
The FBI 'is manufacturing terrorism cases' on a greater scale than ever before - ccvannorman
http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-is-manufacturing-terrorism-cases-2016-6/
======
nkurz
This brings to mind the classic example of "rat hunting". A hundred years ago,
the French Government wanted to get rid of the rats plaguing Hanoi, so they
offered a bounty for each rat killed. To collect the bounty, the (presumably)
dead rat's tail was turned in as proof. As might be expected, the expected
then happened:

 _Appealing to both civic duty and to the pocketbook, a one-cent bounty was
paid for each rat tail brought to the authorities (it was decided that the
handing in of an entire rat corpse would create too much of a burden for the
already taxed municipal health authorities). Unfortunately, this scheme
backfired. Despite initial apparent success, the authorities soon discovered
that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. As soon the municipal
administrators publicized the reward program, Vietnamese residents began to
bring in thousands of tails._

 _While many desk-bound administrators delighted in the numbers of apparently
eliminated rats, more alert officials in the field began to notice a
disturbing development. There were frequent sightings of rats without tails
going about their business in the city streets. After some perplexity, the
authorities realized that less-than-honest but quite resourceful characters
were catching rats, but merely cutting off the tails and letting the still-
living pests go free (perhaps to breed and produce more valuable tails)._

 _Later, things became even more serious as health inspectors discovered a
disturbing development in the suburbs of Hanoi. These officials found that
more enterprising but equally deceptive individuals were actually raising rats
to collect the bounty. One can only imagine the frustration of the municipal
authorities, who realized that their best efforts at dératisation had actually
increased the rodent population by indirectly encouraging rat-farming.
Evidently, this was not what the French had in mind when they encouraged
capitalist development and the entrepreneurial spirit in Vietnam. Faced with
such fraudulent schemes, the colonial regime scrapped the rat bounty program._

[http://www.freakonomics.com/media/vannrathunt.pdf](http://www.freakonomics.com/media/vannrathunt.pdf)

If an organization is judged by how many "terrorists" they arrest, one should
not be surprised if that organization comes up with a counterproductive means
of increasing the number of terrorists arrested.

~~~
Puts
There is actually a name for this. The cobra effect:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect)

At the time of British rule of colonial India, cobras where a huge problem and
rewards for catching cobras resulted in the locals breeding them instead.

~~~
Houshalter
This is weird. Humans hunt animals to extinction all the time when have
economic value. Look what's happening to elephants or rhinos in Africa.

Yet creating an artificial value to killing them isn't enough? Suddenly humans
come up with creative ways of breeding them artificially?

Perhaps these aren't mutually exclusive. Maybe the bounty program worked to
reduce the population to the point that farming was more viable. Maybe the
bounty was too high, and if they reduced it farming wouldn't be economical
anymore.

Perhaps a solution would be to have the bounty in short random bursts. The
bounty program only lasts for 1 year, so no one has time to start farms and
breed them. Or just investigate the people bringing in lots of cobras, and see
if they have a big cobra pit next to their house.

I am very curious about these systems because it seems like a very effective
method of eliminating invasive species. Australia is being overrun with cane
toads, and my local state is complaining about Asian carp and zebra mussels.

Yet no one is willing to put up money to see if the market can find an
efficient solution to cull the population. Partially because of the infamous
stories posted above about how these programs create bad incentives. But I
believe they could be minimized. And I can't imagine anyone breeding asian
carp or cane toads given how prevalent they are in the wild now.

~~~
cheepin
> artificial value to killing them

Another way to think about it is an artificial value to keeping the population
going. All the animals will eventually die yielding a reward, but if you can
keep a population going, the reward will keep coming.

The "solution" for countries who wanted to remove invasive species is to
embrace pretty heavy handed comprehensive enforcement. (See
[http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/canada-declares-
wa...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/canada-declares-war-on-
rats/))

~~~
Houshalter
My point is that only applies once the bounty has already worked to reduce the
population to a low enough level. After that you can end the bounty and try
other things.

------
zaroth
> "These people are five steps away from being a danger to the United States."

I'd say they are one step away. They have the motive and opportunity but they
lack the means.

It seems to me there's a element of 'scale' in an entrapment defense. The cop
tail-gated me so I sped up and then got ticketed for speeding -- perhaps I was
entrapped to speed. It's not so hard to push someone over the edge to commit
relatively minor offenses. But can you really entrap someone into launching a
surface-to-surface missile at a air base? You can certainly _coerce_ someone
into that by threatening their life or their family, but that's not
entrapment.

