8 ms·
FBI groomed a 16-year-old with “brain development issues” to become a terrorist
- nashashmi 3y agoConspiracy to get someone to commit a crime. To frame them.
- StrangeATractor 3y agoHonestly every time the FBI is in the news I get confirmation they're a bunch of lying incompent sleaze bags backed and protected by the state.
- readthenotes1 3y agoEven back to J Edgar Hoover days...
- StrangeATractor 3y agoThey tried to blackmail MLK to get him to kill himself. A department created originally to fight the mob started acting exactly like it. There's no way a reasonable person's faith in an organization like that could ever be restored. Imagine the information that isn't public about their misdeeds.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoThe FBI repeatedly denied that the Mob existed for over a decade, until a patrol cop stumbled accidentally on a meeting of Mob bosses from across America. J Edger Hoover's Wikipedia: > From the mid-1940s through the mid-50s, he paid little attention to criminal vice rackets such as illegal drugs, prostitution, extortion, and flatly denied the existence of the Mafia in the United States. In the 1950s, evidence of the FBI's unwillingness to investigate the Mafia became a topic of public criticism. Story of 1957 Mafia meeting: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1957-meeting-forced-fbi-recognize-mafiaand-changed-justice-system-forever-180967204/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1957-meeting-forced-f...
- ttctciyf 3y agoReminds me that I've yet to see Chris Morris' 2019 film The Day Shall Come which satirizes the FBI's pathological shoehorning of hapless individuals into a paranoid narrative of terrorist cells plotting violence against the state, based on many instances (the number 100 is mentioned) researched by Morris. Morris writes[1]: > The US Attorney General is announcing the sensational arrest of an army based in Miami, about to launch a full ground war on America. The FBI had saved the Nation [...] > Two years later in Washington DC I met a witness from the resulting trial and discovered this terrifying coup would have been pulled off by seven construction workers riding into Chicago on horses. The idea was a fantasy, spun to make money. They had no guns – and no horses. An FBI informant had offered them $50,000 to attack America [...] > The government presented it as an Al Qaeda plot bigger than 9/11. These guys weren’t even Muslims, they were Haitian Catholics. It took three trials to find them guilty. They were all jailed as terrorists. > “I discovered this was not a freakish one off. Since 9/11 it has become Standard Operating Procedure. Informants encourage a Person of Interest to break the law and when they do, the FBI arrest them. Each plan is put together with the federal attorney. Arrest is delayed until the case will play in court. So the conviction rate is 98 per cent. The typical sentence is 25 years. 1: https://lwlies.com/articles/the-day-shall-come-trailer-chris-morris-anna-kendrick/ https://lwlies.com/articles/the-day-shall-come-trailer-chris...
- goeiedaggoeie 3y agothis reminds me somewhat of the plot of the Umberto Eco novel "Foucault's pendulum". A fantastic read.
- dmix 3y agoHow does this stuff get past a prosecutors office? I get law enforcement being idiots but there's whole teams of lawyers putting these cases together too. Are they really that desperate for work?
- rdtsc 3y agoThey are playing on the same team. The definition of entrapment is narrow enough and they both know it very well so they can dance around it just enough to pad each others stats: "Look how many terrorists Joe discovered, give him a promotion!" and "Look how many terrorists Jenny has successfully prosecuted. She should be running the department!".
- sublinear 3y agoIf the bullying at school wasn't enough, even the government bullied him. Wow.
- michaelsshaw 3y agoSadly, in the US, this is far from abnormal. For example, school resource officers often target special needs kids, and a disproportionate amount of them end up with arrests. They're easy to manipulate, and are a prime target for the personality types of American cops.
- brickfaced 3y ago[flagged]
- the_only_law 3y agoThe bullies need careers when they grow up too I guess.
- cypher69 3y agoSurprised to see this on here. HN is usually very pro-FBI and would be quick to dismiss things like this with the C word
- lern_too_spel 3y agoUnlike everything else labeled with the C word, the fact that the FBI has entrapped people for terrorism is well-documented, which is what we expect to see if there is a large group of people doing this. On the other hand, if you claim a large group of government workers are doing something illegal and have no evidence to support your claim, of course it will be labeled a conspiracy theory. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/fbi-sting-operations-terrorism-september-11/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/fbi-sting-operati...
- phpisthebest 3y agoFBI is only good at solving crimes they have engineered
- akomtu 3y agoThe red team, offence, manufactures crimes, the blue team, defence, solves them. Crime plots that happen to be completely staffed by agents dont get reported.
- Aerbil313 3y agoMust be fun, ha? Turns out the world is not as filled with crimes, waiting for you to solve them all, as it seemed in your childhood agent movies, then what are you going to do? Make up your own crimes and solve ‘em!
