How Half of Terror Cases Investigated By the FBI ... Were Also Hatched by the FBI

[Brewman_Jax]

http://www.alternet.org/news/152225/how_...y_the_fbi/

From the article:

Quote:Here is an important question: What single organization is responsible for more terror plots in the USA than any other?

Possible answers: Al Qaida. That would no doubt be the popular answer but it would be wrong. The KKK. Way past their prime, so that is not it. The Jewish Defense League. Good guess, but still not it. So what is the correct answer?

It is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, AKA the FBI. Don’t believe me? Well, just read Trevor Aaronson’s expose entitled “The Informants” published in the September/October 2011 issue of Mother Jones.

Aaronson looked at over 500 terrorism-related cases taken up by the FBI and found that over half of them involved the Bureau’s stable of 15,000 informants. Many of these are ex-felons and con men who are often paid well if their efforts result in an arrest and conviction.

So what, you might say. Using informants to obtain information about criminal activity is an old and legitimate tactic. Yes, however, that approach to information gathering is not exactly how the FBI uses all of its informants.

Indeed, the Bureau has a program, misnamed “prevention” which encourages its agents to get creative in the use of informants. How creative? Well, if they can’t find any terrorist activity going on, they have their informants instigate some. Where are they doing this? Mainly in our country’s Muslim communities.

According to the Mother Jones story, the FBI has concluded that Al-Qaeda as an organization is no longer a major threat to the US. The threat now comes from the “lone wolf,” the person who is angry at or frustrated by their life situation and open to the influence of terrorist rhetoric.

Allegedly, the American Muslim community is full of these “lone wolves” just sitting out there fuming, aching to vent their anger on a myriad array of significant and insignificant targets.

...

The article continues, but the gist is there. This is all sorts of wrong. Informant misconduct, law-enforcement misconduct, financial incentive, and job security to name a few. Job security? If there isn't a problem, then go create a problem and solve it--in the nick of time, of course.

There's also the racist overtones of selective law enforcement. There are always plenty of eyes to watch POC and "those" people, but none to watch the teabaggers and other white supremacist groups that want to do more than wear fatigues and run in the woods with guns all weekend.

Shades of COINTELPRO. That's not the work of a transparent law-enforcement agency, but the work of a secret police force. The hypocrisy is incredible when we have too much in common with dictatorships than democracy.

[Willinois]

I wondered how wide spread this was after seeing several big arrests of "terrorists" who weren't a threat to anyone outside their mom's basement if left to their own devices. 15,000 informants is crazy. Of course, we know there have been abuses against political targets, including an informant who encouraged two boys to plan a bomb attack against the '08 GOP convention.

On the plus side, they've taken down at least one major white christian militia group since Obama took office. But, Obama really needs to push some institutional changes that will last beyond his time in office. I'm sure it's no easy task to change an organization that was founded to subvert Constitutional freedoms and apparently has never in its history stopped abusing civil liberties. J. Edgar Hoover was the most dangerous fascist in American history.

[sandnsea]

Well this is what they were doing in the militia groups back in the 90s, which led to Ruby Ridge. And Waco. Let's remember Ruby Ridge was over Randy Weaver sawing off a shotgun at the request of an FBI agent. Which groups do we infiltrate, or do we infiltrate at all? I don't know. But some of these cases against these teen-aged Muslims most certainly could have been handled with a visit to the parents rather than a trip to a fake bombing.

[Treestar]

I'm not going to judge, since I have no idea how to run the FBI. Surely there will be some institutional drag, where it gets difficult to change things that have always been done a certain way. It would be next to impossible to drag out a lone wolf, but at least they might get information on who is so anti-social that they might harm others.

[jaxx]

(08-31-2011 10:30 AM)Treestar Wrote:  I'm not going to judge, since I have no idea how to run the FBI. Surely there will be some institutional drag, where it gets difficult to change things that have always been done a certain way. It would be next to impossible to drag out a lone wolf, but at least they might get information on who is so anti-social that they might harm others.

That's how I look at it too. If someone comes up and says hey how about making a disaster most people would run as fast as they could go. The one who likes the idea....we need to know why, and would they go through with it.

[Brewman_Jax]

The nation's top law-enforcement agency shouldn't be one of the nation's top law-breakers.