I don't see how providing any amount of weapons or money or fake explosives
could entrap someone into being a jihadist.

Now, TFA raises the question of mental illness. I think if they are so
mentally ill that they went along with the plot without understanding what
they were doing, then they are either not competent to stand trial, or insane
enough to try it as a defense.

I think it's a very low ROI approach for the FBI and mostly they are wasting
their time providing the means for "nobody-wannabe-terrorists" to become
actual terrorists, but my understanding is they record these guys actually
pushing the detonator on their fake-bombs and they are ready to die to kill
civilians, so I can't say I'm sympathetic.

~~~
ChemicalWarfare
With all the bashing FBI receives they are for the most part operating within
the framework of the law.

In some countries just conspiring to commit a terrorist act can lead to a
conviction, so in a way you can say that FBI is 'forced' to operate this way
to get a conviction for a would be terrorist.

~~~
wfo
I don't think any of the bashing the FBI gets is about suggesting they are
breaking the law. Rather, the suggestions are that the law is limitlessly
broad and allows nearly anything so it is nearly impossible for them to break
the law in the first place (they can, for example, set up entire laboratories
dedicated to fabricating evidence and send trained experts who lie on the
stand as standard operating procedure with no repercussions).

And given that their powers are so broad and immense, we rely on them acting
in good faith and morally (we must, because we have nothing else), so we
criticize them when they do not do that.

Preying on mentally ill Muslims and concocting elaborate schemes which exploit
their inability to function normally to trick them into "taking part" in
(sometimes little more than just 'agreeing to') some sort of plot that doesn't
exist and then patting themselves on the back for "getting a terrorist" and
locking the mentally ill person in jail for decades is, well, sick, and not a
shining example of 'acting morally', so the criticism is well-deserved.

~~~
ChemicalWarfare
That specific case - yes it was a stretch, although this brings a question of
a mental health -related detention which is a huge can of worms in and of
itself. Also there are no specific details on the mental disease he was
allegedly struggling with. Dissolving ppl in acid and burning women refusing
to have sex with you is a 'mental disease' in my book which is what isis is
doing. Should they be exempt from prosecution?

That said : "Of 508 defendants prosecuted in federal terrorism-related cases
in the decade after 9/11, 243 were involved with an FBI informant, while 158
were the targets of sting operations. Of those cases, an informant or FBI
undercover operative led 49 defendants in their terrorism plots, similar to
the way Osmakac was led in his." So now 49 cases out of 508 were 'led' by the
FBI, not clear how many of those had to do with mentally unfit individuals or
if Osmakac was the only one.

------
JustSomeNobody
Who did _not_ see this coming?

You have FBI beating the Terrorism drum. You have politicians running on being
tough on Terrorism. Terrorism is BIG BUSINESS. It makes people rich. It gives
the Govt unprecedented POWER of us. How did people _NOT_ see this coming!?

~~~
chrisdbaldwin
Some people did see it coming, and we ignored them. Hell, the politician who
pushed those ridiculous TSA body scanners works for the company which made
them! Cash rules everything around me, CREAM, get the money, dolla' dolla'
bills, y'all.

~~~
naringas
The worse thing is how cash is not a resource, but a standard technology
"regulated" by a private institution (that nontheless has the word federal in
its name)

------
mtgx
This is inexcusable. In many of the mass shootings, there's typically someone
with mental issues, which you may not expect to properly differentiate between
right and wrong.

The FBI is basically seeking these people out, handing them all the weapons
and bombs and they need, and then say "see that school over there? Go ahead
and lay waste to it. Come on, you'll feel good about it. We'll even give you
money to do it!"

This is the danger of having unaccountable authorities that have a profound
lack of respect for the rule of law and due process, and think they can do
whatever they want to further whatever they think the "mission" is. Eventually
_they_ become the enemy of the people and instead of _improving_ public
safety, they actively work to undermine it.

If they are so worried about people with mental issues, they should be seeking
them out to give them help, not arm them. You'd think that should be common
sense. But when civil law enforcement becomes militarized, something like that
is anything _but_ common sense.

 _> Karen Greenberg, for example — author of “Rogue Justice: The Making of the
Security State” — believes that the “tension between security and liberty”
that can result from these tactics is a good thing.

> “The amount of money, time and resources that have been put into rethinking
> law enforcement since 9/11 has made us safer,” she told Business Insider in
> an interview. “And now we’re sort of trying to figure out where the lines
> are.”_

I'd like to see some evidence for that. How many mass shootings still happen
in the U.S. every year? - "But we don't count _those_ as terrorism!" \- Oh,
okay. But you do when it's the government itself that trains these people and
encourages them to do these acts against itself?!