- phpisthebest 3y agoOhh there is plenty of crime out there, but the FBI only creates the crimes they want to solve that align with political goals they want to achieve. To be extra clear given recent events, this is not commentary on the case around Trump;s actions. This is about terrorism cases, drugs cases, and various other crimes (like the attempted kidnapping of Witmer in MI). It all about political objectives of either the individual agents (in the case of Witmer is was for the personal advancement of the agent) , or the the agency has a whole, while they ignore wide spread crime such as insider trading of congress, interstate crimes by large corporations, abuse by local police dept's, etc etc etc etc
- ihsw 3y agoThere is some good that the FBI does but it is tarnished by this case and other cases like this.
- elzbardico 3y agoThe FBI is essentially the same as the KGB, but more polite and with better taste. Think of it as an east-coast, old-money KGB.
- vaidhy 3y agoThe reason you are getting downvoted is because we have been told we are the good guys and the other side are the bad guys. American exceptionalism to the fore. Every group in power acts exactly the same way as they want to keep the power. It is just human nature.
- DoItToMe81 3y agoThe KGB at the very least did not concern itself with provoking children to ruin their lives. That's more of a Stasi thing, who were far worse. Not a good thing for the FBI to be comparable to either group, of course.
- deely3 3y ago> The KGB at the very least did not concern itself with provoking children to ruin their lives. Directly? Probably no.
- infamouscow 3y agoThe English language lacks a word to properly capture the genuine evil and depravity of the FBI.
- tyingq 3y agoSubjugation maybe? That seems to be the essence of their approach.
- Sporktacular 3y agoDon't be hyperbolic. They do also stop crimes.
- tyingq 3y agoIt feels like almost a certainty that an intelligence agency that also has law enforcement powers is going to develop an unhealthy culture. That isn't really hyperbole. That their power is sometimes pointed at actual criminals doesn't change that much. For example, their relationship with Whitey Bulger did end up putting some bad people in prison. It also had some less desirable outcomes.
- BillyTheMage 3y agoThe fact that they stop crimes is just a "broken clock's right twice a day" things. Of course the tyrants stop crime, they have to.
- opportune 3y agoNot only do they stop crimes, is it really evil to arrest someone who continued sending money to (what he thought was) ISIS as an adult after the FBI had literally shown up to his house and told his parents that they needed to monitor their son’s internet access? Incompetence, maybe, unnecessary, yes. Evil is a stretch
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- giraffe_lady 3y ago
- no1groyp 3y ago[dead]
- roenxi 3y agoAlso a curious question is whether they FBI have any experience in grooming people and then letting the plot go to completion. Robert F. Kennedy Jr has been doing the rounds and it really begs the question. The FBI has no problem with grooming people and entrapping them. If it is willing to plot half-measure attacks and destroy lives, where would the confidence come from that they don't also sometimes plot full-measure attacks and destroy lives?
- asynchronous 3y agoAn excellent question, and I believe the most likely scenario (and most common one) is that they simply fail to prevent the plots they orchestrated out of sheer negligence every once in a while.
- remarkEon 3y agoOr due to attrition. Some agent is grooming someone, leaves/gets promoted, the new handler doesn't quite understand what was going on and then all of a sudden they have a "situation" on their hands.
- notavalleyman 3y ago>the most likely scenario (and most common on What evidence led you to think this is MOST likely - or in fact has ever happened in history?
- notavalleyman 3y agoFrom what I understood from the OP link, the FBI are working closely with US attorneys on how to structure and sequence their cases. I really don't understand why you have theorised that a US attorney would allow attacks to take place. Obviously an attorney is seeking closed prosecutions, and the article is about closing prosecutorial cases against people "plotting" attacks, and, therefore, no additional steps are required in order to obtain prosecution.
- coolhand2120 3y ago
- Zaheer 3y agoNot the first time the FBI has done this unfortunately. https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/how-the-fbi-spied-on-orange-county-muslims-and-attempted-to-get-away-with-it https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/how-the-fbi-spie...
- FpUser 3y agoFucking piece of shit you are Mr. Agent and the ones who had let it possible. But it is ok I guess. They have it worse in China.
- deepspace 3y agoThe RCMP in Canada are also not above using disadvantaged people to manufacture terrorism cases: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/new-podcast-exposes-staggering-absurdity-of-nuttall-korody-terrorism-case-1.6573587 https://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcastnews/new-podcast-exposes-sta...
- steve_adams_86 3y agoI was looking for this. I find it deeply disturbing that Canadians don’t really care about this. I knew both of these people in my late teens and it couldn’t have been clearer that they were mentally unstable. They couldn’t conspire to do much at all, let alone the sophisticated things they were accused of. The work that would have gone into framing them is so difficult to overstate. They would have undermined the RCMP at every turn, either through incompetence or lack of interest in the big plan. Not through any fault of their own. Korody was nicknamed “potato” as a teen because she was about as intelligent as one. Which is awful, don’t get me wrong. I have a lot of sympathy for these two. This case made me extremely apprehensive about the RCMP, in any case. The recent Fairy Creek debacle on Vancouver Island wasn’t as bad, but clearly exposed the rotten underbelly of the organization once again. It’s rough because most Canadians will assume you’re some kind of conspiracy theorist or shit disturber if you hold these opinions. Our police and military possess a strange kind of innocence in our national narrative that the US counterparts don’t appear to have.
