Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture Its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS Are Such Grave Threats?

Keep Fear Alive!

Once War was declared on Terror, law agencies were compelled to hunt
it down, dig it out and destroy it. But if they did too good a job,
well, listen to the following words of former FBI assistant director
Thomas Fuentes, "...If you're submitting budget proposals for a law
enforcement agency, for an
intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the proposal that "We won
the war on terror and everything's great," cuz the first thing that's gonna
happen is your budget's gonna be cut in half."
One of our greatest problems in our efforts to save Humankind and the
Planet Earth, is how to develop a government that does not immediately
begin to reinvent itself as the final, most perfect form of
government. With the ever growing Corporate Capitalist form now in
power, we can see how the Ruling Class creates agencies solely for the
purpose of protecting those in power. Agencies such as the FBI and
Homeland Security, along with the CIA, will only receive funding as
long as the Ruling Class feels threatened. So of course it is in the
best interest of those agencies to "find" lots of Terrorists. Even if
they must invent them. Institutions, as necessary as they are,
present a very real threat to the people they are purported to be
protecting or serving. Once created, they tend to begin to develop
ways to make themselves permanent. Institutions make rules and wrap
themselves in them, becoming rigid and brittle and out-dated, like the
government they represent. This is the reason for replacing
governments from time to time. Replacing Capitalism is long overdue.
In the ideal world, the people would gather, debate and finally set in
place a new government, totally removing the current one. But this
the real world. Entrenched governments do not pack up their
briefcases and quietly turn control over to others. Like the agencies
and institutions set in place to protect the government, the
government itself has become the protector of the rich and powerful.
Once the People of the World understand that the Rich and Powerful
protect themselves by hiding behind government, institutions and
religions, we can get down to the business of developing a People
First, World-Wide government. Institutions will serve at the pleasure
of the people, and only for short terms. The same must be done with
governing bodies. When we actually learn how to Educate our children,
they will be prepared to take their turn in managing the public's
affairs.
Learning to change government peacefully will not be an easy process.
We have been long conditioned to solve our differences with force and
violence. Looking around the Globe, we can see how well this has
turned out.
We need to constantly remind ourselves that we hold the real power.
Without our backs, the Ruling Class is impudent. But so long as they
continue to divide and conquer us, we will remain their faithful
servants.

Carl Jarvis

On 2/26/15, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> Greenwald writes: "The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the
> agency's latest counter-terrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn
> men,
> ages 19 to 30, on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for
> ISIS."
>
> Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald. (photo: AP)
>
>
> Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture Its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS
> Are
> Such Grave Threats?
> By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
> 26 February 15
>
> The FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency's latest
> counter-terrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30,
> on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of
> joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain
> ably documents, "it appears that none of the three men was in any condition
> to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI
> informant." One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI
> informant
> that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in
> following through on the FBI's plot: his mom had taken away his passport.
> Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain
> noted on Twitter that this case "sounds like another victory for the FBI
> over the mentally ill."
> In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the
> overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over
> the last decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month -
> after the FBI manipulated a 20-year-old loner who lived with his parents
> into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol -
> these cases follow a very clear pattern:
> The known facts from this latest case seem to fit well within a
> now-familiar
> FBI pattern whereby the agency does not disrupt planned domestic terror
> attacks but rather creates them, then publicly praises itself for stopping
> its own plots.
> First, they target a Muslim: not due to any evidence of intent or
> capability
> to engage in terrorism, but rather for the "radical" political views he
> expresses. In most cases, the Muslim targeted by the FBI is a very young
> (late teens, early 20s), adrift, unemployed loner who has shown no signs of
> mastering basic life functions, let alone carrying out a serious terror
> attack, and has no known involvement with actual terrorist groups.
> They then find another Muslim who is highly motivated to help disrupt a
> "terror plot": either because they're being paid substantial sums of money
> by the FBI or because (as appears to be the case here) they are charged
> with
> some unrelated crime and are desperate to please the FBI in exchange for
> leniency (or both). The FBI then gives the informant a detailed attack
> plan,
> and sometimes even the money and other instruments to carry it out, and the
> informant then shares all of that with the target. Typically, the informant
> also induces, lures, cajoles, and persuades the target to agree to carry
> out
> the FBI-designed plot. In some instances where the target refuses to go
> along, they have their informant offer huge cash inducements to the
> impoverished target.
> Once they finally get the target to agree, the FBI swoops in at the last
> minute, arrests the target, issues a press release praising themselves for
> disrupting a dangerous attack (which it conceived of, funded, and recruited
> the operatives for), and the DOJ and federal judges send their target to
> prison for years or even decades (where they are kept in special GITMO-like
> units). Subservient U.S. courts uphold the charges by applying such a broad
> and permissive interpretation of "entrapment" that it could almost never be
> successfully invoked.
> Once again, we should all pause for a moment to thank the brave men and
> women of the FBI for saving us from their own terror plots.