~~~
dragontamer
> This is inexcusable. In many of the mass shootings, there's typically
> someone with mental issues, which you may not expect to properly
> differentiate between right and wrong.

Of the many mass shootings and terrorist attacks that have occurred over the
last decades...

Starting with Columbine:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre)

To Timmothy McVeigh:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_McVeigh)

To the Beltway Sniper:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks)

To Virginia Tech Shooter:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Tech_shooting)

To the Virginia on-air killing: [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
canada-34090236](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34090236)

To the Charlestown shooting:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting)

To the Boston Marathon Bombing:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Marathon_bombing)

To the Aurora Shooter:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Aurora_shooting)

Only two of these guys strikes me as "insane", the Virginia Tech shooter and
the Aurora Shooter. Everyone else were just assholes. These are just normal
people who got stressed out by their peers and then attacked back.

The fact of the matter is, the vast, vast majority of crimes (and even mass-
shootings and terrorist attacks) are done by 100% sane people. Assholes for
sure, but people who are sound in body and mind.

An insane person rarely has the capacity to plan an attack that will
successfully kill people. Seriously. This "mental health" myth needs to die,
and people need to realize that NORMAL people are killing others. The big
daddy of them all: 9/11 required careful collaboration between four groups of
distinct people (four groups, four aircraft. Near simultaneous execution
across the country). They had to get pilot training, work together, coordinate
an attack at the same time.

Ditto with the Paris and Brussels attacks. This complicated planning and
coordination of a large group of people can only happen if all members of the
group are mentally stable. It really takes a lot of work to plan a terrorist
attack.

The study of "radicalization" says that people become radicalized when they
are increasingly isolated from their peers, become stressed to a breaking
point to the point where they wish to lash out and attack.

~~~
EdHominem
Regarding radicalization, it's a term that's only used by talking heads. In
security work you assume that everyone is a motivated self-aware bad guy who
can find _many_ valid reasons to shoot you. The idea that only simpletons, who
go through a "radicalization" process (usually guided by a priest), become
"terrorists" is dangerously wrong. In the industry you'd be laughed at for a
risk-analysis using that term or even that thought-process.

Many of those killers had a very specific reason for their attacks that was at
least as good as our military uses. Not right or wrong, but as well developed
and contextually reasonable.

For instance, Timothy McVeigh attacked a military installation because he felt
(largely rightly) that they'd illegally and unreasonably conspired to kill his
countrymen on trumped up charges. He did the equivalent of bombing an Iraqi
military HQ because they'd violated international norms. It's likely that had
the initial Waco attack not happened that McVeigh would have had a peaceful
life - he wasn't shopping around for targets.

I say this not to forgive him but to explain how suicidally stupid our public
discourse on internal dangers is. If we really want to be "safe" we have to
realize that these aren't random, unguided, and unskilled, attacks. If we
shoot up someone's friends we will get responses. Not from radical crazies,
but from sane people who believe they're next.

Because the FBI believes its own rhetoric they're looking for radical-looking
people (usually slightly crazy, as a result) and then try to work backwards to
the terrorist attack they assume must be cooking in their head. This will
never fail to find them funding, but will never make us one iota safer.

The main take-home is that there isn't a special terrorist type that we can
find all of, thus making us safe. All of us are potentially terrorists by
someone else's definition, French freedom fighters, spies behind Nazi lines,
etc. (We now consider those to be "good" but the people on the ground acted
from their own initiative at the time, not a comfortable societal safety net
which vetted their ideas.)

Security can't protect us from ourselves.

~~~
dragontamer
Consider Timothy McVeigh vs the Bundy Standoff.

BOTH of these groups were citing the disastrous Waco as a point of their
protest. But one of these groups decided to bomb innocent civilians.