- callalex 3y ago>Our police and military possess a strange kind of innocence in our national narrative that the US counterparts don’t appear to have. I think the USians you run into on the internet are a more well read and skeptical bunch than average. Most Americans I know in person aren’t even aware of past actions of the FBI that even the current FBI denounces, such as their abhorrent treatment of Martin Luther King Jr.
- kurosawa 3y agoMiddle-aged government worker sought to get promoted by abusing a mentally handicapped teen—probably the same age as his own kids if he had any.
- fluxem 3y agoMany school shooters were mentally handicapped teens. That’s the exact demographic the law enforcements need to pay a special attention to.
- BasedAnon 3y agoNice to see bigotry is alive and well
- mc32 3y agoBy encouraging them to act on an ideation, really? It seems pretty counterintuitive to me.
- booleandilemma 3y agoHave you considered a career in law enforcement?
- BillyTheMage 3y agoDo you not understand that being singled out like that is what leads people to become school shooters in the first place? This is some malevolent big-brother bullshit.
- tbrownaw 3y ago> exact demographic the law enforcements need to pay a special attention to But perhaps a different kind of attention?
- akomtu 3y agoI bet many of them were groomed by special agents the same way.
- Hnrobert42 3y agoThis article is pretty biased, but even so, there is an interesting point where the father admits that 2 years ago the FBI seized the kid’s computer. Later, the kid kept talking to the FBI, and the father complains that the FBI should have just warned him (the father) rather than arresting the kid. I mean, the FBI showed up at his house and seized a computer. How many warnings did he expect to get?
- Blahah 3y agoThe FBI baited his child into a crime. Most people probably expect their government not to lure their children to danger, but to guide them to safety. Your response makes it sound like the kid's behaviour is what the father didn't expect, but no. It's the FBI that did the unexpected, and arguably abhorrent thing.
- theknocker 3y agoWow isn't the FBI just the best. Thank goodness they still exist!
- hirundo 3y agoIf it is their modus operandi to enhance their power and prestige with false flag operations written small, it's more credible that they would be willing to do so at scale. You can find any number of conspiracy theories that the FBI created the circumstances that empowered themselves, for pretty much any attack you can name. The behavior described here makes those accusations less incredible.
- Georgelemental 3y agoThere should be a Constitutional amendment restricting entrapment.
- kcrwfrd_ 3y agoBased off the title, I thought this might be about Ted Kaczynski.
- spencerchubb 3y agoI thought the same thing.
- poorbutdebtfree 3y agoPatriot Front, Ray Epps, Gov. Whitmer, etc.
- lern_too_spel 3y agoThe story has "Brother Eric" vibes from Hasan Minhaj's "The King's Jester."
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kaycey2022 3y agoA government organisation with more than 10 Billion USD budget spent valuable time radicalising some poor kid and then arrested him because he was immature enough to be radicalised... It would be funny if it weren't real. ...Actually it is still very funny.
- AnonymizedPost 3y ago[flagged]
- testacct22 3y agoSomething I read like a day or two ago: > “The FBI and other 3 letter agencies contact these unhinged mentally ill kids and convince them to do mass shootings,” Airman Teixeira wrote in an online chat group, sharing a debunked conspiracy theory after a gunman killed three people at a mall in Indiana last summer. The gunman, he claimed, was one of many mass shooters groomed by the government as part of a secret plot “to make people vote for” gun control. Kind of strange to see the NYT prematurely assert something as "debunked" without evidence. And not even in an opinion article, but in a regular article? It seems like when the US govt is involved, any sort of journalistic standard gets thrown out https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/us/politics/airman-jack-teixeira-classified-secrets.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/18/us/politics/airman-jack-t...
- mikrotikker 3y agoThey saw Alex Jones get smacked with a billion $ lawsuit and thought maybe they better tow the line?
- throwawayfour 3y agoIt seems like it should be self explanatory why the FBI would ever do such a thing... (and seemingly on a regular basis) but I don't get it. Could someone please ELI5?
- activiation 3y agoThere are just as many criminals in law enforcement VS normal citizens... The difference is that law enforcement rarely face consequences to their actions... /R/bad_cop_no_donut
- nobodyandproud 3y agoIn intent, this seems like entrapment. Another dimmer view: The FBI agents themselves are getting in practice for sedition, by persuading others (for now) via entrapment.
- kornhole 3y agoLast week one of the FBI whistleblowers stated that the demand for terror threats exceeds the supply.
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoGotta say, I wish they'd used a term other than "groomed". As-is, this article headline (and to some extent the content, given its adjacency to the idea of the "deep state") could be seen as an alt-right/QAnon dog whistle...