>
> FBI website data on domestic terrorism. (photo: The Intercept)
> One can, if one really wishes, debate whether the FBI should be engaging in
> such behavior. For reasons I and many others have repeatedly argued, these
> cases are unjust in the extreme: a form of pre-emptory prosecution where
> vulnerable individuals are targeted and manipulated not for any criminal
> acts they have committed but rather for the bad political views they have
> expressed. They end up sending young people to prison for decades for
> "crimes" which even their sentencing judges acknowledge they never would
> have seriously considered, let alone committed, in the absence of FBI
> trickery. It's hard to imagine anyone thinking this is a justifiable
> tactic,
> but I'm certain there are people who believe that. Let's leave that
> question
> to the side for the moment in favor of a different issue.
> We're constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of
> home-grown terrorists, "lone wolf" extremists, and ISIS. So intensified are
> these official warnings that The New York Times earlier this month cited
> anonymous U.S. intelligence officials to warn of the growing ISIS threat
> and
> announce "the prospect of a new global war on terror."
> But how serious of a threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if
> the FBI continually has to resort to manufacturing its own plots by
> trolling
> the internet in search of young drifters and/or the mentally ill whom they
> target, recruit and then manipulate into joining? Does that not, by itself,
> demonstrate how over-hyped and insubstantial this "threat" actually is?
> Shouldn't there be actual plots, ones that are created and fueled without
> the help of the FBI, that the agency should devote its massive resources to
> stopping?
> This FBI tactic would be akin to having the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
> constantly warn of the severe threat posed by drug addiction while it
> simultaneously uses pushers on its payroll to deliberately get people
> hooked
> on drugs so that they can arrest the addicts they've created and thus
> justify their own warnings and budgets (and that kind of threat-creation,
> just by the way, is not all that far off from what the other federal law
> enforcement agencies, like the FBI, are actually doing). As we noted the
> last time we wrote about this, the Justice Department is aggressively
> pressuring U.S. allies to employ these same entrapment tactics in order to
> create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded around as proof of the
> grave threat.
> Threats that are real, and substantial, do not need to be manufactured and
> concocted. Indeed, as the blogger Digby, citing Juan Cole, recently showed,
> run-of-the-mill "lone wolf" gun violence is so much of a greater threat to
> Americans than "domestic terror" by every statistical metric that it's
> almost impossible to overstate the disparity:
>
> Graph indicating murders caused by guns in comparison to terrorism. (photo:
> Mary Altaffer/AP)
> In that regard, it is not difficult to understand why "domestic terror" and
> "homegrown extremism" are things the FBI is desperately determined to
> create. But this FBI terror-plot-concoction should, by itself, suffice to
> demonstrate how wildly exaggerated this threat actually is.
> UPDATE: The ACLU of Massachusetts Kade Crockford notes this extraordinarily
> revealing quote from former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes, as he
> defends one of the worst FBI terror "sting" operations of all (the Cromitie
> prosecution we describe at length here):
> If you're submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an
> intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the proposal that "We won
> the war on terror and everything's great," cuz the first thing that's gonna
> happen is your budget's gonna be cut in half. You know, it's my opposite of
> Jesse Jackson's 'Keep Hope Alive'-it's 'Keep Fear Alive.' Keep it alive.
> That is the FBI's terrorism strategy - keep fear alive - and it drives
> everything they do.
> Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not
> valid.
>
> Pulitzer Prize winner Glenn Greenwald. (photo: AP)
> https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terroris
> m-isis-grave-threats/https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/fbi-manuf
> acture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/
> Why Does the FBI Have to Manufacture Its Own Plots if Terrorism and ISIS
> Are
> Such Grave Threats?
> By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
> 26 February 15
> he FBI and major media outlets yesterday trumpeted the agency's latest
> counter-terrorism triumph: the arrest of three Brooklyn men, ages 19 to 30,
> on charges of conspiring to travel to Syria to fight for ISIS (photo of
> joint FBI/NYPD press conference, above). As my colleague Murtaza Hussain
> ably documents, "it appears that none of the three men was in any condition
> to travel or support the Islamic State, without help from the FBI
> informant." One of the frightening terrorist villains told the FBI
> informant
> that, beyond having no money, he had encountered a significant problem in
> following through on the FBI's plot: his mom had taken away his passport.
> Noting the bizarre and unhinged ranting of one of the suspects, Hussain
> noted on Twitter that this case "sounds like another victory for the FBI
> over the mentally ill."
> In this regard, this latest arrest appears to be quite similar to the
> overwhelming majority of terrorism arrests the FBI has proudly touted over
> the last decade. As my colleague Andrew Fishman and I wrote last month -
> after the FBI manipulated a 20-year-old loner who lived with his parents
> into allegedly agreeing to join an FBI-created plot to attack the Capitol -
> these cases follow a very clear pattern:
> The known facts from this latest case seem to fit well within a
> now-familiar
> FBI pattern whereby the agency does not disrupt planned domestic terror
> attacks but rather creates them, then publicly praises itself for stopping
> its own plots.