While the other was peaceful. (with guns pointed everywhere. But ultimately,
the Bundy guys remained peaceful)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundy_standoff)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_Nati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Malheur_National_Wildlife_Refuge)

The difference is radicalization. Even if the Bundy folk talk a big talk and
point their guns out the window, they really don't want to be killers. And
their fingers remained off of the trigger.

In contrast, Timothy McVeigh straight up wanted to kill people because of his
beliefs. Neither group was mentally ill. I disagree with both severely from a
political standpoint of course, but they aren't sick.

~~~
EdHominem
> innocent civilians.

Not by the definition we use overseas. Family and business associates of
terrorists are legitimate targets.

And most importantly, not innocent by the definition Timothy McVeigh was
trained to use in the army. "He said he later was shocked to be ordered to
execute surrendering prisoners [...]"

We don't stop to consider if workers in an Iraqi military HQ are conscripts,
or have taken their children to work.

We'd have bombed the BATF office, and considered it a righteous kill, if we
felt they had hurt us the way McVeigh felt they hurt his people.

> The difference is radicalization.

No, the difference is in their goals. They aren't one-issue simpletons.

Assuming they had the same goals, (which they didn't) the difference is
opportunity. Different skills, background, and situations give people
different tools.

> Timothy McVeigh straight up wanted to kill people because of his beliefs.

You tell him. That'll keep us safe.

But no, you're wrong. McVeigh could have killed thousands by targeting a
sporting event or something. He specifically chose the office of his enemy.

I'm not defending him, I'm saying that the things you're saying are feel-good
mantras that would lead us to being totally ineffective if we universally
acted on them.

Your virtue signaling is getting in the way of you analyzing people and their
motivations.

~~~
dragontamer
> Not by the definition we use overseas. Family and business associates of
> terrorists are legitimate targets.

Erm... right. You realize that's against the Geneva convention and is the
definition of a war crime in the US Military. You literally can be court
martialled if you did something like that.

When the Navy Seals stormed Bin Laden's home, how many children did they kill?
Answer: Zero. Did they kill Bin Laden's wife? No. They didn't. She was let go.
The entire family that was staying at Bin Laden's house, hiding with him, were
kept safe by the Seals.

What's your military background where you can say this sort of stuff with
confidence? Methinks you've been reading a bit too many articles and don't
have enough experience on your own to create an opinion.

~~~
EdHominem
> > legitimate targets.

> You realize that's against the Geneva convention and is the definition of a
> war crime in the US Military. You literally can be court martialled if you
> did something like that.

Fwiw, I meant 'legitimate _collateral_ targets'. As in, we don't abort a
mission if it'll blow up the family of the terrorist.

We'd have dropped a bomb on an enemy government office building despite it
having a nursery attached.

> When the Navy Seals stormed Bin Laden's home, [...]

When done by bomb the standards are _much_ lower. Also, that was a mission
they knew would be examined by everyone.

> Methinks you've been reading a bit too many articles and don't have enough
> experience on your own to create an opinion.

For what it's worth, being on the ground somewhere is not one of the best ways
to see the big picture. People fighting in Vietnam were often the least
informed and didn't know what went on a few miles away.

> What's your military background where you can say this sort of stuff with
> confidence?

Are you saying that all the torturers at Guantanamo have been found guilty?
Because otherwise I'm using the same news you have access to.

------
ccvannorman
This has been a problem for a while (I remember reading about FBI doing drug
busts this way -- convincing an at risk but otherwise innocent to play along
in a fake drug deal) -- and it is not a good thing.

Shouldn't the role of government be to better the populace? Instead people are
paid a salary and told to go out into the world and _create_ criminals.

~~~
lallysingh
Is that directly, or via an informant who's setting things (and people) up for
their own benefit?

~~~
ch4s3
both

------
grownseed
How these agencies have manage to thrive for so long, and continue to do so,
remains utterly baffling to me. In the US, the FBI, the NSA and the CIA (and
I'm sure others) have been caught red-handed on so many occasions and ...
nothing happened, and it seems nothing ever will. They'll get a slap on the
wrist, sometimes, and maybe some new legislation will be devised, only to be
bent again. Of course, it's far from being limited to the US, this happens the
world over.

Then you get stories like this one from Adam Curtis about MI5 in the UK [1],
which show that these events are not simply pervasive, they're essentially the
raison d'être of these agencies and their leaders. The very fact these people
think they are not accountable to the public and/or their eleted
representatives should tell us right off the bat where their interests
actually lie.

Those who seek and abuse power will do so regardless; it seems the least we
could do as relatively civilized socities would be to not sponsor those people
in the first place. By any morally acceptable standards, these people are
criminals and their only legitimacy stems from the government backing they
get.

[1]
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460)

~~~
a3n
John Gall: "Intrasystem goals come first."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics)

------
daxorid
This smells far more like an actual psyops strategy than simple entrapment or
career advancement.

