving patriots will have orgasmic fits of nationalism.
Tom Blanton | Oct 28, 2010 | Reply
There’s plenty of evidence that “(2) What if the agents one day actually get someone to commit violent acts and don’t stop him in time?” did happen in relation to the 1993 WTC bombing. You can find all sorts of info by a quick google search, but here’s a good article by James Bovard on the topic: http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0408c.asp
Paul | Oct 28, 2010 | Reply
please, more info on current “attack”.
ralph | Oct 29, 2010 | Reply
The context does seem to be vague here... If the situation was “al Qaeda said they where going to kill my family if I didn’t help them blow up the building...”, I could see that to be clear-cut entrapment... But, this article fails to mention the specifics of what happened, so one can only speculate. Still, I agree that it seems that the FBI did at the very least behave in a questionable manner.
Chuck | Oct 29, 2010 | Reply
Thank-you for mentioning entrapment. This in my opinion is the far more important point here. Entrapment is when a law enforcement official (in this case, FBI agents) break the law in an attempt to get a suspect to break the law. By egging the suspect on, they not only contaminated the case, they are guilty of entrapment and should serve sentences in jail equal to the suspect’s.
Lest we forget; “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...” What these agents did was make themselves coconspirators. If we lived in a society that believed the above words, they would be arrested, tried, and if convicted, dealt with accordingly.
Sadly, we live in a nation where as George Orwell so succinctly put it in his book Animal Farm “...some animals are created more equal than others.”
joe4liberty | Nov 30, 2010 | Reply