> First, they target a Muslim: not due to any evidence of intent or
> capability
> to engage in terrorism, but rather for the "radical" political views he
> expresses. In most cases, the Muslim targeted by the FBI is a very young
> (late teens, early 20s), adrift, unemployed loner who has shown no signs of
> mastering basic life functions, let alone carrying out a serious terror
> attack, and has no known involvement with actual terrorist groups.
> They then find another Muslim who is highly motivated to help disrupt a
> "terror plot": either because they're being paid substantial sums of money
> by the FBI or because (as appears to be the case here) they are charged
> with
> some unrelated crime and are desperate to please the FBI in exchange for
> leniency (or both). The FBI then gives the informant a detailed attack
> plan,
> and sometimes even the money and other instruments to carry it out, and the
> informant then shares all of that with the target. Typically, the informant
> also induces, lures, cajoles, and persuades the target to agree to carry
> out
> the FBI-designed plot. In some instances where the target refuses to go
> along, they have their informant offer huge cash inducements to the
> impoverished target.
> Once they finally get the target to agree, the FBI swoops in at the last
> minute, arrests the target, issues a press release praising themselves for
> disrupting a dangerous attack (which it conceived of, funded, and recruited
> the operatives for), and the DOJ and federal judges send their target to
> prison for years or even decades (where they are kept in special GITMO-like
> units). Subservient U.S. courts uphold the charges by applying such a broad
> and permissive interpretation of "entrapment" that it could almost never be
> successfully invoked.
> Once again, we should all pause for a moment to thank the brave men and
> women of the FBI for saving us from their own terror plots.
>
> FBI website data on domestic terrorism. (photo: The Intercept)
> One can, if one really wishes, debate whether the FBI should be engaging in
> such behavior. For reasons I and many others have repeatedly argued, these
> cases are unjust in the extreme: a form of pre-emptory prosecution where
> vulnerable individuals are targeted and manipulated not for any criminal
> acts they have committed but rather for the bad political views they have
> expressed. They end up sending young people to prison for decades for
> "crimes" which even their sentencing judges acknowledge they never would
> have seriously considered, let alone committed, in the absence of FBI
> trickery. It's hard to imagine anyone thinking this is a justifiable
> tactic,
> but I'm certain there are people who believe that. Let's leave that
> question
> to the side for the moment in favor of a different issue.
> We're constantly bombarded with dire warnings about the grave threat of
> home-grown terrorists, "lone wolf" extremists, and ISIS. So intensified are
> these official warnings that The New York Times earlier this month cited
> anonymous U.S. intelligence officials to warn of the growing ISIS threat
> and
> announce "the prospect of a new global war on terror."
> But how serious of a threat can all of this be, at least domestically, if
> the FBI continually has to resort to manufacturing its own plots by
> trolling
> the internet in search of young drifters and/or the mentally ill whom they
> target, recruit and then manipulate into joining? Does that not, by itself,
> demonstrate how over-hyped and insubstantial this "threat" actually is?
> Shouldn't there be actual plots, ones that are created and fueled without
> the help of the FBI, that the agency should devote its massive resources to
> stopping?
> This FBI tactic would be akin to having the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)
> constantly warn of the severe threat posed by drug addiction while it
> simultaneously uses pushers on its payroll to deliberately get people
> hooked
> on drugs so that they can arrest the addicts they've created and thus
> justify their own warnings and budgets (and that kind of threat-creation,
> just by the way, is not all that far off from what the other federal law
> enforcement agencies, like the FBI, are actually doing). As we noted the
> last time we wrote about this, the Justice Department is aggressively
> pressuring U.S. allies to employ these same entrapment tactics in order to
> create their own terrorists, who can then be paraded around as proof of the
> grave threat.
> Threats that are real, and substantial, do not need to be manufactured and
> concocted. Indeed, as the blogger Digby, citing Juan Cole, recently showed,
> run-of-the-mill "lone wolf" gun violence is so much of a greater threat to
> Americans than "domestic terror" by every statistical metric that it's
> almost impossible to overstate the disparity:
>
> Graph indicating murders caused by guns in comparison to terrorism. (photo:
> Mary Altaffer/AP)
> In that regard, it is not difficult to understand why "domestic terror" and
> "homegrown extremism" are things the FBI is desperately determined to
> create. But this FBI terror-plot-concoction should, by itself, suffice to
> demonstrate how wildly exaggerated this threat actually is.
> UPDATE: The ACLU of Massachusetts Kade Crockford notes this extraordinarily
> revealing quote from former FBI assistant director Thomas Fuentes, as he
> defends one of the worst FBI terror "sting" operations of all (the Cromitie
> prosecution we describe at length here):
> If you're submitting budget proposals for a law enforcement agency, for an
> intelligence agency, you're not going to submit the proposal that "We won
> the war on terror and everything's great," cuz the first thing that's gonna
> happen is your budget's gonna be cut in half. You know, it's my opposite of
> Jesse Jackson's 'Keep Hope Alive'-it's 'Keep Fear Alive.' Keep it alive.
> That is the FBI's terrorism strategy - keep fear alive - and it drives
> everything they do.
>
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