If it's _publicly known_ that there is an N% chance that your explosives
supplier is a Fed (where N > paranoia threshold), that puts a chilling effect
on even attempting your extremist plot.

------
bArray
"Today, roughly 67% of prosecutions involving suspected ISIS supporters
include evidence from undercover operations, according to the "

According to the what? Is it missing or redacted?

~~~
tehwebguy
This empty <a> tag followed:

    
    
        <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/us/fbi-isis-terrorism-stings.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&amp;action=click&amp;contentCollection=us&amp;region=rank&amp;module=package&amp;version=highlights&amp;contentPlacement=2&amp;pgtype=sectionfront&amp;_r=0"></a>
    

Links to here: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/us/fbi-isis-terrorism-
stin...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/us/fbi-isis-terrorism-stings.html)

~~~
burmask
Thanks @tehwebguy - This is why I like HN.

~~~
nstjsnst
This isn't twitter @burmask

------
filoeleven
Having read too many of these stories over the past few years, I have slipped
into the habit of mentally expanding _FBI_ to _Federal Bureau of Instigation_.

------
at-fates-hands
At times I feel sorry for some of these agencies because they are in a
constant state of catch-22.

If we had rampant mass shootings and bombings like they do in Europe and some
of the Middle Eastern countries, people would be rioting in the streets to
stop it.But since it only happens once so often, people are up in arms because
of the methods used to _prevent_ said acts from happening in the first place.

You then have ask yourself. Do you prefer terrorism to happen and then be
reactive, or do you want the government to be proactive and work to flush
these people out from the shadows _before_ they commit a terrible act and
murder innocent citizens?

In my mind, they're damned if they do and damned if they don't.

~~~
hackuser
> rampant mass shootings and bombings like they do in Europe

Europe has "rampant" mass shootings and bombings? They are very rare, despite
the media coverage. The U.S. has many more mass shootings, AFAIK.

> do you want the government to be proactive and work to flush these people
> out from the shadows before they commit a terrible act and murder innocent
> citizens?

The question is whether many of these people would commit crimes if not for
the instigation of law enforcement.

~~~
pjc50
Yeah, the US has far, far more mass shootings. They're usually white
supremacist or enraged-lone-male (practically a political faction of
themselves) rather than carried out by an "organisation" of some sort.

~~~
Kristine1975
Here's a handy website that tracks mass shootings in the US:
[http://www.massshootingtracker.org/](http://www.massshootingtracker.org/)

------
delinka
Perhaps we should pay law enforcement based on a lack of crime. Less crime?
More pay. More crime? Less pay.

Of course, how are we counting "crimes"? By those they actually arrest?
They'll just stop arresting. By the number of complaints reported by citizens
about crime? Perhaps?

I bet there's also some unintended consequence even with this scheme, but I'm
feeling lazy just now.

------
aucto
The original example of this was the WTC93 bombing.

\- The bombing plot started before Ramzi Yousef entered the US. \- It was
initiated by Emad Salem, an FBI informant, ran by FBI agents Nancy Floyd &
John Anticev. \- Salem famously recorded all his interactions with the FBI,
including tapes where he says that he built the bomb that detonated. \- The
FBI started him as an agent provacuter, but when he asked for more money etc,
they lost faith and cut him lose. Months later the bomb went off, and the FBI
re-hired him, paid him a $1 million, to setup more terrorists but this time
with a fake bomb.

\- The first place Ramzi Yousef went was 2 Iraqi brothers apartment in NJ. \-
Allegedly the Iraqi brothers had an unlisted phone number in the name of Josie
Hadaes. This is the same number the so-called "dumb terrorist" used on the
truck rental, the one who went back to get his deposit.

The odd thing about WTC93 is that Yousef is considered the spiritual
mastermind of 9/11 for Operation Bojinka. And his uncle, is KSM, the actual
mastermind of 9/11.

Yet the neoconservatives and a CIA director tried to claim that Yousef's real
identity was something else; some Iraqi agent or something.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories but it's hard to understand exactly
what happened in 1993. It was certainly a failed sting operation and as one
reporter said, the FBI wante to "teach the damn Muslim terrorists a lesson'.
Either way, Emad Salem initiated the bombing plot, originally it was a pipe
bomb against a synagoguge.

Whoever contacted Yousef, and whoever he is, he is a legitamite terrorist
mastermind. Of course, he escaped and went on to commit a variety of other
attacks before being arrested. I think his uncle, KSM, was even on CNN at one
point (forget the story) while he was being hunted.

On 9/11, it seems pretty clear that the CIA was running a sting operation with
2 of the hijackers in CA, the ones affiliated with the alleged Saudi
intelligence agent. At least 50 CIA employees knew about these 2 Al Qaeda
terrorists in the US and the CIA withheld this information from the White
House according to Richard Clarke-
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl6w1YaZdf8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl6w1YaZdf8)

The fact that that video has less than 60,000 views is unfortunate. And Zero
Dark Thirty, is allegedly based on the red hair lady who worked for Rich Blee.
She is lauded as the person who found Bin Laden but worked for the Alec
Station who seemed to inadvertanty allow 9/11 to happen.

Then last year, Cofer Black went public, although he seems culpable
too-[http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-
directors...](http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/cia-directors-
documentary-911-bush-213353)

Of course, prior to 9/11, there were many warnings and chatter about a
terrorist attack. In March 2001, the Lone Gunmen pilot premiered about a
government conspiracy of flying planes into the WTC. And conspiracy theorists,
Alex Jones & Bill Cooper, both warned an attack was coming. Some of this could
be confirmation bias but the point is, a lot of people knew something was
going to happen.

And in the WTC93, since the FBI wanted to teach the terrorists a lessons,
there's some indications that they wanted a terrorist attack to happen, to
motivate the public and government into acting to prevent a mass terrorist
attack.

However, the reality is, government agencies like the CIA are highly
beaurcratic and limited by their mandates, lawyers etc. Whatever happened on
9/11 has been so obsfucated it's hard to understand.

Wherever Rich Blee is, he needs to answer some questions. And the 28-pages
need to be declassified- [https://28pages.org/](https://28pages.org/)

------
marcoperaza
Given that Al-Qaeda and ISIS recruit aggressively online, I'd rather that the
FBI get to these sickos before they do.

~~~
rlidwka
I'm afraid there are plenty of potential victims out there for both FBI and
Al-Qaeda. So one organization does not really interfere with another.

~~~
marcoperaza
Victims? Were the guards at Auschwitz victims too? Someone who tries to
slaughter civilians to spread terror is not a victim, they are the enemy. No
one would ever call a neo-Nazi a victim. The moral double standard toward
minorities in the West is ridiculous. It's the soft bigotry of lowered
expectations.

------
joesmo
Real foreign terrorists are rare.

American terrorists, while plenty, are undesired as media objects so they
don't have the scaremongering effect of foreigners.

Solution: make up fake foreign-looking terrorists and sell them to the
American people to scare them. It works wonders!

Solution 2: Take domestic terrorists and pretend they're foreign (see San
Bernardino). Americans are too stupid to know the difference. Also works
wonders.

~~~
partiallypro
I don't buy your logic, the terror "busts" rarely make a the news more than
just a passing mention these days. So I doubt it has much psychological effect
on the public. Also very few, outside of maybe conservative talk radio, said
the San Bernardino shooters were "foreign." The line was always "home grown
terror with possible ties to (or inspired by) ISIS."

Pretty much everyone I've seen recognizes the risk of terror is far greater
among people already living inside the U.S. (or Europe), "sleepers" or
otherwise, usually first or second generation immigrants.

In terms of "far right" terror groups, that's a different story entirely, and
usually those groups are vocal in their communities (making them easier to
track;) with the exception of "lone wolves," which are harder to track because
they usually don't have international connections or travel records (or
domestic ties to groups) that would raise flags.

~~~
EdHominem
Sleepers are agents specifically embedded with future actions in mind. There's
no such thing as a second-generation sleeper agent - that's called a citizen.

And if you have teenagers, ask yourself how likely they'll follow in your
crufty old plans.

Sleeper agents are movie-plots.

Essentially, if you're thinking about security and you recognize yourself
thinking any terms you've heard on CNN ("Lone wolf", "sleeper", "radicalized",
etc) you're doing it wrong. Those are silly TV terms and are usually after-
the-fact descriptives, not warning signs.

(ie, you only catch one guy with no leads to others, so the media labels him a
Lone Wolf. That's useless wrt finding him in the first place.)

~~~
partiallypro
I never said they'd get their instructions from their parents. My point is
that first or second generation immigrants often feel neglected by the society
they live in and are interested in the culture their parents/grandparents
lived in. So they revert, or visit those places and become radicalized,
usually with absolutely no support from the parent because that's what they
were trying to escape. Then the cell will "activate" them, again, this has no
barring on their parents.

There is one common aspect to most "lone wolves" and other types of terrorists
is that they don't feel like they belong in their current society.

The rest of your argument is a bit of a straw man to what I was actually
stating; however if you think disaffected youth aren't "radicalized" (because
they feel they finally belong to something), you're wrong. And it's not just a
TV term, the FBI and the rest of the alphabet soup agencies use these terms,
so I don't really see your point.

~~~
EdHominem
If they weren't planted, they aren't sleepers. You're spending more time
shoehorning people into TV-word boxes than you are in understanding them.

I've seen this before - people fighting to justify calling someone a Lone Wolf
despite their having outside assistance. Why? Because it sounds dangerous.
It's a trial and judgement all in one. "There, I labelled Osama as 'crazy',
I've done my part."

Maybe after the fact you can sort people by how radical they seem (it's a
subjective measure), or how much outside support they had, but it's a
worthless thing to think about beforehand, and anyone who does it is
_absolutely_ disconnected from making anything more secure.

> And it's not just a TV term, the FBI and the rest of the alphabet soup
> agencies use these terms, so I don't really see your point.

The FBI is dangerously worthless in this regard. If they say something and
someone on TV latches onto it you can be assured that it's wrongheaded. To the
degree that their profiling could actually be useful, it has to ignore
epithets. (Yes, you hate terrorists, you're a good citizen, I get that. But
stop insulting them long enough to actually study their actions.)

Real security doesn't involve labeling people, it involves looking for flaws
in defenses, etc.

------
strooper
Isn't "terrorism" a source of spreading power and control both nationally and
internationally, without which we wouldn't be able to justify our act? It's
not an eye opener report that is telling something we already don't know. Then
why bother reporting it?

------
rm_-rf_slash
I doubt this will be received well but here goes:

People choose to commit violent acts or agree with those that do. Whether
these people are psychologically impaired or clear-headed and bloodthirsty,
they could just as easily _STOP_ glorifying terrorism, watching execution
videos, communicating with terrorists and terrorist supporters...nobody is
forcing them to _want_ to be terrorists.

Is the FBI overstepping its bounds by providing weapons to whom they will soon
arrest? Maybe. But if they had simply stopped bothering with their
investigations, who's to say they wouldn't commit acts of terror with more
primitive means?

Someone with aims of terror could smash a container of bleach against a
container of ammonia in the middle of a crowded shopping mall and kill dozens
of people - with stuff you could buy at any hardware or grocery store. No
permit, no license, no FBI investigator involved.

In the end, there is only one question you need to ask yourself: am I at risk
of an FBI entrapment sting?

Since I do not condone terrorism or make any effort to communicate with
terrorists or terrorist supporters, the Bureau will not bother me. And the
same, I hope, will go for you.

~~~
Kristine1975
_> Since I do not condone terrorism or make any effort to communicate with
terrorists or terrorist supporters, the Bureau will not bother me. And the
same, I hope, will go for you._

Isn't that the classic "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry
about" argument?

And maybe you _do_ communicate with terrorist supporters: Are you absolutely
sure none of the people you communicate with support terrorism?

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Yes it is that argument exactly and it is a case where it works.

Nobody is contacting me on terrorist matters. Even if someone did I would
ignore them and/or report them to the Bureau.

I don't see how this is a problem for anybody here. Unless you are literally
planning an attack, you have done nothing wrong, you are not in the process of
doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

Unless you have an anectode about being personally harassed by the FBI then I
submit that you are getting worked up over something that is not and should
not ever be your problem.

~~~
throwawaysocks
The red scare. The civil rights movement. Anti-war movements during WWII.

People distrust the FBI for very good reasons.

